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The typology of negation across varieties of Arabic

  • Christopher Lucas EMAIL logo and Mohammed Alluhaybi
Published/Copyright: December 1, 2022

Abstract

Drawing primarily on the data collated by Alluhaybi (2019. Negation in modern Arabic varieties from a typological point of view. London: SOAS University of London PhD thesis), this article first situates Arabic within the crosslinguistic typology of negative strategies put forward, among others, by Miestamo (2005. Standard negation: The negation of declarative verbal main clauses in a typological perspective. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter). It then surveys the main parameters of variation among different varieties of Arabic in the expression of standard negation, non-verbal negation, and negative imperatives, with a particular focus on the issue of the single versus bipartite expression of negation. The article finishes by looking at some recent debates concerning the diachronic evolution of the observed patterns.


Corresponding author: Christopher Lucas, SOAS University of London, London, UK, E-mail:

Acknowledgments

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to Stephan Procházka, Bettina Leitner, and Yousef Al-Rojaie for their assistance with the data and analysis of parts of this article. Many thanks also to Stefano Manfredi and Christophe Pereira for their constructive comments. Any shortcomings remain entirely our own responsibility.

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Published Online: 2022-12-01
Published in Print: 2022-11-25

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