Volume 75, Issue 4 - Special Issue: Exploring typological variation across varieties of Arabic; Issue Editors: Bruno Herin, Stefano Manfredi and Christophe Pereira

Pain Constructions (PCs) constitute a class of experiential constructions expressing situations that involve unpleasant physical experiences (e.g. headache , burning eyes, dizziness , etc.). Previous cross-linguistic comparisons have shown that, though languages do not have dedicated morphosyntactic structures for encoding pain, there are certain constructions that are more likely to express physical experiences. Based on original data elicited by means of a situational questionnaire, this paper aims at analyzing the semantic and syntactic properties of PCs in modern Arabic dialects and to make typological generalizations about their cross-dialect variation. Benefiting from insights from both linguistic typology and contact linguistics, the study eventually shows that, despite considerable lexicosemantic and morphosyntactic variation, PCs in Arabic can be reduced to two main syntactic types: locational and inverse constructions.

Arabic is a typical noun-attribute language with head-driven agreement in gender and number. As for definite attributive NPs, the default in most spoken Arabic varieties is definite marking of both the noun and the adjective – a feature that is rarely found cross-linguistically. This article shows that there are also cases of reversed word order, lacking agreement in gender, and dialects with definite marking on the nominal head. In dialects at the northern fringe of the Fertile Crescent, definiteness is by default only marked on the adjective. In these dialects, adjectival attributes are structurally identical to nominal attributes, including the use of the construct state with feminine heads.

This paper describes and compares the strategies used in Arabic dialects to encode the progressive aspect, in order to show their similarities and what sets them apart from one another, as well as to situate them within cross-linguistic tendencies. Drawing on a wide variety of data, the paper shows the different ways the progressive aspect was (or is being) grammaticalized in Arabic dialects in light of the typologically common paths of grammaticalization. These paths involve for some dialects the reorganization of their aspectual categories, and thus provide an interesting perspective to look at the evolution of aspectual systems in Arabic varieties.

In the existential domain, Classical Arabic expresses the ground > figure perspectivization in locational predication by a mere change in constituent order, but Modern Arabic varieties have variously grammaticalized existential particles that tend to acquire verb-like properties. In the possessive domain, Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic have a typical oblique-possessor (or locational possessive) construction in which the possessor phrase is flagged by a preposition. In the vernacular varieties, this preposition has become a possessive predicator with some verbal properties, whose coding frame is similar (although not fully identical) to that of a transitive verb. More radical changes in the existential and possessive domains are attested in pidginized/creolized Arabic varieties.

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.

This article examines verbal sequences in Arabic dialects which can correspond either to complex sentences with embedded clauses or to complex predicates with reduction of one or the other verb. The first part is devoted to complex sentences where completives and subordinates of purpose and consequence are introduced by a marker that is generally specific, but sometimes polyfunctional. The second part explores embedding without a subordinator (with distinct or identical subjects), as well as with cases of complex predicates, sometimes with reduction of V 1 (cases of auxiliarization and pragmatization), sometimes of V 2 (rare cases of serial verbs).