Innovating postverbal negation in North Africa
The present study investigates the grammatical origin of the postverbal negator ḇu in Rif Berber (Afroasiatic, Berber; North, Northeast, and Northwest Morocco) and in Moroccan Arabic of Oujda (Afroasiatic, Semitic; Northeast Morocco), the only languages in which it is commonly attested up till now. Based on new data obtained from recent fieldwork in Morocco, the study will demonstrate that this negator is most probably of Berber origin and has been construed out of an existential by system-internal grammaticalization. The study will also provide evidence for quadruple negation marking in Rif Berber, relating to a reduplication of the ḇu-negator. Moreover, it will show how Berber constantly innovates its cyclical negation system, in which, in this case, different Jespersen Cycles and a Negative Existential Cycle are interlaced. Accordingly, the study will prove that ḇu in Moroccan Arabic is an innovation phenomenon induced by contact with Rif Berber and instantiated through the processes of pattern replication and matter borrowing.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Standard verbal sentential negation in Berber and North African Arabic
- 3.System-internal innovation of postverbal negation in Rif Berber
- 3.1The synchrony of the postverbal negator ḇu
- 3.2The diachrony and typology of the postverbal negator ḇu
-
stage 1: existential verbal form
-
stage 2: negative adverb
-
stage 3: negative particle
bo
- 4.System-external innovation of postverbal negation in MAO
- 5.Conclusion
- Notes
- Abbreviations
-
References
References (53)
References
Aguade, Jorgé, & Mohammad Elyaacoubi. 1995. El dialecto arabe de Skūra (Marruecos). Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas.
Bensoukas, Karim. 2015. Amazigh negative verb morphology: How far does the variation go? Brill’s Journal of Afro-Asiatic Languages and Linguistics 7(2). 211–278.
Boucherit, Aziza. 2002. L’arabe parlé à Alger. Aspects sociolinguistiques et énonciatifs. Paris: Peeters.
Brugnatelli, Vermondo. 1987. La negazione discontinua in berbero e in arabo magrebino. In Giuliano Bernini & Vermon-do Brugnatelli (eds.), Atti della 4a Giornata di studi camito-semitici ed indoeuropei, 53–62. Milan: Unicopli.
Brugnatelli, Vermondo. 2002. Les thèmes verbaux négatifs du berbère: Quelques réflexions. In Kamal Nait-Zerrad (ed.), Articles de Linguistique Berbère. Mémorial Werner Vycichl, 165–180. Paris: L'Harmattan.
Brugnatelli, Vermondo. 2011. Négations, participes et figement en berbère: nouvelles hypothèses. In Amina Mettouchi (ed.), “Parcours berbères”. Mélanges offerts à Paulette Galand-Pernet et Lionel Galand pour leur 90e anniversaire, 521–532. Köln: Köppe.
Caubet, Dominique. 1983. La détermination en arabe marocain (Collection ERA 642). Paris: Université Paris 7.
Caubet, Dominique. 1993. L’arabe marocain, tomes I (Phonologie et morphosyntaxe) et II (Syntaxe et catégories grammaticales, textes). Paris: Peeters.
Caubet, Dominique. 1996. La négation en arabe maghrébin. In: Salem Chaker & Dominique Caubet (eds.), La négation en berbère et en arabe maghrébin, 79–97. Paris: L’Harmattan.
Chaker, Salem. 1996. Quelques remarques préliminaires sur la négation en berbère. In Salem Chaker & Dominique Caubet (eds.), La négation en berbère et en arabe maghrébin, 9–22. Paris: L’Harmattan.
Croft, William. 1991. The evolution of negation. Journal of Linguistics 271. 1–27.
Dahl, Östen. 2010. Typology of negation. In Laurence Horn (ed.), The expression of negation, 9–38. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton
Diem, Werner. 2014. Negation in Arabic. A study in linguistic history. Wiesbaden: Harrasso-wits.
Dryer, Matthew S. 1988. Universals of negative position. In Michael Hammond, Edith Mo-ravcsik, & Jessica Wirth (eds.), Studies in syntactic typology, 93–124. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Galand, Lionel. 1994. La négation en berbère. Matériaux arabes et sudarabiques (GELLAS, nouvelle série) 81. 169–181.
Gast, Volker & van der Auwera, Johan. 2012. What is ‘contact-induced grammaticalization’? Examples from Mayan and Mixe-Zoquean languages. In Björn Wiemer, Bernhard Wälchli & Björn Hansen (eds), Grammatical replication and borrowability in language contact, 381–426. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Heath, Jeffrey. 2005. A grammar of Tamashek (Tuareg of Mali). Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Jespersen, Otto. 1917. Negation in English and other languages. Copenhagen: Host & Son.
Lafkioui, Mena B. 1996. La négation en tarifit. In Salem Chaker & Dominique Caubet (eds.), La négation en berbère et en arabe maghrébin, 49–77. Paris: L’Harmattan.
Lafkioui, Mena B. 2007. Atlas linguistique des variétés berbères du Rif. Köln: Köppe Verlag.
Lafkioui, Mena B. 2013a. Reinventing Negation Patterns in Moroccan Arabic. In Mena Lafkioui (ed.), African Arabic: Approaches to dialectology, 51–93. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Lafkioui, Mena B. 2013b. Negation, grammaticalization, and language change in North Africa: The case of the negator NEG___bu
. In Giorgio Francesco Arcodia, Federica Da Milano, Gabriele Iannàccaro & Paolo Zublena (eds.), Tilelli. Scritti in onore di Vermondo Brugnatelli, 113–130. Cesena: Caissa Italia.
Lafkioui, Mena B. & Vermondo Brugnatelli. 2020. Negation in Berber: Variation, evolution, and typology. Linguistics 58(4). 967–1008.
Lanfry, Jacques. 1968. Ghadamès, Étude linguistique et ethnographique. Vol I: Textes, notes philologiques et ethnographiques. Fort-National: FDB.
Lucas, Christopher. 2013. Negation in the history of Arabic and Afro-Asiatic. In David Willis, Christopher Lucas & Anne Breitbarth (eds.), The history of negation in the languages of Europe and the Mediterranean. Vol. I: Case studies, 399–452. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Marçais, Philippe. 1977. Esquisse grammaticale de l’arabe maghrébin. Paris: Maisonneuve.
Meillet, Antoine. 1912. L’évolution des formes grammaticales. Scientia 121. 384–400.
Mettouchi, Amina. 2009. The system of negation in Berber. In Norbert Cyffer, Erwin Ebermann, and Georg Zieglemeyer, Negation patterns in West African languages and beyond, 287–306. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Mitchell, Terence Frederick. 2009. Zuaran Berber (Libya). Grammar and texts. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.
Naït-Zerrad, Kamal. 2002. Review of Esquisse grammaticale du rifain oriental, Kossmann Maarten, Paris, Louvain, Peeters. Orientalistische Literaturzeitung 971. 4–5.
Paradisi, Umberto. 1960. Testi berberi di Augila (Cirenaica). AION 101. 79–91.
Paradisi, Umberto. 1963. Il linguaggio berbero di El-Fógăha (Fezzân). Testi e materiale lessicale. AION 131. 93–126.
Pauwels, Jan L. 1958. Het dialect van Aarschot en omstreken. Brussel: Belgisch Interuniversitair Centrum voor Neerlandistiek.
Pennacchietti, Fabrizio. 1967. Sull’origine della particella negativa araba mā
. Annali dell’Istituto Orientale di Napoli 181. 15–23.
Prasse, Karl-Gottfried. 1972. Manuel de grammaire touarègue (tahăggart). Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag.
Prasse, Karl-Gottfried, Ghoubeïd Alojaly & Mohamed Ghabdouane. 2003. Dictionnaire touareg-français (A-L). Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press.
Prasse, Karl-Gottfried. 2010. Tuareg elementary course (Tahăggart). Köln: Köppe Verlag.
Ramat, Paolo. 2006. Italian negatives from a typological/areal point of view. In Nicola Grandi, & Gabriele Iannàccaro (eds.), Scritti in onore di Emanuele Banfi in occasione del suo 60º compleanno, 355–370. Cesena: Caissa Italia.
Renisio, Amédée. 1932. Dialectes berbères des Beni Iznassen, du Rif et des Senhaja de Sraïr. Paris: Ernest Leroux.
Sarnelli, Tommaso. 1924–25. Il dialetto berbero di Sokna, suppl. of L’Africa Italiana. Napoli: Societa africana d’Italia.
Simeone-Senelle, Marie-Claude. 1997. The modern South Arabian languages. In Robert Hetzron (ed.), The Semitic languages, 378–423. London: Routledge.
Sudlow, David. 2001. The Tamasheq of North-East Burkina Faso. Köln: Köppe Verlag.
Sudlow, David. 2009. Dictionary of the Tamasheq of North-East Burkina Faso. Köln: Köppe Verlag.
Schwegler, Armin. 1991. Predicate negation in contemporary Brazilian Portuguese. Orbis 341. 187–214.
Taine-Cheikh, Catherine. 1995–96. Trois points de vue sur la negation mā dans le dialecte arabe de Mauritanie. Matériaux arabes et sudarabiques. GELLAS 71. 11–61.
van der Auwera, Johan. 2009. The Jespersen cycles. In Elly van Gelderen (ed.), Cyclical change, 35–71. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
van der Auwera, Johan & Olga, Krasnoukhova. 2020. The typology of negation. In Viviane Déprez and M. Teresa Espinal (eds.), The Oxford handbook of negation, 91–116. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
van der Auwera, Johan, Olga Krasnoukhova & Frens Vossen. Forthcoming. Intertwining the negative cycles. In Arja Hamaro & Ljuba Veselinova (eds.), The Negative Existential Cycle from a historical-comparative perspective, 1–39. Berlin: Language Science Press.
Veselinova, Ljuba. 2013. Negative existentials: A cross-linguistic study. Italian Journal of Linguistics 251: 107–45.
Vossen, Frens. 2016. On the typology of the Jespersen Cycles. Antwerp: University of Antwerp PhD dissertation.
Cited by (1)
Cited by one other publication
van der Auwera, Johan
2024.
Negation. In
Reference Module in Social Sciences,
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 24 september 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.