Arabic indefinites, interrogatives, and negators : a linguistic history of western dialects /

This book traces the origins and development of the Arabic grammatical marker s/si, which is found in interrogatives, negators, and indefinite determiners over a broad dialect area that stretches from the southern Levant to North Africa and includes dialects of Yemen and Oman. David Wilmsen draws on...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Wilmsen, David William (Author)
Format: Book
Language:English
Published: Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2014.
Edition:First edition.
Series:Oxford studies in diachronic and historical linguistics ; 14.
Subjects:
Table of Contents:
  • 1: Introduction: theory, convention, and the assessment of facts
  • 2: On the age and origins of spoken Arabic vernaculars : an unresolved question
  • 3: fīš wa biddīš : The functions of šī
  • 4: Andalusi Arabic negators and interrogatives: Early evidence of grammatical šī
  • 5: Interrogation and negation with šī in North African and Levantine Arabic
  • 6: Origins of grammatical šī : Southern Arabia or the Levant?
  • 7: Proto-Semitic and Proto-Arabic origins of grammatical šī
  • 8: On explanation and theory in Arabic linguistics
  • Afterword
  • Appendix: Points of divergence between written and spoken Arabic.