Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-nwzlb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T12:30:58.372Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Contact as catalyst: The case for Coptic influence in the development of Arabic negation1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 November 2009

CHRISTOPHER LUCAS*
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
ELLIOTT LASH*
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
*
Authors' address: Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages, University of Cambridge, Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge CB3 9DA, UKcbl23@cam.ac.uk
Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages, University of Cambridge, Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge CB3 9DA, UKejfl2@cam.ac.uk

Abstract

This article discusses similar developments in the expression of negation in the histories of Egyptian-Coptic and Arabic and explores the evidence for these respective developments being related by language contact. Both Coptic and Arabic have undergone a development known as Jespersen's Cycle (JC), whereby an original negative marker is joined by some new element to form a bipartite negative construction. The original marker then becomes optional while the new element becomes the primary negator. We present the results of a corpus study of negation in late Coptic, showing that, at the time when Arabic speakers began to settle in Egypt, the bipartite negative construction still predominated. This being the case, we argue that native speakers of Coptic learning Arabic as a second language played a key role in the genesis of the Arabic bipartite negative construction. More generally, we give reasons to doubt the a priori preference for internal explanations of syntactic change over those involving contact, as well as the assumption that the two are mutually exclusive. Rather, we suggest that not only purely internal but also (partially) contact-induced change can profitably be accounted for in terms of child language acquisition leading to a change in the grammars of individual speakers.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

[1]

Parts of this paper were presented in Nijmegen, Milan and Leipzig in 2008. We would like to thank the two anonymous JL referees, as well as David Willis and Johan van der Auwera, for their detailed and insightful comments on earlier, inferior, drafts. We would also like to thank Ariel Shisha-Halevy for the initial suggestion that the issue investigated here was worth investigating. This work was funded by a Ph.D. studentship from the Arts and Humanties Research Council and an Overseas Research Studentship award from the University of Cambridge.

Lists of abbreviations used in example glosses and example source annotations can be found in the appendix.

References

REFERENCES

Abun-Nasr, Jamil. 1987. A history of the Maghrib. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Basset, André. 1952. La langue berbère. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bernini, Giuliano & Ramat, Paolo. 1996. Negative sentences in the languages of Europe: A typological approach. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Borg, Alexander. 2004. A glossary of Cypriot Maronite Arabic (Arabic–English). Leiden: Brill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Borsley, Robert D., Tallerman, Maggie & Willis, David. 2007. The syntax of Welsh. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brugnatelli, Vermondo. 1986. La negazione discontinua in berbero e in arabo-magrebino. In Bernini, Giuliano & Brugnatelli, Vermondo (eds.), Atti della 4a giornata di studi camito-semitici ed indoeuropei, 5362. Milan: Unicopli.Google Scholar
Brustad, Kristen. 2000. The syntax of spoken Arabic: A comparative study of Moroccan, Egyptian, Syrian and Kuwaiti dialects. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Burridge, Kate. 1993. Syntactic change in Germanic: Aspects of language change in Germanic, with particular reference to Middle Dutch. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cassar, Carmel. 2000. A concise history of Malta. Msida: Mireva.Google Scholar
Caubet, Dominique. 2000–1. Questionnaire de dialectologie du Maghreb (d'après les travaux de W. Marçais, M. Cohen, G. S. Colin, J. Cantineau, D. Cohen, Ph. Marçais, S. Levy, etc.). Estudios de dialectologia norteafricana y andalusí 5, 7392.Google Scholar
Chaker, Salem. 1996. Remarques préliminaires sur la négation en berbère. In Chaker, & Caubet, (eds.), 117134.Google Scholar
Chaker, Salem & Caubet, Dominique (eds.). 1996. La négation en berbère et en arabe maghrébin. Paris: L'Harmattan.Google Scholar
Coetsem, Frans van. 1988. Loan phonology and the two transfer types in language contact. Dordrecht: Foris.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coetsem, Frans van. 2000. A general and unified theory of the transmission process in language contact. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.Google Scholar
Corriente, Federico. 1977. A grammatical sketch of the Spanish Arabic dialect bundle. Madrid: Instituto Hispano-Árabe de Cultura.Google Scholar
Cowell, Mark. 1964. A reference grammar of Syrian Arabic. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Dahl, Östen. 1979. Typology of sentence negation. Linguistics 17, 79106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Detges, Ulrich & Waltereit, Richard. 2002. Grammaticalization vs. reanalysis: A semantic-pragmatic account of functional change in grammar. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 21.2, 151195.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Döpke, Susanne. 1998. Competing language structures: The acquisition of verb placement by bilingual German–English children. Journal of Child Language 25, 558584.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Eades, Diana. 1996. Aboriginal English. In Wurm, Stephen, Mählhäusler, Peter & Tryon, Darrell T. (eds.), Atlas of languages of intercultural communication in the Pacific, Asia and the Americas, vol. 2, 133141. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elhalimi, Brahim. 1996. La négation dans le parler arabe de Mazouna (Ouest Algérien). In Chaker, & Caubet, (eds.), 135162.Google Scholar
Eythórsson, Thórhallur. 2002. Negation in C: The syntax of negated verbs in Old Norse. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 25, 190224.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Faber, Alice. 1991. The diachronic relationship between negative and interrogative markers in Semitic. In Kaye, Alan S. (ed.), Semitic studies in honor of Wolf Leslau, vol. 1, 411429. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.Google Scholar
Gardiner, Alan. 1904. The word iwn3. Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde 41, 130135.Google Scholar
Gelderen, Elly van. 2008. The negative cycle. Linguistic Typology 12.2, 195243.Google Scholar
Guichard, Pierre. 2000. Al-Andalus: 711–1492. Paris: Hachette Littératures.Google Scholar
Jäger, Agnes. 2008. History of German negation (Linguistics Today 188). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jespersen, Otto. 1917. Negation in English and other languages. Copenhagen: Høst.Google Scholar
Johnstone, Thomas. 1977. Ḥarsūsi lexicon and English-Ḥarsūsi word list. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Johnstone, Thomas. 1981. Jibbāli lexicon. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Jong, Rudolf E. de. 2000. A grammar of the Bedouin dialects of the Northern Sinai littoral. Leiden: Brill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kickasola, Joseph. 1975. Sahidic Coptic (N) … AN negation patterns: A morpho-syntactic description of sentences and adjuncts. Ph.D. dissertation, Brandeis University.Google Scholar
Lambdin, Thomas O. 1982. Introduction to Sahidic Coptic. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press.Google Scholar
Lass, Roger. 1997. Historical linguistics and language change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lefebvre, Claire. 2001. Relexification in creole genesis and its effects on the development of the creole. In Smith, Norval & Venestra, Tonjes (eds.), Creolization and contact, 942. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loprieno, Antonio. 1995. Ancient Egyptian: A linguistic introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lucas, Christopher. 2007. Jespersen's Cycle in Arabic and Berber. Transactions of the Philological Society 105.3, 398431.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lucas, Christopher. 2009. Contact-induced grammatical change: Towards an explicit account. Ms., University of Cambridge.Google Scholar
Mad‘aj, ‘Abd al-Muhsin. 1988. The Yemen in early Islam 9–233/630–847: A political history. London: Ithaca Press.Google Scholar
Mailhammer, Robert. 2007. The Germanic strong verbs: Foundations and development of a new system. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meillet, Antoine. 1912. L’évolution des formes grammaticales. Scientia 12, 384400. [Reprinted (1948) in Meillet, Linguistique historique et linguistique générale, 130–148. Paris: Honoré Champion.]Google Scholar
Meisel, Jürgen M. 1997. The acquisition of the syntax of negation in French and German: Contrasting first and second language development. Second Language Research 13.3, 227263.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meisel, Jürgen M. 2001. The simultaneous acquisition of two first languages: Early differentiation and subsequent development of grammars. In Cenoz, Jasone & Genesee, Fred (eds.), Trends in bilingual acquisition, 1141. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meisel, Jürgen M. 2008. A quest for (transmission) failure: On child bilingualism as the locus of diachronic syntactic change. Presented at Transmission and Diffusion, Radboud Universiteit, Nijmegen.Google Scholar
Meltzer, Edmund. 1990. The ‘prehistory’ of Late Egyptian i(w)n(3): A hypothesis. Göttinger Miszellen 114, 7179.Google Scholar
Obler, Lorraine. 1990. Reflexes of Classical Arabic šay'un ‘thing’ in the modern dialects. In Bellamy, James(ed.) Studies in Near Eastern culture and history: In memory of Ernest T. Abdel-Massih, 132152. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan.Google Scholar
Owens, Jonathan. 1984. A short reference grammar of eastern Libyan Arabic. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.Google Scholar
Owens, Jonathan. 1988. The foundations of grammar: An introduction to medieval Arabic grammatical theory. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Owens, Jonathan. 2003. Arabic dialect history and historical linguistic mythology. Journal of the American Oriental Society 123, 715740.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Owens, Jonathan. 2006. A linguistic history of Arabic. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parry, Mair. 1997. Preverbal negation and clitic ordering, with particular reference to a group of north-west Italian dialects. Zeitschrift für Romanische Philologie 113, 244270.Google Scholar
Penka, Doris. 2007. Negative indefinites. Ph.D. dissertation, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen.Google Scholar
Reintges, Chris. 2004. Coptic Egyptian (Sahidic dialect): A learner's grammar. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe.Google Scholar
Rosenhouse, Judith. 1984. Towards a classification of Bedouin dialects in Israel. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 47, 508522.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rowlett, Paul. 1998. Sentential negation in French. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwegler, Armin. 1988. Word-order changes in predicate negation strategies in Romance languages. Diachronica 5.1/2, 2158.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simeone-Senelle, Marie-Claude. 1997. The modern South Arabian languages. In Hetzron, Robert (ed.), The Semitic languages, 378423. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Solihin, Sohirin. 1991. Copts and Muslims in Egypt: A study on harmony and hostility. Leicester: The Islamic Foundation.Google Scholar
Stauble, Anne-Marie. 1984. A comparison of a Spanish–English and a Japanese–English second language continuum: Negation and verb morphology. In Andersen, Roger (ed.), Second languages: A cross-linguistic perspective, 323353. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.Google Scholar
Taha, Abdulwahid. 1989. The Muslim conquest and settlement of North Africa and Spain. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid, Gunnel, Tottie & van der Wurff, Wim (eds.). 1998. Negation in the history of English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Tsiapera, Mária. 1969. A descriptive analysis of Cypriot Maronite Arabic. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Turner, Lorenzo. 2002. Africanisms in the Gullah dialect. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Verhaar, John. 1995. Towards a reference grammar of Tok Pisin: An experiment in corpus linguistics. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai‘i Press.Google Scholar
Watson, Janet. 1993. A syntax of Ṣan‘āni Arabic. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.Google Scholar
Watson, Janet. 2002. The phonology and morphology of Arabic. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watterson, Barbara. 1988. Coptic Egypt. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press.Google Scholar
Willis, David. 2006. Negation in Middle Welsh. Studia Celtica 40.1, 6388.Google Scholar
Willis, David. To appear. A Minimalist approach to Jespersen's Cycle in Welsh. In Anderson, Stephen R. & Jonas, Dianne (eds.), Syntactic variation and change. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Winand, Jean. 1997. La négation bn… iwn3 en Néo-Égyptian. Lingua Aegyptia 5, 223236.Google Scholar
Winford, Donald. 2005. Contact-induced changes: Classification and processes. Diachronica 22.2, 373427.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woidich, Manfred. 1968. Negation und negative Sätze im Ägyptisch-Arabischen. Ph.D. dissertation, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität zu München.Google Scholar
Woidich, Manfred. 2006. Das Kairenisch-Arabische: Eine Grammatik. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.Google Scholar