A Multi-Locus Analysis of Arabic Negation - (Edinburgh Studies in Theoretical Linguistics) by Ahmad Alqassas (Paperback)

About the Book

This book studies the micro-variation in the syntax of negation of Southern Levantine, Gulf and Standard Arabic. By including new and recently published data that support key issues for the syntax of negation, the book challenges the standard parametric view that negation has a fixed parametrized position in syntactic structure.

Book Synopsis

This book studies the micro-variation in the syntax of negation of Southern Levantine, Gulf and Standard Arabic. By including new and recently published data that support key issues for the syntax of negation, the book challenges the standard parametric view that negation has a fixed parametrized position in syntactic structure. It particularly argues for a multi-locus analysis with syntactic, semantic, morphosyntactic and diachronic implications for the various structural positions. Thus accounting for numerous word order restrictions, semantic ambiguities and pragmatic interpretations without complicating narrow syntax with special operations, configurations or constraints.

From the Back Cover

A Multi-locus Analysis of Arabic Negation: Micro-variation in Southern Levantine, Gulf and Standard Arabic By Ahmad Alqassas This book studies the micro-variation in the syntax of negation of Southern Levantine, Gulf and Standard Arabic. By including new and recently published data that support key issues for the syntax of negation, the book challenges the standard parametric view that negation has a fixed parametrized position in syntactic structure. It particularly argues for a multi-locus analysis with syntactic, semantic, morphosyntactic and diachronic implications for the various structural positions. Thus accounting for numerous word order restrictions, semantic ambiguities and pragmatic interpretations without complicating narrow syntax with special operations, configurations or constraints. Key Features - Data from Southern Levantine, Gulf and Standard Arabic shed light on word order contrasts in negative clauses and their interaction with tense/aspect, mood/modality, semantic scope over adverbs, and negative sensitive items - New data challenging the standard claim in Arabic linguistics literature that negation has a fixed parametrized position in the clause structure - Non-parametric analysis challenging the parametric view of cross-linguistic negation studies and supporting a multi-locus analysis Ahmad Alqassas is an Assistant Professor of Arabic Linguistics at Georgetown University

Review Quotes

Alqassas builds on Zanuttini's work on negation in Romance languages. He offers rich analyses of negation in Arabic languages and the variation among those languages, therefore of great interest to specialists in Arabic. He also develops an approach that goes beyond "parameters" and his book will interest the growing number of syntacticians who recognize the limitations and problems in parametric approaches and have been working on how parsing requires new analyses that permit the required variation.--Professor David Lightfoot, Georgetown University

About the Author

Ahmad Alqassas is Assistant Professor of Arabic Linguistics at Georgetown University