University of Wisconsin Milwaukee UWM Digital Commons Theses and Dissertations May 2021 The Syntax of Negation in Iraqi Arabic Saja Albuarabi University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.uwm.edu/etd Part of the Linguistics Commons Recommended Citation Albuarabi, Saja, "The Syntax of Negation in Iraqi Arabic" (2021). Theses and Dissertations. 2636. https://dc.uwm.edu/etd/2636 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by UWM Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of UWM Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE SYNTAX OF NEGATION IN IRAQI ARABIC by Saja Albuarabi A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics at The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee May 2021 ABSTRACT THE SYNTAX OF NEGATION IN IRAQI ARABIC by Saja Albuarabi The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2021 Under the Supervision of Professor Hamid Ouali This dissertation is a study of negation in Iraqi Arabic. It investigates the syntactic properties of negation in this dialect by presenting some previously unnoticed empirical facts about this phenomenon and by analyzing its theoretical significance for Arabic syntax in particular and Human language in general. Iraqi Arabic is a cluster of subdialects that show an interesting systematic microvariation in the use of negative expressions. The first goal of this dissertation is to present the syntactic properties of negation in all these subdialects through a detailed description and comprehensive survey. Based on this survey and description, these subdialects, are divided into two major groups: ma group and ma-ʃ group. A syntactic analysis is then developed to explain the behavior of negation in each subgroup, challenging some standard and widely accepted analyses in the literature (Benmamoun 2000, 2013, and Soltan 2007, 2014). The second major goal of this dissertation is to examine the interaction between negation and the so- called Negative Sensitive Items (NSIs) namely: Negative Polarity Items (NPIs) and Negative Concord Items (NCIs). NSIs rely on their syntactic distribution and semantic interpretation on negation, and here again, and as expected, the Iraqi dialects show some variation when it comes to what type of NSIs are licensed and how they are licensed. This dissertation is the first such work to study in detail negation in Iraqi Arabic and to provide a detailed survey and analysis of it. It is a contribution to the syntax of negation in general, and the syntax of Iraqi Arabic in particular. ii The locus of sentential negation is discussed in light of previous theories that are primarily based on the distribution of sentential negation in Arabic dialects. The investigation of the locus of sentential negation indicates that the High-Neg hypothesis, where NegP occupies a position higher than Tense Phrase (TP), cannot provide an explanation for the case when the imperfective verb has the option to merge with the negative marker in both the ma group and the ma-ʃ group; therefore, the High-Neg analysis cannot be extended to Iraqi Arabic. The examination of NSIs licensing in Iraqi Arabic illustrates that previous NSIs licensing analyses proposed in the literature cannot extend to Iraqi Arabic. Alternatively, a novel account through appealing to both syntax and semantics is proposed which is a modification of Zeijlstra’s proposal (2004, 2008). In this study, I argue that NCIs are specified with an uninterpretable [uNeg] feature that needs to be checked against an interpretable [iNeg] feature of a semantic negation that can be either overt or covert in the clause. iii © Copyright by Saja Albuarabi, 2021 All Rights Reserved iv TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES ....................................................................................................................... vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ..................................................................................................... viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................................ x Chapter One ..................................................................................................................................... 1 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................... 1 1.1. Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 1 1.2. Purpose of the Study and Research Questions ......................................................................... 2 1.3. The Language of the Study ....................................................................................................... 3 1.4. Significance of the Study .......................................................................................................... 6 1.5. Organization of the Dissertation ............................................................................................... 7 Chapter Two .................................................................................................................................... 9 LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................................................................ 9 2. Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 9 2.1. Sentential Negation ................................................................................................................ 10 2.2. Negative Sensitive Items ........................................................................................................ 36 2.2.1. Negative Polarity Items .............................................................................................. 36 2.2.2. Negative Concord Items ............................................................................................. 47 2.3. Summary ................................................................................................................................. 58 Chapter Three ................................................................................................................................ 60 THE SYNTAX OF SENTENTIAL NEGATION IN IRAQI ARABIC DIALECTS ................... 60 3. Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 60 3.1. Facts about Sentential Negation in Iraqi Arabic ..................................................................... 63 3.1.1. Sentential Negation in ma Group ............................................................................... 66 3.1.2. Sentential Negation in ma-ʃ Group ............................................................................. 72 3.2. Previous Hypotheses .............................................................................................................. 77 3.2.1. Low-Neg-Hypothesis ................................................................................................. 78 3.2.2. High-Neg-Hypothesis ................................................................................................. 81 3.3. The Locus of Sentential Negation in ma Group and ma-ʃ Group ........................................... 82 3.3.1. Distribution of the single negative morpheme ma and other negative markers ......... 84 3.3.2. Distribution of the two negative morphemes ma- and -ʃ ............................................ 98 3.4. Summary ............................................................................................................................... 106 Chapter Four ................................................................................................................................ 108 v NEGATIVE POLARITY ITEMS ............................................................................................... 108 4.1. Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 108 4.2. Negation and NPIs in ma and ma-ʃ Groups .......................................................................... 109 4.2.1. Negation and NPIs in ma Group .............................................................................. 109 4.2.2. Negation and NPIs in ma-ʃ Group ............................................................................ 117 4.3. NPI Licensing in ma Group and ma-ʃ Group ....................................................................... 124 4.4. Summary ............................................................................................................................... 138 Chapter Five ................................................................................................................................ 139 NEGATIVE CONCORD ITEMS ............................................................................................... 139 5.1. Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 139 5.2. Negation and NCIs in ma and ma-ʃ Groups ......................................................................... 141 5.2.1. Negation and NCIs in ma Group .............................................................................