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Part of
Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XXXV: Papers from the Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics, Washington, D.C., 2022
Edited by Ahmad Alqassas
[Studies in Arabic Linguistics 14] 2025
► pp. 180–200

Chapter 8
On the additive focus particle kamaan in Hijazi Arabic

 | The University of Manchester | Taibah University
This paper explores the semantic properties of the Hijazi Arabic focus particle kamaan. The paper presents original new data of kamaan on four possible interpretations of the particle; an additive interpretation that may translate to English also, a scalar interpretation that may translate to even, a repetitive interpretation that may translate to again, and a quantity-related interpretation that may translate to more. The paper argues that the different interpretations do not result from a case of lexical ambiguity, but rather a uniform analysis for kamaan is possible, under which kamaan is always an additive focus particle.
Keywords: Arabic, semantics, focus, additive particles, presupposition
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • The puzzle
    • Methodological remarks
    • Structure of the paper
  • 2.Background
    • Focus-marking in Hijazi Arabic
    • The semantics of focus
    • Focus-marking
    • Context dependency
    • Focus-sensitive operators
  • 3.kamaan: An additive focus particle
    • Remarks about the syntax of Kamaan
    • Focus sensitivity
    • The additive presupposition
  • 4.The different interpretations of kamaan
    • The scalar interpretation of Kamaan
    • The repetitive interpretation of Kamaan
    • The quantity-related interpretation
  • 5.A uniform analysis for kamaan
  • 6.Conclusion and outlook
  • Notes
  • References
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References (19)
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