Article published in:
Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XXVIII: Papers from the Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics, Gainesville, Florida, 2014
Edited by Youssef A. Haddad and Eric Potsdam
[Studies in Arabic Linguistics 4] 2016
► pp. 153–172

Clause structure in contact contexts

The case of Sason Arabic

| Yale University
| University of Illinois

In this paper, we discuss the syntax of negation in Sason Arabic which patterns with both its Arabic neighbors, particularly the so-called Mesopotamian varieties (such as the Iraqi variety/varieties of Mosul) and the neighboring languages that are typologically different, particularly Kurdish and Turkish. We provide a description of copula constructions in Sason and discuss their word order patterns and interaction with sentential negation. Depending on the nature of the predicate, Sason displays both head-initial word order, which reflects its Arabic and Semitic lineage, and head-final word order, which shows the influence of its head final neighbors and competitors for linguistic space.

Keywords: clause structure, copula, language contact, Sason Arabic
Published online: 25 May 2016
https://doi.org/10.1075/sal.4.07akk
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