This paper investigates the semantics of the Arabic diminutive (DIM) created with the use of the fuʿayl template. DIM may contribute a wide range of sub-meanings, including smallness in size, low quantity, low quality, spatial and temporal proximity, etc. We put forward a scalar analysis according to which DIM systematically maps an argument of the stem to a relatively low degree on a scale. In particular, this degree is lower than the standard of comparison, independently supplied either by the context or by the linguistic environment. The scale in question, we argue, is not lexicalized by DIM but rather contributed by the stem to which DIM applies. The contrast between the various sub-meanings of DIM is thus reduced mainly to the differences between the environments in which it appears.

The theoretical literature on the mass/count distinction in Palestinian-Arabic (PA) is extremely scarce, and the psycholinguistic perspective has never been explored. In this paper, we report results from an experiment exploring the mass/count distinction in 48 (aged 6;6–17;04) young and adult speakers of PA. Using an adaptation of Barner & Snedeker’s (2005) Quantity-Judgment task, we show that while PA-speaking adults are essentially identical to English-speaking adults, PA-speaking children behave dramatically different from both adult PA speakers and from English-acquiring children. We suggest that these results may reflect a process of language change currently taking place in PA. We further propose two possible sources for the process. The first involves the fact that the grammaticization of mass/count in PA is rather marginal, as indicated by the relative paucity of syntactic structures encoding the distinction. Alternatively, our data may reflect a change process involving a relaxation of obligatory number-marking in cardinality contexts. Finally, we outline a research-program aimed to test these hypotheses.