The Arabic Negative Cycle: An Example of Historical Changes in the Arabic Language

Abstract

This study considers negation in 47 modern Arabic varieties. The types of negation investigated are standard negation and non-verbal negation. The study reveals that negation in Arabic is undergoing a cycle in addition to the Jespersen’s Cycle, which has already been identified by several studies. In the first stage of this additional cycle, a single negator is used to negate both verbal and non-verbal clauses. In the second stage, this negator is attached to a personal pronoun to negate non-verbal clauses only. In the third stage, a new single morpheme is coined and generalised to negate any non-verbal clause. In the fourth stage, this new morpheme is used to negate certain types of verbal clauses. In the last stage, verbal and non-verbal clauses return to be negated similarly, and this newly coined morpheme can negate both of them. In the study, this cycle is referred to as the Arabic negative cycle.