Contact as catalyst: The case for Coptic influence in the development of Arabic negation

Lucas, Christopher; Lash, Elliott

Abstract

This article discusses similar developments in the expression of negation in the histories of Egyptian-Coptic and Arabic and explores the evidence for these respective
developments being related by language contact. Both Coptic and Arabic have undergone a development known as Jespersen’s Cycle (JC), whereby an original negative marker is joined by some new element to form a bipartite negative construction.
The original marker then becomes optional while the new element becomes the primary negator. We present the results of a corpus study of negation in late Coptic, showing that, at the time when Arabic speakers began to settle in Egypt, the bipartite negative construction still predominated. This being the case, we argue that native speakers of Coptic learning Arabic as a second language played a key role in
the genesis of the Arabic bipartite negative construction. More generally, we give reasons to doubt the a priori preference for internal explanations of syntactic change
over those involving contact, as well as the assumption that the two are mutually exclusive. Rather, we suggest that not only purely internal but also (partially) contactinduced
change can profitably be accounted for in terms of child language acquisition leading to a change in the grammars of individual speakers.

Citation

Lucas, C., & Lash, E. (2010). Contact as catalyst: The case for Coptic influence in the development of Arabic negation. Journal of Linguistics, 46(2), 379-413. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022226709990235

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2010
• Deposit Date: Feb 7, 2011
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 11, 2025
• Journal: Journal of Linguistics
• Print ISSN: 0022-2267
• Electronic ISSN: 1469-7742
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 46
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 379-413
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022226709990235
• Publisher URL: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=7802260&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S0022226709990235