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Negation in Arabic

Sign reading لَا لِلتَّدْخِين lā lit-tadḵīn "no smoking".

Negation in Arabic (Arabic: ٱلنَّفْي, romanized: al-nafy 'the negative') is the array of approaches used in Arabic grammar to express grammatical negation. These strategies correspond to words in English like no and not.

Modern Standard Arabic

Negation in the present tense

Negating present-tense verbs

لا lā "not"; a male speaker from Tiznit, Morocco.

Present-tense verbs are negated by adding لا lā "not" before the verb:[1]

Negation of sentences with no verb

If a sentence would, in the affirmative, have no verb (this can only happen in the present tense), then the negative verb لَيْسَ laysa "is not" is used. laysa is inflected like a past-tense verb, but is used to negate present-tense sentences. As with كانَ kāna "was", the complement of laysa must be in the accusative case. Before consonantal endings, the diphthong -ay- is reduced to a short -a-.[2]

Here is an example sentence saying that something is not big in all possible persons and numbers:

Negation of past-tense verbs

In Modern Standard Arabic, the main way to negate past-tense verbs is to add the negative particle لَمْ lam "not" before the verb, and to put the verb in the jussive mood.[3] In more colloquial usage, it is possible to give the verb in the present indicative mood (which is largely identical in form to the jussive).[4]

It is also possible to use the negative particle ما mā before the verb, giving the verb in the past tense.[5][6]

Negation of verbs in the future tense

Negating a proposition in the future is done by placing the negative particle لَنْ lan before the verb in the subjunctive mood.[7]

Negation of imperative verbs

The imperative (known as الأَمْر "the order," from أَمَرَ "he ordered") is negated by putting لا lā "not" before the verb, putting the verb in the jussive, rather than the imperative, mood.[8] (This negative imperative is known as النَّهْي "the discouragement," from نَهى "he discouraged.") For example, in the masculine singular: اِظْلِمْ (iẓlim, "oppress!"), لا تَظْلِمْ (lā taẓlim, "do not oppress!").

Saying "no"

"No", as an answer to a question, is expressed by the negative particle لا lā.[9]

Varieties of Arabic

Modern Standard Arabic لَيْسَ laysa "is not" is replaced in colloquial usage with a variety of other forms, which in origin are contractions of phrases such as ما مِنْ شَيْ mā min shay "nothing" (literally: "none from/of a thing"):

North African, Egyptian, and some Levantine Arabic varieties negate verbs using a circumfix—a combination of the prefix ma- and the suffix -ʃ. This, for example, is the negative paradigm of the verb كَتَبَ kataba "he wrote" in Algerian Arabic:

In these varieties, to negate present participles and verbs conjugated in the future, mūš, or its conjugated form, is frequently used (in front of the verb).[10][11] For example, Tunisian Arabic موش mūsh is conjugated as follows:[12][13]

See also

References

  1. ^ Karin C. Ryding, A Reference Grammar of Modern Standard Arabic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 644 [§37.2.1.2].
  2. ^ Karin C. Ryding, A Reference Grammar of Modern Standard Arabic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 641-43 [§37.1].
  3. ^ Karin C. Ryding, A Reference Grammar of Modern Standard Arabic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 647 [§37.2.2.1].
  4. ^ Jane Wightwick and Mahmoud Gaafar, Easy Arabic Grammar (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005), p. 119 ISBN 0071462104.
  5. ^ Karin C. Ryding, A Reference Grammar of Modern Standard Arabic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 647 [§37.2.2.2].
  6. ^ Jane Wightwick and Mahmoud Gaafar, Easy Arabic Grammar (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005), p. 119 ISBN 0071462104.
  7. ^ Karin C. Ryding, A Reference Grammar of Modern Standard Arabic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 648 [§37.2.2.3].
  8. ^ Karin C. Ryding, A Reference Grammar of Modern Standard Arabic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 645 [§37.2.1.5].
  9. ^ Karin C. Ryding, A Reference Grammar of Modern Standard Arabic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 644 [§37.2.1.1].
  10. ^ Gibson, M. (2009). Tunis Arabic. Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics, 4, 563–71.
  11. ^ Wilmsen, D. (2014). Arabic Indefinites, Interrogatives, and Negators: A Linguistic History of Western Dialects. Oxford University Press.
  12. ^ Ben Abdelkader, R., & Naouar, A. (1979). Peace Corps/Tunisia Course in Tunisian Arabic.
  13. ^ Chekili, F. (1982). The morphology of the Arabic dialect of Tunis (Doctoral dissertation, University of London).