Negation in the Egyptian Arabic Dialect of the Dakhla-Oasis: a Case of Rule Morphologization

Dialects of the Dakhla oasis in the western desert of Egypt are like other Egyptian Arabic dialects in negating with the discontinuous morpheme ma + s, but differ in that word-final stressed vowel quality changes: Cairene katab/ma-katab-s 'he wrote /didn't write', Western Dakhla ko:lih/ma-takulah-s 'eat it/don't eat it'. It is argued that the phonologically conditioned alternation of stressed /a/ & unstressed /i/ was reinterpreted as symptomatic of negation; then the /i/ in the positive form was taken as basic, & rule inversion resulted in /i/ > /a/ & ultimately V > /a/. In Central Dakhla, the stressed vowel is /i/: nisayt/ma-nsit-s 'I forgot/didn't forget'. It is speculated that development in Western Dakhla may have been influenced by contact with Berber, in which verb negation involves vowel quality change, or with another dialect of Arabic in which the vowel alternation does not occur. 15 Tables, 59 References. L. Lagerquist