Interactions of negation with other categories in varieties of Arabic

This dissertation describes and analyzes interaction of negation with aspect, tense, quantifiers, and sensitive polarities in standard Arabic and modern Arabic dialects. The reasons behind this study are (i) to provide comprehensive description of negation, (ii) to understand negation better, (iii) to investigate theoretical applications, (iv) to provide a critical review of Arabic grammarians’ approaches to negation, and (v) to connect complex and systematic interactions of negation with other operators to their truth conditions to explain discourse referent. I account for negation in different ways: syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic in order to arrive at an airtight diagnosis. Negation interacts with every category to produce syntactic and semantic representations different from affirmatives. This dissertation not only deals with morphosyntactic negation with other categories, but also explores different interaction between inherent negation, represented through a semantic meaning of negation without negative particles, with these categories. Interaction of negation with aspect, tense, quantifiers, sensitive polarities indicates that there are syntactic and semantic effects of negation with these elements. The framework of this dissertation defenses on multiple approaches which descend from syntax and semantics. This dissertation explores the interaction of negation with other categories in varieties of Arabic where this study shows that a system of negation in standard Arabic is different from modern Arabic dialects. A change of negation system in Arabic is important to help us to assign precise descriptions for these interactions.Middle Eastern Studie