The Syntax of the Negation Marker Laa in Najdi Arabic: An HPSG Approach

Abstract

Negation is considered one of the controversial cross-linguistic areas of research. One of its interesting topics is the syntax of negation markers. This paper aims to contribute to the current linguistic research in negation through exploring one of the negation markers in Najdi Arabic: the negator laa. It first categories laa into three types according to its meaning and the syntactic constructions in which it occurs: the imperative laa, the conjunct particle laa, and the clausal laa. The syntactic properties of each one of these are described with sufficient examples illustrating them. Where appropriate, these properties are compared to those of the negator laa in Standard Arabic and other negators. In addition to the syntactic description of laa in its three types or uses, the paper presents a theoretical account for all the relevant syntactic properties of each type of the negator laa by using the framework of Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar.