A syntax of Ṣanʿānī Arabic

This book is primarily a synchronic account of the syntax of Ṣanʿānī Arabic. The illustrative material is taken from the author’s own field notes and from publications of Ṣanʿānī jokes, sayings, proverbs, short stories and personal narratives. Chapter 1-3 provide a general introduction to the phonology and morphology of the dialect, plus general syntactic notions, with the principal purpose of facilitating comprehension of the transcription system and the syntax. Chapter 3 also establishes parts of speech. The main part of the book, Chapter 4-10, examines the way in which these parts of speech function in the larger syntactic units of phrase clause and complex clause. It is argued that each syntactic unit has three components: two constituents (a modified term and a modifier), the syntactic relationship linking these constituents, and the semantic implications of that relationship. The following syntactic relationships are examined: predication, complementation, annexion, attribution, negation, coordination and supplementation. Chapter 11 looks beyond the clause, and using examples from extended texts, considers the role of co-reference in discourse.