Definiteness, pronoun suffixes, genitives and two types of syntax in Sudanese Arabic1

Abstract

Abstract This article deals with Central Urban Sudanese Arabic, or ‘Sudanese Arabic’ for short—by which I mean, more specifically, the urban dialect spoken in Greater Khartoum (Khartoum, Khartoum North and Omdurman), and in other urban areas of central Sudan, roughly to the towns of Atbara in the north, Sennar on the Blue Nile and Kosti on the White Nile.2,3 It considers the relationship between the definite particle al- (plus allomorphic variants), for example in al-bēt ‘the house’, and what I shall argue is zero (Ø) commuting with al- (amongst other things), for example in bēt ‘a house’, as contrasted with al-bēt ‘the house’.4 What I term here, the ‘definite particle’ is more traditionally termed the ‘definite article’. For reasons why ‘definite particle’ is to be preferred to ‘definite article’ in the description of Sudanese Arabic, see Dickins (2009b; and Section 4 below). Henceforth, I shall, for brevity, refer to the definite particle as al-. I consider (i) Ø and (ii) al- in relation to (iii) pronoun suffixes, and (iv) annexes (‘genitives’).5 I use the following terminology: annexion-head meaning roughly the same as muḍāf (cf. Badawi, Carter and Gully 2015: 131) in traditional Arabic terminology (also termable annexed term, e.g. Watson 1993: 173, or genitive head in English), and annex (Watson 1993: 173) meaning roughly the same as muḍāf ilay-hi (cf. Badawi, Carter and Gully 2015: 131) (also termable genitive modifier in English). The entire phrase involving annexion I shall refer to as an annexion structure. I argue that not only do Ø and al- com-mute with one another, but that they also commute with pronoun suffixes and genitive annexes (incorporating also recursive elements), to give one form of syntax. In the linguistic model underpinning this paper—extended axiomatic functionalism (Dickins 1998; 2009a; 2020a)—this can be termed lexotactic. I also show, however, that these structures can be subject to a second, different, form of syntactic analysis in extended axiomatic-functionalism, termed delotactic. I finally consider in more detail the nature of definiteness and indefiniteness in Sudanese Arabic, justifying the grounds for definiteness which I identified in Section 2.2. Up to the end of Section 3 and in Section 5, this article draws heavily on Dickins (2013), which deals with Standard Arabic, having much the same structure as that article. The two articles can accordingly be partially read together, to provide a structural comparison between Standard Arabic and Sudanese Arabic in the relevant areas.