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Notes on the Genitive Exponents of Some Modern Arabic Dialects

Summary

This short comparative note examines how Arabic dialects came to have so many different-looking words that work like English "of." It frames the question as one of grammaticalization, in which lexical items lose their meaning and take on grammatical jobs. The paper uses no corpus or computational resource. Rubin collects forms from published dialect grammars and compares them with other Semitic and non-Semitic languages. His central claim is that all Semitic genitive markers come from only two sources: a former relative pronoun, or a noun that has become grammatical. Almost every modern Arabic marker goes back to a noun for "property" or "thing." Moroccan is the exception, since its marker is built from a relative plus the preposition l-. The forms also show typical side effects of grammaticalization: they stop agreeing in gender and number, and they undergo irregular sound changes. Rubin suggests the pattern probably already existed in colloquial Arabic of the Classical era, with each dialect later choosing its own "property" word.

Key points

  • Noun-derived markers include:
    • Iraqi/Kuwaiti māl
    • Yemeni ḥagg
    • Tunisian/Algerian/Maltese mtāʿ/ntāʿ/ta'
    • Damascene šī and Palestinian šēt
    • Chadian hana
    • Syro-Lebanese tabaʿ, originally "follower," reinterpreted via a "belonging to" construction
    • Egyptian bitāʿ
  • Egyptian bitāʿ has two possible origins: matāʿ with an irregular m>b change, or a metathesis of tabaʿ. Both paths lead back to "property."
  • Moroccan dyāl/d- is analysed as relative + l-. This parallels Hebrew šel and Aramaic dīl-, and the author rejects the Romance-loan hypothesis.
  • Of the nine dialect forms Versteegh lists to illustrate diversity, seven come from "property/thing" and two from a relative.
  • Cross-linguistic parallels include Tigrinya/Tigre nay, Haitian Creole pa, Thai khɔ̌ɔŋ and Tok Pisin bilong. In Moroccan and Chadian, the markers have also extended to partitive uses such as "three of books" or "a liter of oil."
  • The extracted PDF dates the volume (Folia Orientalia 40) to 2004, not 2026.

Interesting ideas

  • I1. Many surface forms can be grouped by a small set of underlying source categories instead of being listed as unrelated items; this keeps an inventory compact and explainable. — For Mova (tree): UD dialect conversion could map English possessive variants ("of," "'s," "belonging to," "that of") onto one nmod:poss decision, with the surface form kept as a recorded feature.
  • I2. Loss of agreement and inflection serves as a diagnostic that a former noun has become a function word. — For Mova (tokens): the tagger could use "no longer inflects or takes modifiers" as evidence for treating items like "kind of," "sort of" or "lot of" as functional (ADP/DET-like) rather than NOUN heads.
  • I3. The paper separates the genitive use of a marker from its later partitive use, treating the second as a further grammaticalization step. — For Mova (world): the world builder should distinguish partitive "of" (quantity/measure of a mass or set) from possessive "of" (holding), so that "three of the apples" yields a quantity and "the farmer's apples" yields ownership.
  • I4. Independent possessive forms ("This is ours," "It is not mine") appear as their own construction, distinct from attributive possession. — For Mova (world): predicative possessives like "mine/yours/ours" can be compiled directly into holdings assertions, with the owner resolved from the pronoun and the possessed thing taken from the subject.
  • I5. Rubin recounts a published list by underlying origin and shows that apparent diversity is mostly uniformity. — For Mova (learn): error analysis could bucket parser or frame errors by underlying construction instead of by surface string, revealing whether many distinct-looking failures share one cause.

Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.

Fields: Linguistics & languages

Cite

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work.

@inproceedings{rubin2026notes,
  title = {{Notes on the Genitive Exponents of Some Modern Arabic Dialects}},
  author = {Rubin, Aaron},
  booktitle = {Folia Orientalia 40},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://wydawnictwo.pan.pl/index.php/fo/article/view/3465}
}

References

22 references, 0 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

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  13. Grand'Henry, Jacques. 1972. Le parler arabe de Cherchell (Algerie). Louvain-La-Neuve: Institut Orientaliste. The North Ethiopic (Tigrinya and Tigre) form may very well be an Arabic calque, though it need not be. find
  14. In addition to the study of Harning already mentioned, see, for example, Fischer and Jastrow (1980: 220) for other forms in Egyptian dialects, and Versteegh (2001: 107) for still others. find
  15. Grotzfeld, Heinz. 1965. Syrisch-arabische Gramm.atik ( Dialekt von Dmnaskus). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. f-Iarning, Kerstin Eksell. 1980. The Analytic Gene1ive in the /lt!odenz Arabic Dia/eels. Stockholm· Acla Universitatis Gothoburgensis. find
  16. Harrel, Richard S. 1962. A Short Reference Grwnm.ar of Moroccan Arabic. Washington, D.C.: Georoetown University Press. . Heine, Bernd, :nd Tania Kuteva. 2002. World Lexicon of Grmwnaticaliz.ation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. . . . Heine. Bernd, Ulrike Claudi, and Friederike Hi.innerneyer. 199 l. Gra111111a/lcahzatwn.: A Conceptual Fralllework. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hetzron Robert, eel. 1997. The Semitic Languages. London: Routledge. Hopper,' Paul J ., • and Elizabeth Closs Traugott. 2003. Grm11111micalization. 2nd eel. Cambridge: Cambridge University P1:ess. • Howe, Kate. 1990. Haitian Creole Newspaper Reader. Wheaton, MD: Dunwood~. find
  17. Jullicn de Pommerol, Patrice. 1999. Gramm.aire pratique de l'arabe tclwdten. Paris: Karthala. Leslau, Wolf. I 941. Documents Tigrinya. Pitris: C. Klincksieck. . Leslau, Wolf. I 987. Comparative Dictionary of Ge'ez. Wiesbaden: Harassow1tz. . Lipii'lski, Edward. 1997. Semitic Languages: Outline of a Comparative Grcunlllar. Leuven: Peeters. . , . Obler, Loraine Katherine. I 975. Reflexes of the Classical Arabic say\1n 'Thmg . in the Modern Dialects: A Study in Patterns of Language Change. Ph.D. d1ss., Un1vers1ty of Michigan. find
  18. Raz, Shlomo. 1983. Tigre Gra11111wr and Texts. Malibu: Undem~. . Rubin, Aaron. 2005. Studies in Semitic Grammaticaliwtion. Wmona L~ke: ~1senbr~uns. find
  19. Rundgren, Frithiof. 1955. Uber Bildungen mit s/ s und n-t-De111011strat1ven 1111 Senutzsch.en. Uppsala: Almqvist and Wiksell. . Sinoer Hans-Rudolf. 1984. Grammatik der arabischen. Mu.ndart der Mcd1.11a vo11. Tun.is. "' , Berlin: de Gruyter. find
  20. Smyth, David. 2002. Thai: An Essential Grammar. London: Routledge_-von Soden, Wolfram. 1995. Grundriss der Akkadischen Gramlllatik. Rome: Pontificio lstituto Biblico. .. • Tropper, Josef. 2002. Altathiopisch: Grammatik des Ge'ez mit Ubungstexten und Glossar. Munster: Ugarit-Vcrlag. . . . . Verhaar, John W. M. 1995. Toward a Reference Grammar o.f Tok PISln: An Experunent in Co1pus Linguistics. Honolulu: University of Hawai 'i Press. . . Versteegh, Kees. 2001. The Arabic Language. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Umver~1ly Press. find
  21. Watson, Janet C.E. 1993. A Syntax of Scm'ii.n"i Arabic. Wiesbaden: Harrassow1lz. find
  22. FOLIA ORIENT ALIA VOL. 40 2004 Michael Malessa Biblical Seminary of the Philippines, Valenzuela City ZUR SEMANTIK DES VERBS NTN G ,GEBEN' MIT DER PRAPOSITION ½l STATT l- * Das Verb 1m G ist im klassischen Hebraisch vielseitig verwendbar. Dies wird daran erkennbar, daB das Verb mehrere Valenzen aufweist. In alien belegten Valenzen ist das Verb dreiwertig. Die vier Valenzen des Verbs 1m G sollen hier nach der Haufigkeit der Textbelege im alttestamentlichen Hebraisch syntaktisch kurz beschrieben werden: 1 In der Valenz 1 regiert das Verb in der Regel zwei Nominalerganzungen und eine Prapositionalerganzung mit ?. Die Prapositionalerganzung bezeichnet dabei den Rezipienten. Z.B. nKm fiKi1 nK 1nK 7l7ii? ,,deinen Nachkommen werde ich dieses Land geben" (Gen 12,7). In der Valenz 2 regiert das Verb zwei Nominalerganzungen sowie eine Lokalerganzung, die als Prapositionalgruppe oder als Nominalgruppe erscheinen • lch danke Prof. Dr. J. Hoftijzer (Leiden), Prof. Dr. T. Muraoka (Leiden) und Dr. H. von Siebenthal (GieBen) for hilfreiche Bemerkungen zu fri.iheren Fassungen des Artikels. 1 Im Rahmen eines Valenzkonzeptes, das valenzbedingte Erganzungen und nichtvalenzbedingte Angaben unterscheidet, wird hier von den folgenden Erganzungstypen im einfachen Satz ausgegangen: l. Nominalerganzung. Es handelt sich um eine Nominalgruppe. Nominalerganzungen werden weiter in erste, zweite und dritte Nominalerganzungen unterschieden (in der traditionellen Terminologie: Subjekt, direktes Objekt und zweites direktes Objekt), die sich syntaktisch jeweils anders verhalten; 2. Prapositionalerganzung; 3. Lokalerganzung; 4. Pradikativerganzung. Pradikativer-ganzungen sind nichtreferentiell, sondern stellen eine Pradikation i.iber eine Nominalerganzung dar (z.B. Gen 17,5ab.20b); 5. Infinitiverganzung (z.B. n1Ki1? in l Sam 3,2b; i:li!1? in 2 Sam 17,14b); 6. Komparativerganzung (nur bei der Subklasse der Zustandsverben). Vgl. dazu Malessa (2003: 26-34). Andere Einteilungen von Erganzungen finden sich in Richter (1980: 92-93) und GroB (1996: 29-38). find

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