LING-Seminar: Dennis Arndt -- Homonymy or Polysemy? A Cross-linguistic Analysis of the Particle da- in Aleppo Arabic

The particle da- enjoys a wide functionality in the Arabic dialect of Aleppo, ranging from volitive and dubitative, over future and optative/hortative to final and temporal (until) function. The purpose of this presentation is to discuss the particle’s possible grammaticalization paths in order to explore whether said multifunctionality is an expression of one highly polysemous gram or rather two (or more) homonymous grams. The presentation opens with a synchronic perspective and maps the occurrence of da- and its variants, their grammatical functions as well as their suggested etymologies across various Arabic dialects. Particular focus is placed on dialects along the Mesopotamian-Levantine dialect continuum. The section after that then assumes a diachronic perspective and plots two possible grammaticalization paths of bədd and ḥattā, which appear as the two most likely source lexemes due to their large functional overlap and/or their having been proposed as source lexemes in neighboring dialects. The final section re-examines the evidence from a broader typological perspective drawing on linguistic evidence beyond the Semitic language family—principally grammaticalization theory and semantic maps—to make an argument regarding the da-prefix’s high degree of multifunctionality in Aleppo, including the homonymy/polysemy question.
 

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