Semantic Negation on Verbal Clauses with Verbs of Imminence in Saudi Arabic Varieties

Negation in languages is a phenomenon, which receives researchers' attention for a long period. Negation occurs on different type of clauses by which it shows to have morphological and syntactic changes over the structure of words, phrases and sentences. Verbs of imminenceare used sometimes to denote negation in verbal clauses in Arabic. ka:d  is one of those verbs which carries the negation of the clause without using any negative particles. Saudi dialects use the verb baʁa to perform the same function. This paper discusses baʁa in verbal clauses illustrating its syntactic and semantic impact on the structure of the clauses. It requires the imperfective form of the verb to follow. Negating a clause, with the only negative particles ma: and/or la:, does not carry the negative sense because it is delivered through the use of baʁa. Thus, the negation of verbs of imminence does not require the presence of any negative particles. Otherwise, the positive meaning is delivered.


I. INTRODUCTION
Negation in languages is a phenomenon, which receives researchers' attention for a long period. Negation shows to have an impact over both verbal and nominal clauses. It is proven that it shows to contain morphological and syntactic changes over the structure of words, phrases and sentences. Languages use different means to negate clauses. Some languages negate clauses with one element such English and Italian. Other languages negate the same clauses with two elements such as Standard French (Pollock 1985b, cited in [31]) West Flemish (Haegeman 1995, cited in [31]). Classical Arabic (CA) and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) shows to contain both types while marking negation in both verbal clauses and nominal clauses [3] [28]. CA and MSA show to have a number of negative particles la:, ma:, laysa, lam, lamma, and lanused to mark negation on different types of structures and verbs.
On the other hand, Saudi dialects retains the negatives la: and ma:, but has lost all the other forms [5][4] [6] [7]. Saudi dialects show not to have case marking which consequently helps to disappearance of any morphological impact. This paper introduces a short summary of negation on verbal structures; followed by a discussion of how negation in Saudi dialects is coded without the use of any of the negative particles (ma: and la:). They encode negation on verbal clauses by the use of the verbs of imminence baʁa:" was about to/want". Negation in Arabic plays an important role morphologically, syntactically and semantically. Truth condition changes with the change happening due to the presence of negation in clause structures. In addition, scope of negation differs from one structure to another. It can be partially or wholly depending on the position of the negative particles. CA uses eight different negative particles (la:, ma:, lan, lam, lamma, laysa, lattaandʔin) to negate clauses as claimed by linguists [19] [35] [27]. Some other linguists such as Benmamoun [10] [11], Wright [37] and suggest the loss of two negative particles: ʔin and latta. Saudi dialects negates clauses both nominal and verbal using either ma: or la:.
The following section discusses types of verbal clauses and the agreement system only in Saudi dialects, as it is the focus of this paper.

II. METHODOLOGY
Saudi Arabia has five main dialects. All these colloquial Arabic dialects are divided according to the linguistic categorization of the main features of each group. Also, this division is based on the geographic location of its native speakers. Saudi dialects show to contain a high degree of complexity in its phonology, morphology and syntax. The main focus of this paper is the morphological and the syntactic facts about the use of the verb of imminence baʁa:" was about to/want".

The data
MSA shows to have what is called the verbs of imminence ka:da:" was about to/want" and its sisters. At the beginning, the verbs of imminence were investigated with regard to their meanings. Then, these different meanings were tested in various clause structures to compare and contrast the morphological and syntactic change and/or impact. The MSA data were used to generate similar data representing Saudi dialects.
Saudi dialects interestingly lose such verb (ka:da). They use baʁa the same exactly as ka:da. As a native speaker, some of the grammatical judgments presented in this paper are based on native-speaker intuitions about the grammar [8]. I gathered all the examples that match the MSA data consulting [6]. After that, the author arranged two separate sessions with 10 participants to cover all the different five dialects in Saudi Arabia (two participants from each dialect). The author's own dialect was the base to consult other Saudi dialects. The data included individual clauses of Zahrani Spoken Arabic with their meanings. The participants were asked to agree or disagree with the given clauses.
If any disagreements occur, they provide the clause replacing the given one. All the resulting examples were used to support the claim of this paper.

Types of Clauses in Arabic
Arabic, as mentioned earlier, shows to contain two types of clauses; namely, verbal clauses and nominal clauses. Before going deeper into a discussion, it is stated that there has been two views on how to determine if a clause is a verbal clause or a nominal clause. Some linguists consider the first element of any clause to be the key to know the type of the clause [14][16] [22] [23]. In other words, if the first element is a verb, it is a verbal clause. If the first element is a noun, it is a nominal clause. Therefore, the focus is not based on whether the clause consists of a verb or not, but rather it is based on whether the noun phrase is initial or not. Other linguists [13] Examples (1 a&b) show that Saudi Arabic contains only two possible word orders in verbal clauses: VSO and SVO due to the absence of case marking. 2 Subject and verb are the essential elements of verbal clauses although some verbal clauses may occur having only the verb, as in the following example: 2 MSA shows different word orders because the subject and the object are distinguished by means of case marking. So, any NP with nominative case marking is the subject and any with accusative case marking is the object regardless of its position in the clause.  Other clauses appear to contain a complement clause as in the following example: Other verbal clauses contain ditransitive verbs followed by two noun phrases. Consider the following example: The subject in verbal clauses may occur in different forms. It may appear as a substantive (a noun), a proper noun, a suffix agreement, an implied pronoun or a demonstrative pronoun [9]. Therefore, subject-verb agreement is dominated by the gender and number of the subject in both active voice and/or passive voice structures, as will be discussed in the following sections [12].
Verbal clauses, in Arabic, shows to contain two different forms of verbs: perfective aspect and imperfective aspect to indicate time. The perfective aspect form may appear using the verb by itself or having the verb preceded by an auxiliary and/or a modal, as shown below: Alzahrani, S Semantic Negation on Verbal Clauses with Verbs of Imminence in Saudi Arabic Varieties 120 (7) a. The imperfective aspect form of the verb, on the other hand, may appear using the verb with infixes or having the verb preceded by an auxiliary and/or a modal, as shown in the following examples: Ali Saudi dialects show to express passive voice via using either inflectional forms of verbs or the derivational forms of verbs in which the subject of the VS structure is originally generated from the complement NP of the predicate in SVO and/or SVO orders. That is, the direct object of the transitive verb. Therefore, it is the patient instead of the agent in active voice structures. Consider the following examples:

Agreement in Verbal Clauses
Agreement system in Arabic is controversial due to the various word orders and the complicated morphological system the language has[21] [30]. However, Saudi dialect is less complicated since they show only two different word orders, as mentioned earlier. The main focus was to determine the core element in the verbal clause structure which controls the agreement system. By analyzing different data, it was proven that the subject controls the agreement system in Arabic as well as Saudi dialects in either active voice structures or passive voice structures. Consider the following examples: The above examples show different subjects containing information with different person, gender and number. By looking to their verbs, it is obvious that these verbs show agreement marker suffixes with the same person, gender and number of their subjects [33] [34]. Therefore, subject agreement markers occur as bound morphemes attached to the verb to express person, gender and number.
Moreover, person, gender and number of the complement (the direct object) alba:b: ' the door' and/or assajjarah: ' the car' does not show any impact on the agreement markers. Therefore, it is clear that the subject is the controller of the agreement system in verbal clauses. The subject shows full agreement in person, gender and number when it precedes the verb. Consider the following examples: (15)  The above examples show that the presence of subject pronouns replacing other NPs does not have any impact on the agreement system. In addition, Saudi dialects do not show to have dual agreement marker when the subject is dual. Rather, they use the plural marker /-u:/ to agree with dual masculine subject or /-nah/ to agree with dual feminine subject. Consider the following examples: (16)  It is worth noting that the dual subject cannot exist in clauses containing pro due to the absence of the dual agreement marker. Therefore, clauses, in example (20), have only plural one reading which is the plural either masculine or feminine. Also, it is noticeable that /-nah/ must be used in structure having pro to show the feminine gender agreement.
Moreover, some clauses have two NPs in the subject position (compound nouns) preceded by the verb. In such case, the verb shows full agreement with the first NP. Consider the following examples: The above show different agreement markers based on the first NP, as stated clearly. All the above clauses show VSO word order. Therefore, the verb must be initial. However, when the word order is SVO, there is no agreement with any of the conjoined subject NPs. Rather, it shows only the third plural masculine marker suffix /-u:/ attached to the verb regardless of the different structures. Consider the following examples: It is important to mention that the passive voice structures show the same agreement system as the active voice structures. However, the subject of the passive structure is direct object (the patient). Therefore, the verb shows full agreement with the In Saudi dialect, the subject of the passive structure is usually post-verbal. However, it may occur preverbal. The passive verb agrees fully with its subject either it appears initial or not, as shown in the following examples:

Negation in Verbal Clauses
Verbal clauses are negated by ma: or la: in all the Saudi dialects, as mentioned earlier. The following sections discuss how ma: and la: behave to negate verbal clauses showing the different possible structures and any morphological implications and/or changes.

ma: in verbal clauses 5
Saudi dialects use the negative particle ma: before the verb to negate any clause. 6  The above examples show that ma: must appear before the perfective form of the verb kassar: 'broke' in both SVO and VSO word orders. The use of ma: does not show any morphological impact on the verb it precedes. Also, it is illustrated that ma: which follows the verb results in an ungrammatical clause. In addition, ma: appears the imperfective form of the verb where it does not have any impact on the morphology of the verb it precedes, too. 7 Consider the following examples: 5 Ghalayini (1986) and Ibn Ageel (1964) suggested that the negative particle ma: may function as an interrogative particle and a relative pronoun. 6 Benmamoun (1992) argues that it appears in the same position where 'not' does in English. 7 Arabic shows that the presence of ma: before the verb does not have any morphological impact on the imperfective form of the verb it negates (Wright, 1859(Wright, /1996 It is noticeable that ma: cannot exist following the imperfective form of the verb in both SVO and VSO word orders the same as it is the case with the perfective form of the verb. It is worth mentioning that the negative particle ma: may appear in a structure in Saudi dialects in which it does not denote negation. Rather, it is used as a kind of prayers, as shown in the following example: 8 (31) a. The following section discusses the second negative particle in Saudi dialects.

la: in verbal clauses
The negative particle la: occurs in verbal clauses having verbs in the imperfective form in which la: does not have any morphological impact on the following constituent of the clause. Consider the following examples: 8 Wright (1898) claims that the negative particle la: is used sometimes to entail blessings and/or curses. Ul-Haq (1984) also suggests that la: is used preceding the perfective form of the verb to express the meaning of "may never". The above example shows la: followed by a verb occurring in the jussive mood that has no overt marker. It behaves as a particle of prohibition to carry the meaning of (not to do).
In addition, the negative particle la: cannot appear followed verbs in the perfective form.
The following examples are ungrammatical due to the use of the perfective form of the verb.

Negation using baʁa
Arabic has one type of verbs known as verbs of imminence. These verbs show to have various inflectional and derivational forms. ka:da 'about to' is one of these verbs. Some linguists suggest to name it ka:da and its sisters (karb, ʔuʃak, halhal, ʔalamm and qa:rab). They suggest that these verbs function the same as ka:na and its sisters. Saudi spoken Arabic has a similar type of verbs due to the absence of the use of ka:da. baʁa is used in Saudi dialects. It is one of the verbs that may appear and function as content lexical items. Examine the following examples: The above example shows the verb baʁa as the main content verb. It appears in both the perfective and the imperfective forms. It appears to mean "want". In addition, baʁa may be used as functional lexical item where it replaces ka:da. It occurs before other main verbs to function as modal verbs. It works exactly the same as ka:da in MSA and CA. In such structure occurring preceding main verbs, it denotes the proximity of the action or the event to happen. Consider the following examples:  'Ali is about to break the door.' The above examples show how baʁa appears in the perfective form and the imperfective form. It changes the meaning of the whole clause although it does not show any impact on the following main verb and does not require any syntactic condition and/or restriction to exist in the structure of any verbal clauses.
Before going deeper into any discussion, it is important to state that baʁa only occurs in verbal clauses and is never used in verbless (equational) clauses. 9 The presence of baʁa in verbal clauses requires certain forms of the verb following it and is acceptable in certain structures, as will be discussed in the following section.

Entailments of baʁa
Verbal clauses are the only type of clauses that can host baʁa. The meaning of the whole clause is changed in terms of the happening of the action and/or the event of the verb. baʁa, which is the same as ka:da, denotes the closeness of the action or the event; however, it did not happen. Some linguists claim that the subject (the doer) of the clause attempts hard to do the action but with no use. That is, the action did not happen. Therefore, baʁa denotes different meanings based on the different structures where it may be negated by any article or not. There are two main interpretations of baʁa claimed by linguists depending on its structures with relations to the presence of negative particles or not. Some claim that the negation of baʁa entails the affirmative (positive) sense while its positive sense where it has no negative particle preceding it entails the negation sense.
On the other hand, some other linguists claim that it denotes the positive sense when it occurs in any structures with no negative particles preceding it.
It denotes the negative sense when it has negative particles exist in its structure. The next section provides examples in which baʁa appears in different syntactic structures denoting different semantic meanings.

Structure of baʁa
Unlike MSA and CA, verbs of imminence only occur in verbal clauses. Thus, baʁa always precedes the verb regardless of the position of the subject. Unlike ka:da, baʁa does not require to have ʔan in its structure. As mentioned earlier, it appears in both the perfective and the imperfective forms of the verbs. Also, it appears preceding both transitive and intransitive verbs. Consider the following examples: The above examples show that baʁa occurs only before the imperfective verbs, as in (39.b). jikssir: "he breaks" is a transitive verb. Saying that, it is obvious why example (39.c) is ungrammatical due to the perfective verb kasar: "break". The last example is ungrammatical due to the presence of ʔan between baʁa and the verb. Such structure does not exist in Saudi dialects and is unacceptable. Clauses which have intransitive verbs in their structures behave exactly the same as those structures containing transitive verbs with regard to the use of baʁa, as shown in the following examples:

Constituent Order
The above examples show that baʁa occurs only before the imperfective verbs, as in (39.b). jikssir: "he breaks" is a transitive verb. Saying that, it is obvious why example (39.c) is ungrammatical due to the perfective verb kasar: "break". The last example is ungrammatical due to the presence of ʔan between baʁa and the verb. Such structure does not exist in Saudi dialects and is unacceptable. Clauses which have intransitive verbs in their structures behave exactly the same as those structures containing transitive verbs with regard to the use of baʁa, as shown in the following examples:

Agreement
As mentioned earlier, the subject controls the agreement system in Arabic. Also, it is illustrated earlier that the subject's position does not have any impact on the agreement system in Saudi dialects. It is worth mentioning that baʁa may appear in the passive voice structures show the same agreement system as the active voice structures. Therefore, the verb shows full agreement with the passive subject regardless of the verb Form (Form V, Form VII or Form VIII), as shown in the following examples: As mentioned earlier, the subject of the passive structure is usually post-verbal, as seen in the above examples. However, it may occur preverbal. The passive verb agrees fully with its subject either it appears initial or not, as shown in the following examples: