This comparative study is mainly concerned with the syntax of negation in Arabic. The principal aim is to characterize the properties of negation that are particular to different varieties of Arabic and the properties they share. The book primarily discusses negation in three varieties of Arabic – Southern Levantine, Gulf, and Standard Arabic. Egyptian Arabic (EA)is discussed in this book but it is limited to the background literature and the discussion in Chapter 5, where I show how the distribution of negation strategies in EA contrasts with Jordanian Arabic (JA). The Southern Levantine data is primarily from the dialect spoken in the Jordanian Houran, the author's native variety. The Gulf and Standard Arabic data is drawn from grammar books and scholarly studies, and complemented with novel data from the author's native dialect (including data from older speakers of this dialect), native speakers of Gulf Arabic (GA) and a corpus study of negation in classical and modern Standard Arabic. The corpus study is a syntactic analysis of negation in the Quran (around 86,000 words) and Levantine literature (around 86,000 words). Though the study is based on data from three varieties, the results largely represent the range of possible variations in the expression of negation in Arabic and other languages, and the interaction between negation and other elements of the clause structure such as tense, aspect, agreement, adverbs, adjuncts, and negative polarity/concord. Southern Levantine Arabic has preverbal and postverbal negative markers, GA only has preverbal negative markers, and Standard Arabic has preverbal negative markers that are tensed and others that carry agreement inflections.

Another advantage of considering these related varieties of Arabic is that they make it possible to do a micro-variation analysis that allows us to investigate negation in a somewhat controlled context (cf. Zanuttini 1997a for this methodological rationale in studying negation in Romance). Having such a controlled context is especially helpful in running a battery of tests to probe the structure of negation and related categories in Arabic. This is particularly useful because Arabic syntax is known for its flexibility and tolerance for a wide range of variation within and across the dialects.