Arabic-L:LING:lam with perfective verb responses

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Mon 07 Mar  2005
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
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1) Subject:lam with perfective verb response
2) Subject:lam with perfective verb response
3) Subject:lam with perfective verb response

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1)
Date: 07 Mar  2005
From:A. Ferhadi <af3 at nyu.edu>
Subject:lam with perfective verb response

Outside al-siirah al-hilaaliyyah, there is an old song by the late
Muhammad Abdulwahaab in colloquial Egyptian Arabic. In that song, 'lam'
precedes the perfective consistently. This is evident in the following
two lines:

I did not abandon you in the sea but you abandoned me on land;
I did not sell/exchange you for gold but you sold me for hay (chopped
straw)

fi-lbaHri lam fut-tukum, fi-lbarri fut-tuuni
in the sea didn't [I] leave you, in the land you left me

bit-tibri lam bi9tukum, bit-tibni bi9tuuni
With gold didn't [I] sell you, with hay you sold me

Ahmed Ferhadi
New York University

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2)
Date: 07 Mar  2005
From:mbooth at uiuc.edu
Subject:lam with perfective verb response

Dear Mustafa,
This has to do also with Egyptian Arabic, not other
dialects, but fyi, Egyptian colloquial poetry at least in
the 1910s-1930s, used lam with the perfect verb, no doubt
following oral poetic practices.  I note several instances
of this in my book on Bayram al-Tunisi; happy to talk with
you about it more if I can be of help.

best wishes,
Marilyn Booth

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3)
Date: 07 Mar  2005
From:mustafa.mughazy at wmich.edu
Subject:lam with perfective verb response

Dear List members, Srpko, and Maher

Thanks a lot for your quick response to my query. I understand that the
use of the negative lam with perfective verbs is supposed to be
ungrammatical. That is why I first thought it was a typo or a
mispronunciation. However, I found a few specific examples that I would
like to share with you:

This one is from Al-Hayaat newspaper 9-5-04 in an article on Abu-Ghureib
prison

Laakinnii fuuji`t bi-'aalam bashi' [lam kunt ataxayyaloh]
But I was surprised with a horrible world I did not imagine


This one is from Al-Quds Al-'arabi, also a newspaper, 23-2-05. It is
from an article about the assassination of Al-Hariiry

(al-Hariiry) lam yastaghil al-qaraar 1559 li`iHraaj suurya 'ala an-naHw
al-lathi ittaba'ahu JumblaT
Al-Hariry did not use the resolution number 1559 to embarrass Syria, as
Jumblat did

bima'naa annaho [lam kaana yaxtaT] linafsih xaTTan xaaSan bih
Meaning that he did not have a special agenda


If you want to hear an example, check the narration of the Egyptian
story teller in Tales from Arab Detroit, a documentary.

My question again, do you know of any dialect that uses lam with
perfective verbs. That could be a spoken dialect or a genre of written
Arabic.

Thank you

Mustafa Mughazy
Western Michigan University

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End of Arabic-L:  07 Mar  2005