NEGATION IN WORLD LANGUAGES: A RADICAL LINGUISTIC THEORY APPROACH

要旨

This paper traces the Arabic origins and/or cognates of negation in most world languages from a radical linguistic (or lexical root) theory perspective. The data, which is taken from Swadesh’s lists in the main, comprises the main negative terms like no/not in 112 world languages from 11 major and minor families like Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, Afro-Asiatic, Austronesian, Dravidian, Turkic, Mayan, Japonic, Niger-Congo, Uto-Aztec, and Tai-Kadai, which constitute 60% of world languages and whose speakers make up 96% of world population. The results clearly show that all such words like no/ne, la/lo, ma/mei have true Arabic cognates with the same or similar forms and meanings, whose differences are due to natural and plausible causes and different routes of linguistic change. Therefore, the results support the adequacy of the radical linguistic theory according to which, unlike the Comparative Method and/or Family Tree Model, all world languages are related to one another, which eventually stemmed from a radical or root language which has been preserved almost intact in Arabic as the most conservative and productive language. In fact, Arabic can be safely said to be the radical language itself for sharing the negative cognates with all the other languages and for its huge phonetic, morphological, grammatical, and lexical variety and wealth without which it is impossible to interpret its linguistic richness and versatility on all levels.

主題