Chapter 4

The fourth chapter deals with the analysis of syntactic structures as they appear in the informants’ speech. The chapter is organised in three main sections: phrases, clauses, and negation. The comparison with Reinhardt decreases here, due to the lack of a precise and detailed presentation of sentence structure in the German work.

In both the sections on phrases and clauses, the interested reader can find some remarks on TAM categories and agreement patterns in the district of al-ʿAwābī, as well as numerous examples drawn from the author’s own fieldwork.

Particularly pertinent is the section on negation: for a long time, Reinhardt’s negative system has been the object of intense discussions in the field. Here, the interested reader will find food for thought and clear evidence of linguistic variation.