Andalusi Arabic negators and interrogatives

Abstract The earliest unambiguous evidence for grammatical šī in Arabic comes in a few instances of an indefinite determiner and negator šī in the vernacular poetry and folk proverbs of Arab Spain (al-Andalus), evidence for a copular interrogative formed with a suffixed -š also appearing in two places. Conventionally and mistakenly interpreted as negators, these would show the operation of a Jespersen’s Cycle in Andalusi Arabic. Considering them in the context of exclamatives and rhetorically negative questions in living Arabic dialects and in their indigenous setting allows us to draw a different conclusion: negating with -š began when interrogatives formed with reflexes of šī were negated with mā, thus permitting their reanalysis as negators, even as they retained the post-positive -š of interrogation.