Interrogation and negation with <i>ši</i> in North African and Levantine Arabic

Abstract Polar and copular interrogatives ending in -š like those of Andalusi Arabic have been documented since the late 18th century in the peripheral Arabic dialect Maltese, that variety also negating with -š. This is significant because Maltese retains features of the North African dialect spoken in the 8th and10th centuries in what is now Tunis, Arabic speakers populating the Maltese islands in that era. For their parts, the old urban Tunisian dialects retain a polar interrogative šī, including copular interrogative 3rd person pronouns, and they negate with -š. Remnants of copular interrogatives persist in Moroccan and Egyptian vernacular Arabic, copular negation with -š remaining productive in Arabic dialects from the Yemen, the southern and highland Levant, and across coastal North Africa.