The Arabic Origins or Cognates of Negative Terms in World Languages: A RadicalLinguistic Theory Approach

Abstract

This paper aims to establish the Arabic cognates, reflexes, or origins of "negative particles,
terms, or words" in world languages from a radical linguistic (or lexical root) theory
perspective. The data comprises key negative terms like no/not in 112 world languages,
belonging to eleven major and minor families like Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, Afro-Asiatic,
Austronesian, Dravidian, Turkic, Mayan, Japonic, Niger-Congo, Uto-Aztec, and Tai-Kadai,
which make up 60% of world languages and 96% of world population. The results clearly show
that all such words, whether n-based (e.g., ne, na, in, no), l-based (e.g., la/lo, lain/lan 'not'),
or m-based (e.g., ma/mei 'not'), 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 retained and preserved almost intact in Arabic as the most conservative and
productive language. Thus Arabic can be safely said to be the radical language itself for
sharing the negative cognates with all world languages and for having a huge phonetic,
morphological, grammatical, and lexical repertoire and variety which is indispensable for
interpreting its linguistic richness and versatility.