Jameroriesoci 133 2 0217

The Historical Linguistics of the Intrusive *-n in Arabic and West Semitic
Author(s): Jonathan Owens

Source: Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 133, No. 2 (April-June 2013), pp.
217-248
Published by: American Oriental Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7817/jameroriesoci.133.2.0217
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The Historical Linguistics of the Intrusive
*-n in Arabic and West Semitic
Jonathan Owens
University of Bayreuth
A much discussed morpheme in Semitic historical linguistics is the suffix *-n.

Its reflexes include the energic in Classical Arabic, the ventive in Akkadian, and
many languages with a [V – n – object pronoun] reflex. Explanations of its origins
fall broadly into two camps. One sees it originally as a proto-Semitic verbal suffix,
while the other derives it from a grammaticalization of an originally independent
[deictic/presentative + object pronoun] element. This paper argues for the cor-
rectness of the second explanation, to which end a general reconstruction of the
historical development of the morpheme in West Semitic is developed, with par-
ticular attention given to Arabic. Although a modest and unobtrusive morpheme,
it is argued that the linguistics of *-n is of considerable significance for conceptu-
alizations of Arabic and Semitic historical linguistics.
1. introduction
I term the -n (realized variously as -in, -an, -inn, -ann, -unn, -anna) that occurs before object
suffixes in many Semitic languages and varieties the “intrusive -n,” or simply “-n.” 1 The ori-
gin of this morpheme has been widely discussed among Semiticists in particular, and more
recently among Arabicists (Holes 2011). Among Semiticists there are two broad explanations
for its appearance. The more widespread approach, represented inter alia by Robert Hetzron
(1969), David Testen (1993), and Rebecca Hasselbach (2006), is to interpret the intrusive
-n as an inherited proto-Semitic verbal suffix with various, uninterrupted reflexes across the
different varieties. An alternative perspective is offered by Jan Retsö (1988: 92; also Barth
1907), who sees the -n as originating independently from common “deictic elements,” a
massive parallel independent development, as it were. The former approach tends to derive
the morpheme from common verbal aspect-mode values, two functions of which are the
Akkadian ventive (motion towards speaker) and the Classical Arabic so-called energicus
(nūn al-taʾkīd in the Arabic tradition, also termed energetic or energic in the Western tradi-
tion). The latter approach, on the other hand, is sceptical of shared proto-functions, instead
emphasizing the basically formal property of pronoun object marking.
In this article I will attempt to combine elements of each of the two perspectives. As in
the first position, there is a common, shared origin to all occurrences of the -Vn in West
Author’s note: I would like to thank Clive Holes for comments on and discussion of various points in this article,
and the two anonymous readers for their helpful and critical comments. Nadine Hamdan provided invaluable help
in organizing the Qurʾanic databases. Symbols used herein are standard grammatical abbreviations, e.g., N = noun,
SG = singular, PL = plural, M = masculine, F = feminine, NOM = nominative, ACC = accusative, GEN = geni-
tive, OBJ = object, NP = noun phrase, PP = prepositional phrase, etc.; in addition, EM = emphatic morpheme, T =
energic suffix (al-nūn al-thaqīla), -n = intrusive -n, V = verb (unless in phonological formulae, where v = vowel),
AP = active participle, CA = Classical Arabic. (Presumably) spoken dialect has been transcribed using a variant of
the international phonetic alphabet (IPA) for consonants (dots under emphatic consonants instead of the IPA raised
ʿayn) and two short vowels for a lengthened vowel (e.g., uu = ū).
1. Cf. Landberg’s term, “nûn paragogique” (1909: 732).
Journal of the American Oriental Society 133.2 (2013) 217
218 Journal of the American Oriental Society 133.2 (2013)
Semitic. However, following Retsö, the only functional unity that characterizes them is the
grammaticalized function of marking a pronoun object suffix. As will be seen, the explana-
tion advocated here basically confirms the analysis of Carlo Landberg (1909: 738). 2
Partly for strategic reasons, and partly because of the breadth of material that would have
to be treated in detail to work out a completely comprehensive development, I will concen-
trate on the West Semitic languages in general, and on Arabic in particular. To the extent that
the West Semitic languages have the intrusive -n, they are remarkably similar to one another
in grammar, while Arabic is of particular interest for two reasons. First, the -n is attested in a
number of varieties of it, and at different chronological eras; and second, a close look at the
general syntax of the -n in a major text of Classical Arabic will allow a detailed evaluation,
and refutation, of the idea that the -n derives from a proto-verbal function.
I begin in section 2 with a summary of the situation in Arabic, first the dialects, then a
corpus-based summary of the energic -n in Qurʾanic Arabic. This will form the basis in sec-
tions 2.2 and 2.3 of the first of two reconstructions developed in this paper, namely, a recon-
struction of the development of the energic as a grammatical category in Classical Arabic.
In section 3 the data from other West Semitic languages are presented, and in section 4 an
overall historical development is offered. In section 5 individual interpretive issues related to
the proposed solution are addressed.
2. the intrusive -n in arabic
2.1. Arabic dialects

The properties of -n are quite uniform among contemporary Arabic dialects. In all Arabic
dialects where it occurs—viz., Eastern Arabian dialects of former South Yemen, Oman, the
Emirates, and Bahrain; those of eastern Syria, Khorasan, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan; and
Bagirmi Arabic in northeast Nigeria, Cameroon, and western Chad—an intrusive -n is added
onto the active participle only before an object suffix.
In Yemen (specifically, Dathīna, in former South Yemen; cf. Landberg 1909: 720ff.) it
occurs in all forms of the AP. The -n is geminate except before the -n initial suffixes -ni
‘me’ and -na ‘us’. Gemination nearly always occurs before a vowel, although there are a
few examples of -nn-ha (muṣaaħib-ínne-ha “he has accompanied her,” as well as mitħaḍḍin-
ínn-ha “he carried her in the arms”; subjects are provided from context in the following
examples):
(1) meħaalif-ínn-ak “[he is] your ally” (allied-N-you-M)
muħaalif-iin-ín-na “[they are] allied to us” (allied-MPL-N-us)
kaatib-et-ínn-eh “[you (F)] have written it (M)”
kaatb-aat-inn-a “[they (F)] have written it (M)”
In Oman -in is added to any stem form (Reinhardt 1972: 139): 3
2. One of the readers observed that Barth’s theory “. . . was conceived before the inclusion of Akkadian and
Ethiopic . . . in the reconstruction of [the] Proto-Semitic [-n]” and therefore can no longer be considered of equal
rank with the inherited verbal suffix analysis. While this paper filters Akkadian out of the main analysis (see 5.5,
below), the question of the origin of the intrusive -n as an originally independent element vs. original verbal suffix
remains a question implicated for all of West Semitic (and ultimately all of Semitic). I do not think that the solution
proposed here cannot be interpreted to have occurred at the proto-Semitic, rather than proto-West Semitic stage.
3. Carl Reinhardt’s phonetic transcription is inconsistent. For the sound MPL suffix, for instance, he writes -yn,
obviously transliterating rather than transcribing.
Owens: The Intrusive *-n in Arabic and West Semitic 219
(2) ḍaarb-ínn-ek “he has hit you (M)”

ḍaarb-ít-n-hum “she has hit them (M)”
ḍaarb-íin-n-ek “they (M) have hit you (M)”
ḍaarbaat-ínn-iš “they (F) have hit you (F)”
Here -n is added to the MPL directly, rather than as -in + pronoun suffix, as in Yemen.
In Bahrain (cf. Holes 1987: 109), -in is a feature of Shiʿite (Baḥarna) speakers. It is added
only after a singular participle (M or F); -n is geminate before a vowel, single before a
consonant: 4
(3) xaaṭb-ín-ha “he has become engaged to her”
xaaṭb-at-inn-ah “she has become engaged to him”
In the Syrian desert I. G. Wetzstein notes (1868: 192; no complete paradigms are given in
this work) that forms with and without -n are used before object suffixes:
(4) šaayf-ann-u “he saw him” (1868: 75)
For Khorasan Ulrich Seeger (2002: 635) does not give complete paradigms, but he shows
the -n suffixed to the AP stem for MSG, and to the FSG suffix for the feminine singular. He
gives only a geminate -nn, except for n- initial suffixes (as with Oman and Yemen), and he
has u for the vowel.
(5) mint-unn-he “he has given her” (give-N-her)
aaxđ-t-unn-a “I (F) took [married] him” (take-F-N-him)
In Uzbekistan and Afghanistan 5 the situation is slightly complicated by the fact that the
active participle has itself become refunctionalized into a person-inflected form in which the
historical pronoun objects assume the function of subject. However, this refunctionalized
pronoun object is always suffixed to the -n in the first and second person subjects, 6 so that
formally, even if not semantically, it parallels the other dialects. The -n suffixes directly to the
MSG AP stem, neutralizing FSG and MPL suffixes. For Afghanistani Arabic Bruce Ingham
(2006: 32) gives the following forms, some, it can be noted, with -an instead of -in, while the
1 and 2MPL forms are suffixed to the plural suffix -iin, rather than the intrusive -n.
(6) SG PL
1 kaatb-an-ni 7 kaatb-iin-na
2M kaatb-inn-ak kaatb-iin-ku
2F kaatb-an-ki kaatb-an-kin
The -n is geminate before -V, single otherwise, a situation also noted by Wolfdietrich Fischer
(1961) for Uzbekistan.
For Uzbekistan, Gerit Zimmermann’s (2009: 620) data agree broadly with (6), except that
she clearly has the -n in all forms including the plurals—qaʕd-in-kum “you (MPL) have sat
down”—and always a single -n.
Finally, in Bagirmi Arabic, a dialect area roughly coterminous with the former Bagirmi
empire that ruled the border area between western Chad, Cameroon, and Nigeria south of
4. Rebecca Hasselbach’s deriving the Bahraini geminate forms from analogical extension of the 1SG object
suffix (2006: 324) appears unnecessarily complicated; see (42) below.
5. Speakers of Afghanistani Arabic migrated from Uzbekistan in the nineteenth century.
6. In the third person the original AP forms marked by the number and gender suffixes are used.
7. Note, with the meaning “I have written.”
Lake Chad, -n is added to the MSG stem, where, as with Uzbekistani Arabic, it neutralizes
all other forms (Owens 1993: 2009).
(7) ana kaatb-in-ha “I have written it” vs. ana kaatib (M) “I have written”
inti kaatb-in-ha; inti kaatb-e “you (FSG) have written”
hum kaatb-in-ha; hum kaatb-iin “they (M) have written”
hinna kaatb-in-ha; hinna kaatb-aat “they (F) have written”
In addition, in all non-Bagirmi Nigerian Arabic dialects and in Shukriyya, in eastern
Sudan (Reichmuth 1983), -an/-ann is added to the FPL -aat, as in Oman (see (2), above).
The geminate variant occurs before a vowel, the single before a consonant.
(8) kaatb-aat-ann-u “they (F) have written it” (written-FPL-N-itM)
In these two dialects, the -an can probably be interpreted as a relic of the fuller system,
as in (1) and (2), above.
2.1.1. Other -n/-nn’s

In the eastern Arabian peninsula, southeastern United Arab Emirates, and the adjoining
area of Oman, an -n can be suffixed between pronoun object and imperfect verb (Holes
2011). Clive Holes notes that such forms are common in this area: 8
(9) yi-kaffi-n-na “it will be enough for us” (3M-enough-N-us)
n-sawwi-nn-a “we do it” (we-do-N-itM)
yi-šill-inn-ah “he removes it” (3M-remove-N-itM)
The cognate status of these is discussed in section 5.4, below.
2.1.2. Complementizers
It is relevant, for reasons that emerge in sections 2.3 and 4, below, to briefly summarize
another -n, this one occurring in a class of complementizers in Arabic, which in Classical
Arabic are those ending in -nna (inna wa-akhawātuhā), namely, inna ‘that’, anna ‘that’, and
lākinna ‘but’. These have a number of formal links to the energic, discussed in the next two
sections. Like the energic they can be followed by a pronoun from the object series, 9 anna-ka
‘that you’; they are neutrally followed by an accusative complement if nominal rather than
pronominal; and anna itself marks an object complement.
(10) ʿalim-tu anna zayd-an munṭaliq-un
learn-I that Zayd-ACC leave-NOM
“I learned that Zayd is leaving”
Furthermore, there is a “light” version of this morpheme (in, an, lākin) that in most varieties
does not govern an accusative noun (Sībawayhi 1970, 1: 430).
The complementizer in continues to be used in many contemporary dialects, though not
all (see 5.6, below). It has, however, various functions, only one of which is to mark a sen-
tential verb complement (e.g., Germanos 2009, where it is a discourse marker, as well as
marking complements). Retsö (1988: 79) notes that a number of Landberg’s texts have a
particle win, often used with a suffix pronoun co-referential with the subject of the clause,
which appears to demarcate short episode segments in narratives.
8. Private communication, February 2011. See also Eades 2008: 89.
9. Hence in the 1SG -nī, as well as -ī.
(11) winne-hom nezal-u min em-xalwah leθneen ʕala ṣħaab-hom . . . u qaal-u inna
ṭaʕán-na θneen u elʕalim alla inne-hom faat-u oo ʕaad-hom
“and then the two descended to their companions . . . and they said we stabbed
two and God knows if they are dead or not” (Landberg 1905: 9) 10
As can be seen here, inna occurs in the same texts marking a sentential complement after
qaal, so that there appear to be multiple *-in-origin words in this dialect.
2.2. Classical Arabic

Following a long tradition of scholarship, it may be assumed that the -n of the Arabic AP
is of the same historical lineage as the energic -n of Classical Arabic. As will be shown in
section 2.3 it can be more precisely argued that the energic is an innovative category built
on an older -n construction.
In Classical Arabic there are two morphemes that in the Western tradition are known
as the energic, -anna and -an. These are termed in the Arabic tradition al-nūn al-thaqīla
and al-nūn al-khafīfa respectively, or the heavy and the light -n. They are suffixed to the
imperfect and imperative verbs. According to the explanation of the grammarian Sībawayhi
(d. ca. 180/796), who wrote the earliest Arabic grammar, in the 2FSG and 2/3MPL forms
the long vowels of the suffixes shorten regularly according to the general rule that shortens
long vowels before -CC, while the initial -a of the energic is elided. 11 The FPL produces the
allomorph -ānni:
(12) SG PL
a-ktub-anna na-ktub-anna
ta-ktub-anna ta-ktub-u-nna
ta-ktub-i-nna ta-ktub-n-ānni
ya-ktub-anna yaktub-u-nna
ta-aktub-anna ya-ktub-n-ānni
Further special variants occur with the dual, which are not relevant to this discussion.
The distribution of the “light” -n (termed energic II in the Western tradition) is by com-
parison curtailed. The issues are complex and only basic facts will be summarized here.
Sībawayhi spends nine pages in his grammar al-Kitāb describing the two -n’s (1970, 2:
152–61), with much of the description devoted to the various allomorphic or variationist
realizations of the light -n, including detailed discussion and criticism of the views of Yūnus
Ibn Ḥabīb (d. 182/798) (and the naḥwiyyūn) on the subject. The light -n does not occur in
the dual or the feminine plural. Furthermore, it does not occur before either the definite
article l- or an epenthetic vowel (2: 157.6, 158.17), since this would lead to an unaccept-
able sequence of three consonants (*tukrim-an l-ḍayf-a “you honor the guest”). 12 In pausal
10. Landberg’s transcription has been adjusted to conform with the transcription of dialectal speech used in
this article.
11. In the Arabic grammatical tradition, the final -n of the indicative (the inflection of indicative in these
persons) is said to be dropped before the energic forms. William Wright (1986, 1: 61) formulates the morphology
differently, saying the energic is added to the jussive stem, which in the 2FSG and MPL at least is a viable alterna-
tive. It is not added to the jussive of weak final verbs, however, which maintain their long vowel before the suffix,
e.g., armiy-anna “I shall throw” (Sībawayhi 1970, 2: 161). There are interesting issues of historical linguistic inter-
pretation behind both formulations.
12. Sībawayhi notes that in this case the light -n is not like the tanwīn, which it behaves like in pausal position.
The definite article is realized as al- post-pausally, but as l- in context (waṣl). In the Arabic grammatical tradition, it
is known inter alia as lām al-taʿrīf “the definite l.”
position it changes to -ā after an a. In the 2FSG and plural forms Sībawayhi notes that the -n
of the indicative (raf ʿ) returns in pausal position, i.e., instead of theoretical taktub-i-n “you
(F) write-N” > taktub-iy-ā or taktub-īn-ā, one has taktub-īn (2: 158.9).
(13) SG PL
aktub-an na-ktub-an
taktub-an ta-ktub-u-n (but not in pause)
taktub-i-n 0
yaktub-an ya-ktub-u-n (but not in pause)
taktub-an 0
The energic is a translation of the term tawkīd ‘emphasis’, a term that Sībawayhi attri-
butes to al-Khalīl (d. 175/791) (2: 152). Sībawayhi notes that the heavy -n is more emphatic
than the light, and he gives two contexts with which it is closely associated. The first is the
so-called lām al-qasam—the lām or letter l signifying an oath—a morpheme that he sees
as closely associated with the energic (see Testen 1998: chaps. 1 and 2 for summary of
la- in Arabic). Sībawayhi explains qasam ‘oath’ as “emphasizing your expression” (taʾkīd
li-kalāmika, 1: 403.15), i.e., it is a linguistic, not a legal category. Should la- be used with a
non-negative imperfect verb, Sībawayhi claims that the energic must also be used:
(14) wa-llāh-i la-a-f ʿal-anna
by God-GEN EM-I-do-T
“By God I will do [it]” (2: 403.18)
This formulation is too general, as in fact la- does occur without the energic, as Sībawayhi
himself later notes:
(15) inna zayd-an la-ya-ḍrib-u
EM Zayd-ACC EM-3-hit-IND
“Indeed Zayd will hit” (1: 405.14)
Sībawayhi simply observes that the use of the energic with la- here is more frequent.
What can be noted is that Sībawayhi often illustrates the energic in the context of a lexical
expression with the force of an oath, wa-llāh ‘by God’, ashhadu ‘I bear witness’, aqsimu ‘I
swear’, and the like (see (29), below).
A second context is in imperative and negative verbs, lā ta-f ʿal-anna ‘don’t do!’, which
Sībawayhi notes as optionally occurring with the energic (in shiʾta adkhalta fīhi l-nūn wa-in
shiʾta lam tudkhil). In addition Sībawayhi summarizes further contexts, all characterized
by occurrence with a characteristic but optional morpheme. One of particular interest is his
observation that with a question word the energic turns a question into a command, i.e., it
assumes the illocutionary force of a command:
(16) hal ta-qūl-anna
Q you-say-T
“do you really mean to say?” = “you don’t (really) mean to say; you shouldn’t
say”
In this context Sībawayhi approvingly cites the grammarian Yūnus (see Baalbaki 2008:
14) who sanctions the energic -n after hallā ‘why not?’:
(17) hallā ta-qūl-anna
why not you-say-T
“why don’t you say?” = “you should say”
A general characterization of the meaning of the energic will be given in 2.2.1, below,
after further data are introduced, though for the moment it is enough to note that the energic
is strongly associated with illocutionarily marked contexts.
Turning to the larger historical issue addressed here, ostensibly there is only a partial
overlap between the -n of the Arabic dialects and the energic of Classical Arabic, the only
similarity being that they both occur before object suffixes. A closer look at the distribution
of the energic in one important Classical Arabic text will help form a more nuanced picture
of this initial observation, however.
2.2.1. The energic in the Qurʾan

The Qurʾan is not only the most important text rendered in Classical Arabic, 13 but also
its earliest extended text. Aside from its religious significance, its early pedigree makes it an
invaluable source for one variety of early Arabic. It is certainly the case that the Qurʾan as
we know it today achieved its sanctioned final form only with Ibn Mujāhid’s (d. 324/936)
al-Sabʿa fī l-qirāʾāt, a work of the early third/tenth century, some three hundred years after
Muḥammad (see Beck 1945). Nonetheless, its very authenticity would have preserved it from
extensive re-editing, so that it may be assumed to be the longest early text available.
For the present study, the online source “The Quranic Arabic Corpus” was used. 14 This
allows a concordance search of all verb forms (19,364 tokens, according to the corpus) in
the Qurʾan, which are listed by lemma according to frequency. Twenty-five of the thirty
(web)pages of verbs—the first fifteen and the last ten—were searched for the heavy energic
-anna. There are fifty lexical types per page. As is usual in corpora, the most frequent lexical
types overproportionally represent the token usage. The first page of fifty types, for instance,
accounts for a total of 10,379 tokens, slightly over one-half of all verb tokens. In token terms
probably over ninety percent of all Qurʾanic verbs are included in the statistics presented
here; in lexical type terms, 1,246 verbs, out of a total of 1,496 (83%), were searched. In this
group, eighty-three verb types occurred with the heavy -n. Translations are taken from the
same website.
It can be noted that the overwhelming majority of energic tokens are the heavy form and
therefore only this variety is treated here. The light energic is vanishingly rare. To gauge an
idea of the frequency of the light energic, the verbs on the first page and the verbs on the last
ten pages of the Quranic Arabic Corpus were exhaustively searched for occurrences. The
search turned up only one token, as against eighty-three tokens of the heavy variety on the
first page alone. 15
2.2.1.1. A basic summary of linguistic properties of the energic in the Qurʾan

In the sample no tokens of the energic are found attached to the dual or feminine plural.
Otherwise it occurs in all three persons, and in the singular and plural. In virtually all contexts
it is introduced in the presence of another morpheme that co-marks the “energic” meaning of
the construction, as Sībawayhi describes (see above). These will be termed “illocutionary”
13. No attempt will be made to distinguish early forms of Arabic—pre-Classical, Classical, Qurʾanic Arabic,
and the like—which I believe is a precarious exercise (see Nöldeke 1893, Fischer 1961; see also Owens 2009:
39–40 for methodological problems in defining early varieties). In my view, so long as a sociolinguistic history of
early Arabic is lacking, issues of early varieties cannot be defined with complete adequacy.
14. http://corpus.quran.com/ (directed by Kais Dukes and hosted at Leeds University).
15. Viz., yakūnā, noted in Sībawayhi as yakūn-an (2: 152).
Table 1. Illocutionary operators co-occurring with the energic -anna

Frequency Percent Cumulative Percent
la (lām al-qasam) 149 72.3 73.6
lā, negative 38 18.6 91.6
immā ‘when, if’ 9 4.4 96.0
immā . . . aw ‘either . . . or’ 6 2.9 99.0
aw ‘or’ alone 1 .5 99.5
others 1 .5 100.0
Total 204 100.0
operators. In the Qurʾanic citations examined here these contexts can be summarized in
Table 1, with their token counts.
Examples of the less frequent morphemes are as follows (see (20) for la-):
(18) fa-immā ya-ʾtiy-anna-kum min-nī hud-an (Q 2:38)
And-when 3-come-T-you-MPL from-me guidance-ACC
“And when guidance comes to you from Me”
(19) hal yu-dhhib-anna kayd-u-hu mā ya-ghīṭu (Q 22:15)
Q 3M-go-T effort-NOM-his what 3M-enrages
“will his effort remove that which enrages” 16
Not infrequently, there is a sort of energic agreement, when the energic in one verb form
is followed by the same in the next or neighboring verb. In Q 4:119, for instance, six tokens
of the energic follow one another successively.
(20) wa-la-u-ḍill-anna-hum wa-la-u-manniy-anna-hum wa la-ʾ-āmur-anna-hum
And EM-I-mislead-T-them and EM-I-arouse-T-them and EM-I-order-T-them
fa-la-yu-battik-u-nna ādhān-a l-anʿāmi wa-la-ʾ-āmur-anna-hum
and-EM-3-slit-PL-T ears-ACC DEF-cattle-GEN and EM-I-command-T-them
fa-la-yu-ghayyir-u-nna
and-EM-3-change-PL-T
“And I will mislead them, and I will arouse in them [sinful desires], and I will
command them so that they slit the ears of cattle, and I will command them so
they change”
Thirty-two of the verses have more than one energic token in them.
The previous example (20) illustrates another relevant point, namely, that the la- of oath
often occurs with no explicit oath before it, so that it simply has the effect, with the energic
suffix itself, of marking a pragmatic emphasis. 17
It is also not uncommon for the same phrases to be repeated in more than one verse (see,
e.g., Zwettler 1978 on orality and repetition in Arabic literary composition). The phrase (lā/
16. Given the discussion in n. 19, below, a more appropriate translation might be “and do you really think that
his effort will remove that which enrages.”
17. Similarly in poetry. Dīwān ʿAntara turned up nine total tokens of the energic -n, all of them marked with
la- and none with the jawāb al-qasam actually “answering” an overt oath. My thanks to Smaranda Grigore for these
statistics.
la-) takūn-anna min X 18 “(don’t) be of the X,” for instance, accounts for sixteen of eighteen
tokens of the energic on k-w-n, as in Q 6:114, 7:149, and 7:189 respectively:
(21) lā takūn-anna mina l-mumtar-īna / l-khāsirīna / l-shākirīna
“do not be of the doubters” / “of the losers” / “of the grateful”
In other cases, whole clauses recur. The next example, for instance, is found in both
Q 31:33 and 35:5:
(22) fa-lā ta-ghurr-anna-kumu l-ḥayāt-u l-dunyā wa-lā ya-ghurr-anna-kum bi-llāhi
l-gharūru
“so let not the worldly life deceive you and let not the Deceiver deceive you
about Allah”
Each such case is counted as an individual token in the statistics below. What applies
to phrases applies to a degree to the illocutionary operators and complements as well. The
illocutionary operators tend to collocate with individual verbs. The verb ḥasaba ‘think,
consider’, for instance, occurs in two verses—nine tokens in all with the negative lā; this
one verb therefore accounts for nearly one-quarter of all lā + -n occurrences. Also, arā
‘show’ occurs in four tokens in four verses, all in the context of immā ‘if’. The verbs may be
predisposed to occur with certain types of complements: adkhala ‘make enter’, for instance,
occurs only with a pronominal object complement in its four tokens.
As far as the meaning of the energic goes, generalizing over the examples and description
given so far, it can be said to represent an assertion on the part of the speaker that “the event
or state of affairs represented in the predicate will with a high degree of certitude occur.” It
is, as it were, a certitude operator. In the case of imperatives it expresses a strong desire on
the part of the speaker that an event should or should not occur. 19 In actual discourse, based
on the Qurʾanic material, the energic always occurs in tandem with another morpheme to
co-mark this meaning. 20
2.2.1.2. A statistical summary

In order to better assess the function of the energic, the syntactic contexts in which it
occurs in the sample were further broken down into the following categories (in a few cases
the class is so small that no example is given):
18. The verb is always in the 2MSG here.

19. A full-scale account of the semantics and pragmatics of the energic is outside the scope of this article. It
can be noted, however, that on the basis of this characterization further interpretations relating to its meaning can
be developed. For instance, looking at (16), the use of the yes-no question marker hal and the energic on a second
person verb is pragmatically contradictory, as it combines a question (hal) with an assertive morpheme, -anna. The
speaker is at one and the same time in good faith asking (with hal) for information from the addressee and assert-
ing (with -anna) knowledge of the outcome. Note that the speaker is not asking whether the addressee is certain
about what he is saying (which would be something like hal mutaʾakkidan taqūlu dhālika “are you sure you are
saying that = make sure that you know what you are saying is what you are saying”). Rather, -anna represents the
speaker’s (or third person subject’s) own evaluation of the future event expressed in the predicate. On the basis of
this pragmatic contradiction it would appear to be fruitful to derive the implied meaning noted in (16), above. Given
that the sentence is grammatical, the inference is invited that the question the speaker is “asking” is not a question
at all, which is a first step towards arriving at the illocutionary force of the configuration. The inference that it is a
command rather than an assertion needs to be explicated.
20. From a brief comparative perspective, it can be noted that in a number of respects the energic is akin to
what Irina Nikolaeva (2007: 141) terms hortatives. Hortatives generally occur in main clauses or, if in dependent
contexts, then as clausal complements of verbs of speaking or epistemic verbs such as qāla ‘say’ and ʿalima ‘know’;
they tend to have reduced morphological contrasts, and they express exhortations or wishes. All three criteria are
relevant to interpreting the energic.
1. With pronoun object complement; see (18), (20), and (22), above.
2. With noun clause object complement,
(23) la-ya-qūl-anna dhahaba l-sayyiʾ-āt-u ʿann-ī (Q 11:10)
EM-3-say-T went DEF-bad-PL-NOM from-me
“He will surely say ‘Bad times have left me’”
3. With nominal direct object complement immediately following; this class is divided
according to whether the direct object bears the definite article,
(24) wa la-ya-ʿlam-anna l-munāfiq-īna (Q 29:11)
and EM-3M-know-T DEF-hypocrites-PL
“He will surely know the hypocrites”
4. or an object without definite article, as in (20) fa-la-yu-battik-u-nna ādhān-a l-anʿāmi.
5. With prepositional object immediately following,
(25) la-yu-ʾmin-anna bi-hi (Q 4:159)
EM-3-believe-T in-him
“he will surely believe in him”
In classes 1–5 the complement immediately following -anna is implied in the argument
structure of the verb; āmana ‘believe’ (25), for instance, requires that its object complement
be marked by the preposition bi-. In the following four classes the complement immediately
following -anna is not implied as a (non-subject) complement of the verb.
6. With non-argument complement (e.g., prepositional phrase) immediately followed by
nominal object.
7. With non-argument adjunct immediately following and no nominal object; see (21).
This class is problematic. The majority of its tokens are due to one verb ‘be’, k-w-n (18
tokens), where the complement introduced by min is considered to be an adjunct, not part of
the argument structure of k-w-n. This problem is alluded to briefly below.
8. With overt noun subject immediately following (19).
9. With no overt nominal or prepositional argument of the verb at all,
(26) lā ta-mūt-u-nna (Q 3:102)
not 2-die-PL-T
“do not die”
The statistics for these contexts are given in Table 2.
2.3. The development of the energic in Classical Arabic

To begin this section, three points derivable from the statistics in Tables 1 and 2 relevant
to the comparative analysis developed here stand out. The first is that in the overwhelming
majority of cases, the complement that follows the energic -anna is (1) tied to the argument
structure of the verb and (2) a non-subject complement. Of the 204 cases, 156 (76%) fall into
the class of non-subject complements that are implied in the argument structure of the verb.
If the min complements of k-w-n are included, the number increases to over eighty percent
(see the discussion in 2.2.1.2, above). There are only twenty-one cases where a non-subject
clausemate does not occur at all, and only fourteen where a subject argument immediately
follows the heavy nūn.
Table 2. Heavy nūn in Qurʾanic Arabic in nine contexts

N
1. pronominal DO 72
2. S Comp 34
3. prep pro DO 18
4. DO with al 6
5. DO without al 25
6. V PP OBJ 1
7. non-argument comp 27
8. V Subject 14
9. no overt argument 7
The second point is that the largest single category, or thirty-five percent, of verb comple-
ments is composed of V + anna + pronoun object; and the third is that the energic in the vast
majority of tokens is introduced by la-, the lām al-qasam (see Table 1). I will return to the
statistics at the end of this section.
In addition to these three points, CA also has complementizers (section 2.1.2, above) that
are of the same form as the heavy -n, -nna, and are of the same parentage as the -n that was
grammaticalized in the object marking complex. As has been well studied (in particular,
Testen 1998), the complementizer inna is very frequently (anna less so) paired with the
emphasizing la-, as in the examples of (27) and (28). 21
(27) inna zayd-an la-qāʾimun/ la-fī l-bayt-i/la-yaqūm-u

“Zayd is indeed standing/at home/getting up”
(28) allā annahum la-yaʾkulūna l-ṭaʿāma (Q 25:20)

“they (were men who) ate food (and walked through the streets)” (cited by Ibn
Hishām, 307)
Equally relevant to the current question, Sībawayhi (1970, 1: 421.3) explicitly notes that
the inna . . . la- construction occurs in the contexts of oaths even without the imperfect verb:
(29) a-shhad-u inna-ka la-dhāhib-un

I-witness-IND EM-you EM-going-NOM
“I bear witness to the fact that you are going”
21. Example (28) is a variant reading of innahum (Saʿīd ibn Jubayr) (see Ibn Hishām, 307, for a discussion of
acceptability of anna + la). In the later Arabic tradition, e.g., the summary of Ibn Hishām (300–11), the “lām of the
oath” is distinguished from the “lām of the topic” (lām al-ibtidāʾ), which is illustrated in (15). Both have the func-
tion of emphasis, however, and both place la- on the predicate. Syntactically the Arabic tradition would be prone to
consider the two lāms distinctive, simply because of the different syntactic environments automatically generated by
the nominal vs. verbal sentence—the former, Topic + (la-) Comment, the latter (la-)-verb-anna- Agent. The assump-
tion is made here that speakers would have identified the two, both formally (both are la-) and semantically, even if
they might have distinguished them syntactically, which is an open question.
In his exposition, Ibn Hishām recognizes four lāms, homophonously la-, that do not govern and that occur on
a major predicative constituent (verb, topic, subject), i.e., they contribute to the illocutionary force of the clause
they occur in. These are the lām al-ibtidāʾ and lām (jawāb) al-qasam, as noted, as well as the “extra lām” (al-lām
al-zāʾida) and the lām that occurs on conditional particles. That the status of the four categories as distinctive
categories is not always clear is witnessed by the fact that Ibn Hishām often notes that in various citations different
grammarians differ as to the correct categorization of a given la-.
Two key points are relevant here. First, the la- marks a predicate, either nominal or verbal;
and second, in most cases the complementizer inna/anna is followed either by an accusative
noun or a bound pronoun (in accusative form).
2.3.1. The analogical origin of the energic

With this I turn now to the specific proposal. As background to the following explanation
it needs to be stated at this point, as will be explained in greater detail in sections 3 and 4
below, that CA inherited a system from proto-West Semitic that already had a grammatical-
ized V + -n + pronoun object construction. This is argued to have been the ancestor of the
energic -anna, as is manifested in the statistic that the largest category of energic -anna com-
plements are pronoun objects. Furthermore, it may have inherited a structure that euphoni-
cally mimicked the V + -n + pronoun object, but left off the pronoun object. This alternative
is discussed in the appendix. Whether CA itself analogically developed the energic from
scratch, as it were, or whether it functionalized a previously functionless V + -n structure is
not crucial to the immediate analysis. In order to keep the presentation concise, I will assume
that the development described below is internal to Arabic.
With this basic background, I follow with a description of the development of the energic
in steps (the historical stages will be described in section 4, below) as an inferential account
of how speakers would have developed the grammaticalized energic. The statistics presented
in Tables 1 and 2 will then be discussed for their compatibility with the proposed reconstruc-
tion and the statistics will be expanded to better illuminate the close connection between
energic -anna + pronoun object in Classical Arabic.
Step 1. The ancestor of CA inherited the following two structures:
(30) V + -n + pronoun object (inherited structure A)
(31) inna/anna + pronoun/noun + la-predicate (inherited structure B; see 2.1.2)
Inherited structure A is the intrusive -n with pronoun object suffix (see sections 3, 4, and
5) and at the proto-CA stage is not the energic whose development is being described here.
Step 2. Speakers made an analogical (cognitive) association between the structures (30)
and (31) in three ways. First, in each case the predicate can be marked by la-. Second, the
phonological segment -nna of inna/anna is formally identical to the energic -(a)nna. More-
over, all share the generalized form Vnna. Third, the complement of inna/anna is obligatory
grammatically, and indeed is often a suffix pronoun, while a non-subject complement of a
verb occurs immediately after the verb with a high degree of frequency, often in the form
of V + -n + pronoun object. The crucial association is in the obligatory linear linkage of the
form Vnna- with the following constituent, not with the syntactic function of the following
elements, which are often distinctive. The syntactic function of the complement following
the emergent energic -anna would have been originally controlled by the pronoun object,
i.e., this inherited feature already defines the element after energic -anna as an object—or a
non-subject argument—of the verb.
The associations can be represented diagrammatically, as in Figure 1.
[inna-ka] la-qāʾim-un
la-ta-ghurr-[anna-kum]
Fig. 1. Analogical categories precursing the development of the CA energic
Step 3. It is a small analogical step to fill in a full noun after the verbal suffix -anna rather
than a pronoun, on the model of Figure 1. The analogical proportion can be stated as follows:
(32) inna-pro obj + la-Pred : la-Verb-anna-obj pro :: inna - Noun + la-Pred : la-Verb-
anna-X
X is filled in with a noun (or other non-subject complement), and so arises the Classical
Arabic energic, which originally was a structure restricted to V + -n + pronoun object gener-
alizing to V + -n + pronoun object or N.
In lockstep with the expanded formal context of V-anna was the development of the
meaning of the energic. As seen in the statistics in Table 1, the energic occurs with the great-
est frequency—by a considerable margin—with la-, which itself has a general meaning of
emphasis, and, as seen in 2.2, Sībawayhi even went so far (too far, I think) as to suggest
that imperfect verbs following la- always require the energic. Another context in which the
energic occurs is the conditional immā < in mā, and conditional clauses can also mark the
result clause with the emphasizing la-.
At some point the constant co-occurrence of the (now) energic -anna with emphasis la- as
well as with other illocutionary particles led to it acquiring the status of a certitude operator,
a meaning anchored strongly enough that by Sībawayhi’s day it allowed inferential meanings
to be derived, as discussed in (16) and (17) above.
It should be emphasized here that the CA energic in this treatment is interpreted as devel-
oping by an analogical extension of an already existing suffix, namely, the Pred + -n + pro-
noun object (see section 4, below). The energic itself does not form by grammaticalizing or
incorporating independent material. 22
Relating this reconstruction now to the Qurʾanic statistics, it should be kept in mind that
the Qurʾan represents a linguistic stage at which time the energic is fully functionalized
grammatically. It does not represent the proto-stage itself of this development.
Argued here is that overall the numbers reflect the origin of the energic in various ways.
A central point is that the single largest grammatical category occurring with the energic suf-
fix is the pronominal object, representing over one-third of all tokens. The inference drawn
from this is that this accumulation in one category reflects the historically original stage. A
second major point is that grammaticalization of -n into the function of an “energic” took
place in the context of illocutionarily marked morphemes, foremost among them la-. As
Table 1 shows, the energic -anna in the Qurʾan almost never occurs outside of an illocution-
arily marked context. This context was needed to regularize and generalize the meaning and
distribution of the inherited -n suffix.
Furthermore, the reconstruction sees the basic grammar of the energic to be that of mark-
ing a non-subject argument. This follows from the analogical workings with the comple-
mentizer inna/anna, which requires that it be followed by an accusative complement. There
are, in fact, occurrences of V-anna + subject in the sample, or simply V-anna + Ø, but
these together represent barely more than ten percent of all tokens (see (19), above). The
vast majority of cases are V-anna + (non-subject) complement. Moreover, of the comple-
ments, depending on how the complement of k-w-n is interpreted (see (21), above), anywhere
22. I.e., the morphemic material -anna is necessarily already in place before the analogical extension described
in Figure 1 and (32) takes place. A reader suggests as a possible source constructions of the type yarā anna ‘see that’
(> yarā-nna). As will be specified in Figure 2 below, anna here is seen as providing “analogical help,” but not as
providing the morphemic material itself. Still, the existence of yarā anna in discourse could further have expedited
the formation of the analogy described in (32). V + anna is indeed quite common in the Qurʾan (e.g., 2:26, 72, 106,
107, 194, 209, 223, 231, 233, 244, etc.), so this source deserves closer textual study as well.
Table 3. V – NP/ProObj in a general sample of Qurʾanic Arabic

V – pronoun object 72
V – NP 62
V – S comp 80
V – X – NP, X ≠ subject 83
between 75 to 85 percent of the complements directly following -anna are integrated in the
(non-subject) argument structure of the verb. This again is interpreted as an historical relic,
as it were: the energic developed as a general category by integrating non-subject verbal
complements into the predicate argument structure, in part under the analogical working of
the complementizer inna/anna.
To be sure, as it developed into an independent verbal suffix, the energic came to allow
any complement to follow it directly, including the subject, or to allow no complement to
follow it. As noted, however, the small percentage where this does occur reflects the fact that
this is a later development.
The statistics in no way prove the correctness of the proposed historical development. It
is reasonable to claim, however, that in their present form they serve as a plausible substan-
tiation of it. Moreover, the statistical argument can be considerably strengthened, as will be
shown in the next section.
2.3.2. A comparative statistical perspective

It will have been apparent that the statistical count in Table 2, though very suggestive, still
lacks a comparative perspective. In particular it needs to be shown that the distribution of the
categories in Table 2 are indeed significantly linked to the energic. It could be that the numbers
in Table 2 merely reflect the overall occurrence of these categories in the Qurʾan as a whole.
To carry the comparison one step further, an arbitrary sample of all tokens of V + object in the
first ninety-one verses of the Qurʾan (alʾFātiḥa and alʾBaqara) were classified according to
the following contexts. This sample serves here as the standard of comparison against which
the energic -anna can be measured. Table 3 gives the frequencies of each context as well.
These contexts correspond to classes 1–6 in Table 2. Essentially all of the V – non-subject
argument tokens were classified, that is, the set which it is argued formed the basis of the
development of the energic in CA. It should be noted that the classification departs slightly
from the Arabic grammatical tradition in that it includes the three tokens of illā + N-ACC as
direct object (V – NP). The “X” in V X NP is usually a prepositional phrase (anzala mina
l-samāʾ māʾ-an “He let rain fall from the sky,” Q 2:21). Seven tokens of V – pronoun object
– NP (ihdinā l-ṣirāṭa l-mustaqīm, “Show us the straight path,” Q 1:6) are included only
among the V – pronoun object.
The crucial comparison to be applied to these data and those in Table 2 is whether the V –
pronoun object has a significantly higher degree of occurrence with the energic than it does
with the sample at large. This comparison is carried out by opposing the V – pronoun object
to the combined frequencies of all other object complements listed in Table 3.
This comparison strengthens considerably the central claim of a special relationship
between the energic and pronoun object. The chi-square distribution in Table 4 shows that
the co-occurrence of a pronoun object with the energic is not a randomly related phenom-
enon, but rather that there is a significant positive association between the two categories of
“pronoun object” and “energic.” At this point a stronger causal relationship may be made
between the occurrence of V-anna-pronoun object and its historical pedigree.
Table 4. Chi-square distribution of ProObj vs. V – NP, -anna vs. general sample
general sample -anna (energic)
V – pronoun object 72 72
V – NP/S comp 176 83
p < .000 df = 1, Pearson chi-square = 12.6
The statistics in Table 3 are suggestive in another way, namely, that the complement NP
in the energic (see Table 2, category 6) is separated linearly from the verb to a far lower
degree than in the sample at large. This is the V X NP construction, which occurs only once
with the energic, thirty-three times in the overall sample. Recall that in Figure 1 it is argued
that an important part of the analogical development depended on the argument occurring
immediately post -anna in the energic.
To summarize this subsection, adding a comparative statistical sample reveals that the
analogical associations argued to be criterial in the development of the energic are indeed of
a significantly higher degree of frequency in the energic than in a sample of the Qurʾan as
a whole. Observed statistical correlations are argued to replicate the historical development
of the structure.
2.3.3. Classical Arabic as an innovative variety

This reconstruction of the energic interprets the fully functional grammaticalized structure
as an innovation of Classical Arabic, even if it developed out of pre-existing building blocks,
as described in the following three sections. The analysis is thus to be compared to Retsö’s
analysis of the dual in Classical Arabic. He describes a process whereby the dual category in
Classical Arabic innovated out of proto-Semitic markers of countable plurals and plurals of
paucity (1995: 189). In both cases, the development of the dual as a grammatical category
and the development of the energic -anna as an illocutionary force marker of speaker cer-
titude are innovations in Semitic that set the classical variety of Arabic off from all others.
3. the intrusive -n in other west semitic languages

In this section the major distributions of -n in other West Semitic languages will be sum-
marized, in preparation for an overall construction that will be developed in section 4.
In West Gurage (Outer Southern Ethiopian Semitic) -nn occurs before object suffixes in
past tense verbs. In other contexts (“elsewhere,” in Hetzron 1977: 65) the pronoun object
occurs without the -nna-, as segmented in the paradigm below.
(33) SG PL
1 -e -e
2M nna-xä nna-xəmw
2F nna-hy nna-xəma
3M nn- 23 nn-ämw
3F nn-a nn-äma
abä-nna “he gave her”
The -nn is always geminate in Muher.
23. The 3MSG is shown by labialization or palatalization in the non-nna- forms. Robert Hetzron (1969: 108)
reconstructs the form as *-nn-uu.
There are no complete paradigms for Biblical Aramaic (Rosenthal 1961: 71). 24 A vowel
occurs before the n when the object is suffixed to a C-final verb. Franz Rosenthal (1961: 54)
suggests the underlying form is (i)nn-, reduced to -Vn when the “-n is vowelless.” In Biblical
Aramaic the -n is not obligatory before an object suffix. 25
(34) SG PL
1 -nna-ni nna-ni
2M -nnā-k n-koon
2F
3M nne-h
3F nn-ah
It rather appears that in Biblical Aramaic the -n is variable, in the sense applied in Table
5 below.
For Old Aramaic, Rainer Degen (1969: 80) shows an -n only in imperfects, and only
before a suffix, e.g., yqtl-n-h “he will kill him,” and Jacob Barth (1907: 3) notes that an -n is
attested in the Elephantine (Egypt) papyri.
For Jewish Palestinian Arabic, ca. seventh century c.e., Dalman notes that in the perfect
and active participle the -n occasionally occurs as well before an object suffix (1905: 360,
380). The -n is obligatory in the imperfect before an object suffix.
(35) SG PL
1 nná-ni inná-na
2M innā-k innə-koon
2F innii-k
3M innee-h inn-uun
3F inna-h inn-iin
y-qdm-in-k “he precedes you (SG)”
Writing on Samaritan Aramaic attested between 400–1000 c.e., Rudolph Macuch (1982:
132) gives a similar paradigm, which will therefore not be given here, except that in Samari-
tan Aramaic the insertion of the -n is optional. As with Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, although
more frequent with the imperfect verb, it also occurs with the perfect and with the infinitive.
Further to older varieties of Aramaic, Barth (1907: 3), citing Theodor Nöldeke, notes that
Mandaic has -in before plural object suffixes and Babylonian Talmudic -in-hoon. He further
observes that suffixing the -n on perfect verbs is not infrequent in both Western and Eastern
Middle Aramaic (Jewish Palestinian, as noted above, Mandaic, and Babylonian Talmudic).
Barth concludes from these observations that the -n in these varieties is basic to both imper-
fect and perfect verbs (1907: 8).
In Modern Western Aramaic, spoken in three villages in Syria, the -n has been completely
regularized in the subjunctive paradigm, whereby before any object suffix, -n is inserted,
with -nn occurring before -V-initial pronouns, -n before -C-initial (Arnold 1990: 208–12).
The vowel before -n varies according to grammatical and dialectological parameters. The
subjunctive corresponds to the Arabic imperfect.
24. Ronald Williams (1972: 78) has a rather different interpretation of Aramaic (and Hebrew) morphological
structure, identifying all -n’s after 2FSG and 2/3PL forms as tokens of the energic -n, as in the -n of təqabbəl-uu-n
“you (PL) shall receive” (see discussion below).
25. Williams (1972) points out the general lack of strict correlation between the presence or absence of -n and
a grammatical category in Northwest Semitic languages, such as indicative vs. jussive. In Biblical Aramaic, for
instance, yḇahə-luu-ḵ “they disturb you” and yḇahlo-nna-ni “they disturb me,” with and without -n, have no obvious
difference in meaning.
(36) iṭʕan ‘he carries’
SG PL
1 y-ṭuʕn-in-ni y-ṭuʕn-en-naħ
2M y-ṭuʕn-enn-ax y-ṭuʕn-en-xun
2F y-ṭuʕn-inn-iš y-ṭuʕn-en-xen
3M y-ṭuʕn-enn-e y-ṭuʕn-en-n(un)
3F y-ṭuʕn-enn-en
For the past verb the situation is dialectally complicated, even if Modern Western Ara-
maic is only spoken in three villages. An -an (-ann-V) is inserted before plural object suffixes
in all three villages (šimʕ-an-xun “he heard you [MPL]”). Before a singular pronoun object,
no -n is inserted in the village of Jubbʿadīn, while an -n is inserted before the pronoun suffix
in Bakhʿa (raħəm-n-i “he loved him”), and in Maʿloula it is inserted only after CCiC-stem
verbs (Arnold 1990: 201–2).
Biblical Hebrew has the following (Meyer 1972: 218; Hasselbach 2006: 317, citing pre-
assimilation forms 26):
(37) SG PL
1 yiqtəl-ín-ni naqtul-án-nā
2M yiqtəl-ín-ka
2F
3M yiqtul-ín-huu
3F yiqtul-ín-hā
Ronald Williams (1972: 84) also notes four tokens of the -n suffixed to Hebrew par-
ticiples. Finally, it should be noted that Williams (1972: 84) lists a number of examples
of the -n on verbs without pronoun objects in Phoenecian, Old and Biblical Aramaic, and
Ugaritic (see n. 24, above). A number of these are on 2FSG and 2/3MPL or dual prefix verb
forms, which Williams associates with the energic -n, but which other scholars (e.g., Degen,
Rosenthal), whom this article follows, associate with the indicative. Discounting these, there
remain only a small number of tokens for V + -n in Phoenecian and Ugaritic with no object
suffix. For Ugaritic Testen (1993: 296–97) adds that -n is “frequently employed . . . before
object suffixes.” Both Williams and Testen point out that it is difficult to associate the -n with
a dedicated grammatical function.
What can be termed the “otiose -n,” that is, an -n that cannot be, or at least to date has not
been identified with a discrete grammatical function, will not be integrated into the discus-
sion, though the basis for doing so is discussed in the appendix.
26. Hetzron, and following him, Retsö (1988: 87), has a different interpretation, whereby he identifies two [n +
object] suffix morphemes in Hebrew, one related to the energic which occurs in all persons of the prefix conjugation
and is not restricted phonologically, and one with a different origin determined phonologically in the context C +
u/a + -nn + object suffix. In the 3SG the forms are contrastive, -nna/ennuu for what Hetzron (1969: 101) calls “-n
suffixes,” vs. n-hu/n-ha for the historical energic.
As Hasselbach (2006: 313) notes, postulating two different historical origins for -n’s that occur in the identi-
cal context of V + n + pronoun object is to draw a perhaps overly fine diachronic distinction. Hetzron (1969: 112)
identifies the -n of the Gurage group (see (30), above) with the -n suffix of Hebrew (i.e., not with the historical
energic -n). Whatever the merits are for making this association, Hetzron did not show comparatively with which
of his proto-Semitic -n’s the Aramaic and Arabic -n’s are to be related. Ultimately, Hetzron projects an interesting
synchronic contrast in Biblical Hebrew onto the entire fabric of proto-Semitic. While such inferences can hardly be
ruled out in principle, they require systematic integration into an explanation for all languages in which a potential
reflex of the form occurs.
4. reconstruction
Before explaining the reconstruction developed here, the following overview of the sit-
uation in West Semitic will be helpful. Table 5 summarizes the data in sections 2 and 3
under three categories: obligatory, optional, or variable, each in those contexts that have been
defined above where the intrusive -n occurs. The -n is obligatory, for instance, before a suffix
pronoun after an AP in various Arabic dialects, whereas in the same morphological context
it is variable in Omani Arabic after weak verbs. It is variable in Samaritan Aramaic, object
suffixes with -n alternating with those without. Optional means that the choice of -n depends
on the choice of the energic (in CA) according to discourse immanent factors.
Leaving aside Ugaritic (see appendix), it is immediately striking that in all but Classical
Arabic the decisive factor governing the occurrence of -n is the presence of a suffixed pronoun
object. This observation forms the basis of the reconstruction. Given that identical or near
identical forms of wider distribution point to a common origin, the following can be recon-
structed for proto-West Semitic, -n originally occurring only before a pronoun object suffix:
(38) *V-n + pronoun object suffix
This reconstruction leaves Classical Arabic as the odd man out, where -n occurs both
before a pronoun object suffix and before a noun. However, it can be plausibly postulated
that the ancestor of Classical Arabic also had the basic distribution given in (38). The statis-
tics in Tables 2, 3, and 4, above, speak to this point. They indicate that in Qurʾanic Arabic,
V-anna, which is the context illustrated in (18) and (20), is associated with the suffixed
pronoun object. This is inferred to reflect the original situation in ancestral Classical Arabic.
The development of the energic in Classical Arabic, as described in section 2.3, above, then
falls into the following stage 4.
The historical derivation leading to (38) proceeds in five stages as follows:
Stage 1. Originally proto-West Semitic (PWS) had a construction with -n + noun or pro-
nominal complement which, following Barth (1907: 8) and Chaim Rabin (1951: 38), was a
proto-Semitic emphasis particle, deictic or perhaps presentative.
Stage 2. This developed into a complementizer, marking one of the main arguments of a
clause, the topic, subject, or object. Here a first stage of grammaticalization can be hypothe
sized in which the -n + pronoun/noun is drawn into the argument structure of the predicate.
Stage 3. Still in the PWS stage (i.e., without naming any individual languages) its func-
tions split. In Stage 3a, in its specifically object marking function, it became restricted to
pronoun objects and underwent a further stage of grammaticalization, becoming morpho-
logically bound to the verb as a predicate suffix: Pred + n + pronoun object. At the same
time, Stage 3b, the complementizer -n continued in the ancestor of some of the varieties of
Semitic. “Predicate” is used here as a term that subsumes both verb and active participle. As
a predicate suffix it loses its relation to nominal complements. This point is expanded upon
from a comparative perspective in section 5.1, below.
It is relevant to note that the grammaticalization of -n occurred in some but not all ances-
tral PWS populations, so that at this point two ways of representing the predicate + pronoun
object came into existence.
Stage 4. In this stage, when distributions in specific languages began to take shape, the
complex -n + pronoun object grammaticalized as a suffix on a predicate (stage 3) and it
undertook its journey in one complex of West Semitic (viz., Aramaic, Arabic, Ethiopian
Semitic). In addition, a further development took place in the immediate ancestor of Clas-
sical Arabic. On the one hand, along with other West Semitic languages/varieties Classical
Arabic would have participated in the grammaticalization of the -n + pronoun object suffix
Table 5. Status of -n in nine languages/varieties

Obligatory Optional Variable
Arabic dialects, AP + Obj pro
Omani, (weak) final verbs + Obj pro
Classical Arabic, energic + imperfect V
Gurage + Obj pro
Biblical Aramaic + Obj pro
Jewish Palestinian + Obj pro
Samaritan Aramaic + Obj pro
Modern Western Aramaic + Obj pro
Biblical Hebrew + Obj pro
Ugaritic + Obj pro
+ verb (otiose -n)
on the verb. At the same time, analogy to the independent complementizer inna/anna—indi-
cated by the dotted line in Figure 2—which itself occurs not only with a pronominal suffix,
but also with a noun complement, allowed the -n verbal suffix to develop into a generalized
suffix occurring with either pronoun or nominal complement, that is, into the energic. This is
the process described in sections 2.2 and 2.3, above.
Stage 5. This stage is essentially the situation that is found today, to the extent that the
languages are still spoken.
The entire development of proto-West Semitic *-Vn can be represented with a tree dia-
gram (Figure 2).
Stage 1: -n + pronoun/noun = presentative/deictic
Stage 2: -n + pronoun/noun associated with verbal arguments
Stage 3a: pred -n + pronoun object Stage 3b: -n + pronoun/noun
Stage 4: pred -n + -pronoun object CA V -n + noun
Stage 5: present
Fig. 2. Stylized development of -n in West Semitic
To recapitulate the current solution relative to the two main approaches sketched in the
introduction, the origin of -n on verbs (and predicates) lies in a grammaticalized, originally
independent presentative/complementizer morpheme, etymologically related, inter alia, to
the Arabic complementizer inna/anna and her sisters. The original grammaticalization as a
predicate suffix occurred not in the form of verb + -n, but rather verb + -n + pronoun object.
This conclusion is consonant with Barth (1907: 8), Landberg (1909: 738), and Retsö (1988:
88), but runs counter to the more recent Testen (1993: 303) and Hasselbach (2006), who see
the -n as an original verbal suffix. In West Semitic, the only grammaticalized attestation of
a reflex of the -n as a verbal suffix operating independently of pronoun object suffixes is the
Classical Arabic energic, which is interpreted here as an innovation in Classical Arabic. 27 On

the other hand, with Barth, Landberg, Testen, and (probably) Hasselbach, all occurrences of
-n + pronoun object suffix are derived from a common source in West Semitic.
5. individual issues
5.1. Grammaticalization of -n + pronoun object to verb suffix (stage 3a)

This analysis assumes that the original presentative came to mark the object of a verb.
Subsequently the complex -n + pronoun object grammaticalized to the verb, forming a pho-
nological word with the verb. That the -n is a part of the verb or AP phonologically can be
seen in the stress placement. In the Arabic dialects, for instance, stress falls on the -VVn or
-Vnn in the syllable closed by the intrusive -n, according to a fairly universal of stress place-
ment in spoken Arabic, which has stress falling on the first heavy syllable from the end of
the word (kātb-ínn-a, etc.); see examples in (1) through (8). Similarly in Hebrew the word
stress falls on the syllable before the -nn.
The grammaticalization of originally independent morphemes as verbal suffixes is not
unusual in Semitic, nor was -n alone among proto-complementizers. In Hebrew the inde-
pendent complementizer oot/et- (the nota accusativi) occurs as a marker not only of defi-
nite accusative objects, but also as a topic marker. In Palestinian Jewish Aramaic the same
etymological -it + pronoun object, also realized as -t + pronoun object, can be suffixed to a
perfect verb as an object marker (qṭl-it-wn “he killed them,” Dalman 1905: 360). Whereas in
Hebrew oot/et- does not suffix or cliticize to the verb, Nöldeke (1893: 104) sees Palestinian
Jewish Aramaic as having taken this step in the etymologically identical morpheme. Rudolph
Macuch (1983: 133) describes a nearly identical construction in Samaritan Aramaic, which
he explicitly links etymologically to the nota accusativi, and Nöldeke himself cites one
example of V-t-Obj pro as early as the Zenjirli (Aramaic) inscriptions.
In Classical Arabic the particle iyyā + pronominal object, which later itself became a ver-
bal clitic (see (39), below), can mark an independent pronoun object, as in Q 1:4 (Sībawayhi
1970, 1: 336, 346), though unlike inna and oot-, iyyā cannot mark a topic or subject. How-
ever, a perhaps related morpheme surfaces in ayyuhā, which marks a vocative subject. These
morphemes reflect what was characterized in stage 2 above as stage 1 grammaticalization of
-n, or in the case of Palestinian Jewish Aramaic, variably stage 3.
Looking further at results of grammaticalization of verbal complements on contemporary
varieties, in Arabic the indirect object marker -l + pronoun object occurs as a verbal/AP suf-
fix in most (though not all) modern Arabic dialects, as in the following example from Najdi
Arabic (Ingham 1994: 30, see Wilmsen 2010):
(39) gil-t-li-hum-iyyáa-h 28
said-I-to-them-OBJ-it (M)
“I said it to them”
The same example shows a slightly less widespread development, namely, the suffixation
of the object marker + pronoun object marker iyyā to the verb. The entire complex of modern
27. The hedge in this formulation is the word “grammaticalized.” The status of -n + noun in other West Semitic
languages is discussed in the appendix.
28. Criteria for answering whether iyyā is a proper suffix or a clitic can be complex. Two points can be noted
here based on Kuwaiti Arabic (thanks to information from Talal al-Jassar). First, -iyyā + pronoun forms a phono-
logical word with the verb it is suffixed to, in that the last syllable of iyyā- carries the main lexical stress (following
the universal Arabic stress rule of stressing the first heavy syllable from end). Second, iyyā itself (no longer) occurs
self-standing, at least in Kuwaiti Arabic, but only as an affix.
Aramaic varieties is based to one degree or another on participles refunctionalized as finite

verbs. All of the finite tenses of the neo-Eastern Aramaic languages, except Mandaic in one
case, are based on historical participles. In what is termed the ergative, based on an older
passive participle (pəʕiyl), the subject is marked by the complex -l + pronoun object, the -l
cognate with the Arabic preposition li-, for instance, griš-l-i “I pulled him” (literally, “he is
pulled to me,” Jastrow 1997: 362). These cases are summarized in (40).
(40) Grammaticalization of originally independent morpheme + pronoun object as
suffixes on predicates
predicate + -l + pronoun object = indirect object (ancestor of many Arabic
dialects)
predicate + -iyyā + pronoun object = object (ancestor of many Arabic dialects)
predicate + -(i)t + pronoun object = object (Jewish Palestinian/Samaritan
Aramaic)
predicate + -l + pronoun object = subject (neo-Eastern Aramaic)
Thus, it is a common development in Semitic for pronoun objects on an independently
occurring X + pronoun object (X = iyyā, -l, -it) to become grammaticalized as a unit as a
predicate suffix, marking the subject or object of the verb. The complex -n + pronoun object
was among the first of these: predicate + -n + pronoun object = object (proto-West Semitic,
stage 3).
5.2. Vowel quality and length of -n

As noted at the beginning of the article, the question of both vowel quality and length of
-n has been an issue in the interpretation of this morpheme. Looking at the issue from an
Arabic perspective, the vowel quality is probably an indeterminate one. 29 On the basis of the
modern dialects I argue in A Linguistic History of Arabic (20092: chapter 2) that the funda-
mental contrast among short vowels is between the High and Low varieties, i.e., a bi-valued
contrast, with the difference between u and i phonologically determined, and that in the Old
Arabic grammatical literature as well substantiating arguments can be made in this direction.
As for the contrast between a and i (eponymic for a high vowel), there is a systematic and not
completely regular variation recognized in the Arabic tradition (known as taltala) between
a and i in grammatical morphemes. The list of these morphemes includes the following (in
parentheses is given a typical dialect where the form occurs, not an exhaustive listing of their
geographical distributions):
(41) a-form i-form
Preformative vowel ya-lbas (ELA) yi-lbas (Cairene) 30
Definite article al- (Sudanic) il- (North African)
3FSG on verb -at, shaaf-at (Sudanic) -it, shaaf-it (Cairene)
FPL on verb -an (southern Iraq) -in (Najdi)
FSG on noun -at (Gulf dialects) -it (Nigerian)
Intrusive –Vn -an (Shukriyya), CA energic 31 -in (as above)
29. In this context it is appropriate to note that probably because of the common a element, it is not uncommon
to see the energic posited as deriving from the Arabic subjunctive (e.g., Zaborski 1996: 70). This is not a position
adopted here. The formal interpretation of -Vn is the topic of this section. Semantically it was shown (see 2.2, 2.3,
above) that the Arabic energic has a highly specific meaning defined inter alia by co-occurrence with a limited set of
illocutionary morphemes, none of which is inherently associated with the subjunctive. Andrzej Zaborski makes no
mention at all of the -n + pronoun object construction as a possible source of the energic.
30. Also cf. CA, stems II-IV with u vs. all others with a.
31. Wetzstein (1868) gives the vowel quality as a (see (4), above), and Ingham reports an a in Afghanistani
Arabic.
Pending a comprehensive integration of these data into comparative Semitic, 32 the pos-
sibility needs to be left open that the ancestral variety of the intrusive -n had both a high and
a low vowel variant, -in ~ -an. In no language is -V suffixed to a -V-final morpheme (e.g.,
3MPL).
With regard to consonantal length, single and geminate -n are generally in complementary
distribution in West Semitic, nn- occurring before -V, -n before -C. 33 This is unequivocally
the case in most contemporary Arabic dialects that have the morpheme (see (1) through
(7), above), which contemporary observers (Reichmuth 1983; Holes 1987; Owens 1993;
Ingham 2006) have confirmed. 34 This also applies in Modern Western Aramaic, as noted
by Arnold, and it is explicitly stated as the distribution by Rosenthal for Biblical Aramaic
(see above). 35 In Gurage—and it would appear also in Jewish Palestinian Arabic—the form
nna- has become general, this also being the form of the heavy -n in Arabic, and in Yemen
Landberg’s data suggest a fixed -nn, except -n before another -n (see (1), above). In general
in West Semitic it would appear therefore necessary to posit only -*n, with two conditioned
allomorphs, -n and -nn, with perhaps -nn generalizing in some cases. 36
(42) -*n
(a) nn-V
(b) n-C
As far as the light and heavy -n of Classical Arabic is concerned, the following observa-
tions can be offered here. The heavy -n does in fact fit the expected profile of a geminate
form when it is recalled that its prototypical occurrence is in a connected, non-pausal (waṣl)
position. A connected position in Arabic requires either a systematic (e.g., case) vowel or an
epenthetic i. Assuming the final -a to be a reflex of its typical morpho-syntactic position, the
doubling of the heavy -nn adheres to (42a). Note that in the Qurʾanic sample, only six tokens
of -anna occur before no clausemate at all (Table 2).
On the other hand, it is not inversely possible simply to link the light -n to (42b), since -C
initial object suffixes occur with both heavy and light -n. In this regard it is relevant to return
to Sībawayhi’s observations of the phenomenon. The light -n, as noted above, does not occur
before CC, in this respect obeying standard syllable structure constraints in Arabic, as long as
no epenthetic vowel is insertable, or, as Sībawayhi notes, no shift to -ā is possible. The light
and heavy -n then overlap only before an object suffix and before a word beginning with -CV.
Otherwise they are complementary, with the heavy -n occurring before CC as well as in the
dual and FPL. Two developments can be imagined here.
32. The assumption that proto-Arabic had, for instance, a as preformative vowel, as in Sabatino Moscati et al.
(1980: 141) and Kees Versteegh (1997: 99), is based on stipulations and does not explain on a comparative basis
the widespread variation of the two vowels throughout grammatical morphemes. Both a and i occur in all regions
of the Arabic-speaking world, with perhaps a greater propensity for a to occur in southern areas (Sudan, Yemen)
and i in northern ones.
33. There are other -n’s in Arabic that have the same allomorphy as (42). The FPL in those dialects that main-
tain it always have -a in-C ~ -a/inn-V, and the plural -iin in AP predicates often geminates to -inn-V. Various -n-final
function words (e.g., min ‘from’) have a similar behavior.
34. It is striking that almost all contemporary observers who have had the benefit of tape recorders agree on the
allomorphy in (42).
35. Why Biblical Aramaic should have a vowel before -n (inna-n) is a separate issue, for which a number of
plausible parallels could be cited but are outside the scope of this article.
36. Thus, from the West Semitic perspective, the basic conditioning factor is the following segment rather than
the preceding one, as some have argued for in Akkadian (Testen 1993: 305).
The ancestor of Classical Arabic could originally have obeyed (42), with the light -n
occurring only before object suffixes and perhaps prepausally, and the heavy -n occurring
in waṣl position before word boundary. The distribution of the heavy -n then generalized to
prepronominal position, and the light -n to inter-word contexts. Alternatively, one can imag-
ine that the light -n was the original form, with an -nn variant arising with the development
of non-pausal morphophonology. A similar development may have occurred with the sister
particles, inna, anna, lākinna developing as non-pausal variants of in, an, and lākin. In both
cases, the non-pausal form became the statistically common one. In both scenarios, however,
the still unwritten historical linguistics of pausal forms becomes crucial. By the same token,
the drastic differences in the frequencies of the two forms (see 2.2, above) would seem to
imply an historical dynamic between the two, with the heavy -n growing at the expense of
the light.
5.3. Multiple populations, multiple historical variants

It is perhaps disquieting that a high degree of variation can be observed in the distribu-
tion and use of -n. There are two types of variation. On the one hand, there is a categorical
variation—either -n occurs in a variety or it does not (see Table 6, following page, for a non-
exhaustive summary). The other type of variation is that noted in column 3 of Table 5, where
one and the same population uses the -n variably.
To help understand the nature of the forces that could have sanctioned such widespread
variation, it is helpful to look in greater detail at contemporary Arabic dialects for which we
have relatively detailed data and which can still be observed today. 37
Relying only on dialectal information, the occurrence of the -n would have the follow-
ing history. It can be tracked to the Southwest Arabian peninsula in pre-Islamic times. The
situation reported by Landberg (see (1), above) can be taken as representing the original
state of affairs as well. From the southwest part of the peninsula populations moved into
the southeast, or what is now Oman, where Reinhardt’s representation maintains basically
the same situation. From there populations moved up the coast, to the present Emirates and
Bahrain. In Islamic times tribes from this area moved into ʿIrāq, inter alia into the new gar-
rison cities of Baṣra and Kūfa, whence the Arab armies moved eastward into Khurāsān and
what is now Uzbekistan, two areas where the -n is still attested. In the west the movement
was into Upper Egypt and then into the Lake Chad area and that of Bagirmi speakers, as will
be sketched below. Each migration brought the speakers into contact with other populations,
producing leveling of various types, particularly in the post-Islamic era. In Bagirmi Arabic
all gender and number suffixes are neutralized with the suffixation of -in. 38 In present-day
Bahrain and Khorasan it is reported only in the singular, and in Uzbekistan also only suf-
fixed to a (historical) singular AP. That the form was probably once more widespread in the
Arabic-speaking world is suggested by the odd occurrence of -an in Shukriyya and in the
non-Bagirmi dialect of Nigerian Arabic after the FPL -aat of the active participle, before
object suffixes, as well as Wetzstein’s report of its optionality (it has not been attested in
contemporary Syrian dialects).
This summary covers nearly 2,000 years of history and a geographical area spanning
one-seventh of the circumference of the globe. The first point the illustration thus testifies
37. I owe the summary of the development of the eastern forms entirely to Clive Holes (private communication,
February 2011).
38. This is a singular development. In other paradigms of Bagirmi Arabic SG/PL and M/F are differentiated
consistently with morphology (see (7), above).
Table 6. Occurrence of intrusive -n according to languages/varieties

*-n occurs does not occur
Classical Arabic
E. Arabian peninsula, Khorasan, Uzbekistan, Bagirmi all other Arabic dialects
Biblical Aramaic, Jewish Palestinian, Samaritan Syriac, Nabataean
Modern West Aramaic Neo-NE Aramaic
Gurage-Gunnän Gəʕəz, Amharic, etc.
Biblical Hebrew
to is the ability of the same form to be maintained and spread over time and space. Looking
at the social mechanism of the maintenance and spread, the summary highlights a second
point, namely, the role of small, compact groups (according to Holes, the links between -n
speakers in Oman and those in Bahrain can be traced in some cases to historical relations
between individual villages). In the Sudanic region the basic Arab demographic social unit
was, and to some extent still is today, a nomadic cattle group linked by kinship to sedentary,
agricultural villages (Braukämper 1994). Although nomadism is more pronounced in the
non-Bagirmi dialect area, this social configuration is characteristic of all Arabs in Nigeria,
Cameroon, and western Chad. Even the Arab-Islamic expansion, which brought Arabs into
central Asia in the second/eighth century, was effected by relatively small armies of never
more than 20,000 soldiers and usually far fewer.
So long as these social units remain intact, it may be assumed, so too will the dialect they
use. By definition, neighboring dialects will maintain a different form. What vagaries of
social history led one group to originally adopt one form rather than another remains one of
the great challenges to understanding language change. 39
Using the Arabic situation as a basic analogy, projecting back into the era of history when
communication was incomparably slower than it is today, it is not at all difficult to concep-
tualize the spread and maintenance of contrastive forms from a common source throughout
large language groups, like Arabic, and, by extension, Aramaic, Hebrew, and peripheral
South Ethiopic. In fact, the case of -n in the rather isolated Gurage-Gannän group can be
compared to the isolated occurrence of -n in Bagirmi Arabic in the Lake Chad region, and
to the ultimate linguistic enclave of Uzbekistani Arabic in the east. The complex distribu-
tion of the -n in the preterite in the three villages where modern western Aramaic is spoken,
described in (34), above, is further witness to the capacity for significant linguistic differ-
ences to be maintained among very closely related linguistic populations. The analogy car-
ries back into early West Semitic, reconstructing the two paradigms, V + pronoun object
and V + -n + pronoun object, into different groups that transmitted them ultimately into the
present.
A demographic perspective would also appear applicable to the issue—not addressed in
this article—why the -n became established only in the Gurage group on the perfect (suffix)
conjugation. It would, however, be speculative, lacking better comparative data, to say that
in one case the group adopting the -n on the perfect verb was large enough to maintain it
into Ethiopic.
39. Linguistic observations relevant to this point are made below in 5.4.
5.4 The intrusive -n and the active participle in dialectal Arabic

The limitation of -n to the AP in most varieties of Arabic deserves special consideration.
Except for the geographically limited occurrence on the imperfect verb in Oman and Yemen,
the -n occurs only on the AP in Arabic dialects. In the reconstruction offered, the -n was
originally an optional element on predicates. As has been shown (see, e.g., Ingham 1994:
chapter 8; Caubet 1993, 2: 221–46; Eisele 1999: chapter 7), the active participle among
Arabic dialects has a uniform function which can broadly be termed “perfectivity” or “cur-
rent relevance of the action/state of affairs represented in the predicate.” It clearly commutes
in the verbal system with the perfect and imperfect verbs. The occurrence is so consistent
throughout nearly every variety of spoken Arabic 40 that its function as a predicate can be
plausibly reconstructed into proto-Arabic. 41
In Figure 2 above, the -n would have been present in Arabic at least by stage 3, differen-
tiating at stage 4 into V + -n + pronoun object and V-n + noun. Here the attestations of -n +
suffix in contemporary Omani Arabic (section 2.1.1, above) are of interest. One explanation
for these is as a partial “relic,” shadowing the distribution of -n in CA, namely, V + -n +
pronoun object. Whereas it was lost, or simply never actualized in most dialects, it became
established in the Arabic varieties of Yemen and later Oman and the lower Gulf. As the AP
was incorporated into the verbal system, the -n was transferred from the imperfect verb to the
AP as well; whereas the -n was largely filtered out from the verb in the course of time and
contact, it was protected in the context of the AP, and, comparatively speaking, maintained
until today in those varieties where it occurs.
There is mutual accommodation among different dialect groups 42 and in cases of contact,
the V + -n + pronoun object construction, being of high frequency 43 and therefore more sus-
ceptible to analogical comparison by speakers, either has disappeared or is disappearing from
dialects where it ancestrally existed. In the less-frequent AP + pronoun object, on the other
hand, devising an analogy is rendered more difficult by two factors: the far lower degree of
discourse frequency of the AP generally in Arabic (see n. 43, below) and the difficulty of
establishing a morphemic value for the -n, which exacerbates establishing an analogical link
to non-n dialect forms.
It can also be mentioned in passing that it is an intriguing coincidence that among all vari-
eties of Semitic, it is in Aramaic, particularly among its western varieties, where -n is most
strongly established. This is intriguing because Aramaic, far more than Arabic, has gram-
maticalized the active (and passive) participle to assume verbal functions (see (40), above).
Furthermore, -n is reported as occasionally occurring on Middle Aramaic participles (see
(35), above). It should not therefore be ruled out that pre-Islamic contact between Aramaic
and Arabic speakers had a role to play in the development of -n in Arabic, i.e., that the -n on
the Arabic AP was not a development independent of the Aramaic.
Finally, it is relevant to note that at least one citation can be found suggesting that the
“transfer” (if it was that) of -anna from V to AP occurred even in CA. The thirteenth-century
40. Maltese appears to be the only “dialect” where its distribution is severely limited.
41. Its function as a predicate also broadly tallies with its usage in Classical Arabic (see Youssef 1990).
42. Variational data from Nigerian Arabic in Maiduguri is also interesting in this respect (Owens 1998: 289;
Owens 1999).
43. In three corpora of spoken Arabic for which tagged data is available to me, two from Emirati Arabic and
one from Nigerian Arabic, the AP as predicate has a frequency of about five percent of that of finite verbs (perfect
and imperfect combined).
grammarian Raḍī l-Dīn al-Astarābādhī (d. ca. 686 a.h.) ([n.d.], 2: 404), basing himself on
Sībawayhi, 44 says that the nūn can occur on the AP in cases of poetic necessity:
(43) a qāʾil-anna aḥḍar-ū al-shuhūd-ā
Q saying-N brought-they def-witnesses
“Do you indeed say they brought the witnesses”
The major argument against the possibility that in fact the situation in Classical Arabic is
the original one and that what is found in the dialects are relic cases going back to the energic
is that the dialects agree with other varieties of West Semitic, against CA, in maintaining
(on a variable basis) the -n + pronoun object (Table 5). Standard reconstruction practice thus
argues for a common proto-function among these. Assuming the CA situation as the original
one, one would have to explain the loss of the energic in all other varieties of West Semitic. If
one ignores CA completely, the situation in the Arabic dialects is entirely in conformity with
other West Semitic languages, particularly with Aramaic. Note that the loss of the intrusive
-n on verbs in most Arabic dialects is explained above in this section as a result of contact
with dialects that never had the intrusive -n, and does not rely on a direct derivation from CA.
From the reverse perspective, section 2.3, above, offers a concise account of the develop-
ment of the energic, which allows the mechanisms of its singular innovation to be specified.
Thus, the argument advanced here corresponds to standard historical linguistic methodology.
There is also a third argument, namely, that if the energic grammatical function had been
dominantly widespread throughout the Arabic-speaking community, one might expect some
residual evidence of it in most of today’s varieties, which is not the case.
5.5. Akkadian
In Akkadian it is assumed that the ventive (motion towards speaker) verbal suffix, either
-am (occurring after VC-) or -nim (occurring after VV-), is cognate with the West Semitic
-n. Wolfram von Soden (1952: 109) noted that “many verbs in ventive form occur only
with pronominal objects”—a situation that in general resembles that described in this paper,
and which specifically resembles the distribution of the energic in Qurʾanic Arabic (see
Table 2)—and that “a connotational difference between the indicative and ventive is not
easy to establish.” Furthermore, in Babylonian the 1SG pronoun object -ni is nearly always
suffixed to the ventive suffix, neutralizing the contrast between ventive and indicative alto-
gether. Again, this case resembles another situation described above, namely, the instance of
obligatory occurrence of the -n before any object suffix. On this basis it is a priori realistic
to push the -n + pronoun object origin back into proto-Semitic itself, as indeed Hasselbach,
Testen, and others, albeit with the different analytical perspective noted above, have done.
This paper leaves this important issue for further development. 45
44. The two examples cited by al-Astarābādhī are not cited by Sībawayhi in his discussion of the nūn, nor in
book one in his chapter on poetic license (1970, 1: 7–10). The citation from al-Astarābādhī, a grammarian who lived
some five centuries after Sībawayhi, is to be interpreted as applying to the early Islamic era.
45. There are a number of descriptive and theoretical issues involved here. The basic issue is well defined,
however. If the above reconstruction of the CA energic in 2.3 and the primacy of -n + pronoun object for PWS, as
argued for in section 4, are correct, then the ventive as a verbal suffix (V + -n) in Akkadian requires independent
reconstruction as well. The existence of the energic function in CA cannot be projected back into a PWS V+ -n
construction. This is an issue I leave at this point to specialists in East Semitic. More generally, as has already been
noted, stages 2 and 3 in Figure 2 may turn out to be proto-Semitic rather than specifically proto-West Semitic stages.
5.6. Against massive independent development: one morpheme, multiple

populations
In this final section I would like to take up briefly the question of independent develop-
ment of the intrusive -n in different varieties of Semitic. As noted above, Retsö sees the -n +
pronoun object construction developing in multiple ways. The -n in Bagirmi Arabic presents
a problem, however. We know with certainty that the ancestral Arabic population reached
the Lake Chad area around 1400 c.e. and that they were settled in Upper Egypt and the
immediately adjacent area of northern Sudan before then. Whether the -n bearing population
came from Yemen or from eastern Arabia (Qays) is at this point unclear. General historical
records attest to early, pre-ninth-century migrations into Upper Egypt from both areas (see
Garcin 1976; Owens 2003), and, as Holes (2011) shows, the -n would have been present in
both Arabian peninsular populations at this time.
Assuming independent development, the source of the -n in Bagirmi Arabic is problem-
atic. Following Retsö one would look to deictic elements. However, there is no deictic model
with -n + suffix in Bagirmi, or Western Sudanic Arabic in general for that matter. To the
extent that a complementizer etymologically related to inna, etc. (see 2.1.2, above) occurs at
all in these varieties, it is via borrowing from Modern Standard Arabic. On the basis of the
unavailability of a model that could be grammaticalized into the AP, as well as the general
unlikelihood that such a specific morpheme would arise independently in different varieties
of Arabic, it is clear that this is an old feature in Bagirmi Arabic, which is inherited from
the same stock that contemporary speech in Oman, Yemen, and elsewhere is related to. A
similar point ostensibly applies to Gurage (see (30), above), where it is clear that there is
no obvious deictic element in the language that could have served as the basis of the -nna
pre-object morpheme. 46
This does not rule out independent development in principle, of course, even if by Occam’s
razor it is the marked solution. An -n (inna, anna, etc.) or -n + pronoun object marking a
complement has been maintained in Semitic-speaking populations over the entire history of
West Semitic, as is indicated briefly in section 2.1.2, above. It is also briefly suggested in
2.1.2 that this independent -n itself may have split into different functions, for instance, the
two illustrated in (11) for Yemeni Arabic. However, showing that the -n developed inde-
pendently in different languages, rather than from a common source as argued for here,
requires specifying the eras and varieties where this happened, as well as arguing against the
unmarked assumption of common origin.
6. conclusion
The criticisms of Retsö aside, the current article follows in his footsteps in two important
ways. First, it follows his model (1988; 1995) in defining certain structures of Classical
46. From the opposite direction, a similar problem arises with Hetzron’s (1969: 110) assumption that the -nn
object marker on the past (suffix) conjugation in Gurage is an independent development within proto-Ethiopic, for
he did not account for the fact that the marker is widespread on the perfect verb in different varieties of Middle Ara-
maic. One can equally question Hetzron’s assumption (1969: 124) that the intrusive -n on the AP in dialectal Arabic
(he cites Omani) is an independent development. The only reason he adduces for this is that it occurs on the AP, not
on the verb. However, the -n on the AP is already attested in Middle Aramaic and sound arguments for analogical
extension to the AP can be given (see 5.4, above). Hasselbach as well (2006: 324) appears to countenance parallel
independent development in the case of the geminate -nn; in her interpretation, in Omani and Bahraini Arabic (no
doubt a single development in this case) and in Biblical Aramaic the gemination derives from -n + ni (1SG), in both
cases that gemination spreading analogically to other persons. For West Semitic, a different development of the
geminate form is argued here (section 5.2, above).
Arabic—in this case the energic—as innovative relative to other varieties of Semitic. In this
historical, comparative perspective the contemporary reflexes of -n in Arabic are maintained
from proto-Semitic itself, and are not an accidental relic left from the Classical Arabic ener-
gic. And second, his conclusions (1988: 93) regarding the remarkable maintenance of the
basic -n + pronoun object construction across thousands of years of chronology and thou-
sands of miles of geography, across different languages and varieties, cannot be endorsed
strongly enough. Understanding Semitic language history requires giving due consideration
to all varieties, wherever they are at present spoken or were in the past. Reflecting on this
vast geo-diachronic landscape leads to the consideration of central issues in the nature of
language maintenance, spread, and change. In this context the study of the living Semitic
varieties assumes a larger importance than has traditionally been accorded them in historical
linguistic study, not only for their intrinsic linguistic value, but also for the fact that social
and demographic dynamics affecting the languages can still be observed against actual lin-
guistic usage (section 5.3, above). In the present case, the intrusive -n before pronoun objects
in varieties as disparate as the Arabic of Nigeria, Uzbekistan, and the eastern Arabian pen-
insula, as well as neo-Western Aramaic, should be seen less as a quaint relic attested in
“peripheral” varieties as evidence of its origin in an -n + pronoun object complex. What is
maintained over space can be a reflection of its original genesis.
appendix: other v + -n + noun in west semitic

While there are, as noted in section 3, above, other West Semitic languages with V +
-n occurring before a noun object or occurring with no complement at all, the observation
remains that among the West Semitic languages only in Classical Arabic is there evidence
for the reflex of intrusive -n functioning in a definable grammatical manner without pronoun
objects. A good case in point is Ugaritic, which has been exhaustively described by Josef
Tropper (2000: 497–504). Tropper lists what he calls the forty-five tokens of V-n in Ugaritic,
without a pronominal suffix. He terms this -n the “Energikus I,” but he equally notes that
it occurs with all verb forms and cannot be associated with a given mode value. From this
it may be inferred—Tropper does not say so explicitly—that the V-n cannot be assigned a
discrete function, an interpretation that agrees, albeit in differing detail, with Daniel Sivan
(1997: 105). Tropper also distinguishes what he terms an “Energikus II,” which only occurs
before an object suffix. He furthermore assumes this to have been the original suffix, with the
Energikus I being derived from Energikus II (“Die Form des Energ. I dürfte . . . sekundären
Ursprungs,” p. 502). In broad terms this agrees with the analysis proposed here, in which the
V + -n + pronoun object represents the original West Semitic state of affairs.
Should an assumption of cognate status in all relevant V-n forms be made for other West
Semitic languages, then the process described in Figure 2 for Classical Arabic would need to
be pushed back to an earlier stage and include ancestral varieties of West Semitic languages
other than Classical Arabic. While developing the reconstruction based on this assumption
would require a reworking of the details presented here, as well as the incorporation of
others, the argument for the priority of V + -n + pronoun object would remain. The sequence
would thus be:
1. independent complex: n + pronoun object;
2. grammaticalization V+ -n + pronoun object;
3. V+ -n generalized irregularly to all objects in some languages.
There are two arguments for this sequence. First, step 2 has robust congeners all the way
to the present and is comparatively well attested in Aramaic, Arabic, and Ethiopian Semitic,
whereas step 3 is completely lost today. One way (circular but plausible) to account for
this difference is to assume that step 2 established itself earlier than step 3, and had thereby
developed a wider population spread, which ensured a more robust transmission. The sec-
ond argument is that if V + -n is indeed a stage before CA, then it is functionless, so far as
the data in PWS outside Arabic show. No specific, consistent grammatical function can be
attributed to it. This implies variable occurrence in the categories of Table 5. This is opposed
to V + -n + pronoun object, where -n is clearly an object marker. In this perspective, V +
-n can be seen as developing originally as a euphonic mimic of V + -n + pronoun object,
establishing a grammaticalized functional niche for itself in the West Semitic branch only in
Classical Arabic.
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The Historical Linguistics of the Intrusive *-n in Arabic and West Semitic

Author(s): Jonathan Owens

A much discussed morpheme in Semitic historical linguistics is the suffix *-n.

Journal of the American Oriental Society 133.2 (2013) 217

2. the intrusive -n in arabic

2.1. Arabic dialects

(2) ḍaarb-ínn-ek “he has hit you (M)”

2.1.1. Other -n/-nn’s

2.2. Classical Arabic

2.2.1. The energic in the Qurʾan

2.2.1.1. A basic summary of linguistic properties of the energic in the Qurʾan

Table 1. Illocutionary operators co-occurring with the energic -anna

2.2.1.2. A statistical summary

18. The verb is always in the 2MSG here.

2.3. The development of the energic in Classical Arabic

Table 2. Heavy nūn in Qurʾanic Arabic in nine contexts

(27) inna zayd-an la-qāʾimun/ la-fī l-bayt-i/la-yaqūm-u

(28) allā annahum la-yaʾkulūna l-ṭaʿāma (Q 25:20)

(29) a-shhad-u inna-ka la-dhāhib-un

2.3.1. The analogical origin of the energic

Table 3. V – NP/ProObj in a general sample of Qurʾanic Arabic

2.3.2. A comparative statistical perspective

2.3.3. Classical Arabic as an innovative variety

3. the intrusive -n in other west semitic languages

(36) iṭʕan ‘he carries’

Table 5. Status of -n in nine languages/varieties

Stage 1: -n + pronoun/noun = presentative/deictic

Stage 2: -n + pronoun/noun associated with verbal arguments

Stage 3a: pred -n + pronoun object Stage 3b: -n + pronoun/noun

Stage 4: pred -n + -pronoun object CA V -n + noun

Classical Arabic energic, which is interpreted here as an innovation in Classical Arabic. 27 On

5.1. Grammaticalization of -n + pronoun object to verb suffix (stage 3a)

Aramaic varieties is based to one degree or another on participles refunctionalized as finite

5.2. Vowel quality and length of -n

5.3. Multiple populations, multiple historical variants

Table 6. Occurrence of intrusive -n according to languages/varieties

5.4 The intrusive -n and the active participle in dialectal Arabic

5.6. Against massive independent development: one morpheme, multiple

appendix: other v + -n + noun in west semitic

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