From word to construction: a syntactic etymology of the Qurʾānic Arabic lāta

This paper proposes a new etymology for the Koranic negative particle lāta by concentrating on the syntactic environment in which this particle occurs. This etymology, which is developed by means of interpretive tools of a distributional character, incorporates all the previous interpretations of lāta found in literature. Its conceptual core is the analysis of lāta as a bimorphemic word consisting of a negative marker lā and a fronted locative pro-form ta, and therefore akin to Colloquial Arabic mā-fī-h-(š). An analysis along these lines arguably explains the puzzling a/i-alternation observable in the negated noun phrase that follows lāta, as attested in the Koranic readings (i.e., lāta ḥīn-a/i manāṣin); and sheds new light on two particles etymologically related to lāta, notably ṯamma-ta and the so-called lā al-nāfiyah li-l-jins.