A Typological Analysis of Cognate Infinitives in Lebanese Arabic Based on Comparative Semitic Evidence

Despite the relatively scarce literature on the topic and the lack of terminological consensus among scholars, Cognate Infinitives (CI) have been identified to share formal and functional characteristics across Semitic. The present study provides a description of the formal features of Cognate Infinitives in Lebanese Arabic (LA) based on the analysis of linguistic data gathered through a participant observation method. The novelty of this description lies in its comparative approach, which has been developed in the light of the Semitic evidence available, gathered through a review of the main literature available on the topic. The results of this comparative analysis reveal that the grammatical features of Cognate Infinitives in Lebanese Arabic seem to be in line with general Semitic trends that do not, however, always find their parallel in prescriptive descriptions of Cognate Infinitives in Classical or Standard Arabic.