Ahmad Alqassas

Interests: Linguistic Theory, Comparative Syntax, Mainland & Diasporic Variation, Arabic Linguistics, Morphosyntax, Language Acquisition, Language Policy & Politics, Political Discourse.

Ahmad Alqassas is a Professor at Georgetown University whose work bridges formal linguistic theory with the sociopolitical realities of the Arab world and its global diaspora. His research investigates the structural dependencies of Arabic—including clausal architecture and morphosyntax—within the framework of Minimalist syntax and Distributed Morphology. He is currently a lead collaborator on a major multi-regional project (2025–2027) funded by the Norwegian Academy’s Center for Advanced Study, which examines comparative patterns of language maintenance and loss in Arabic, Greek, and Scandinavian diasporic communities across Europe and the United States.

Dr. Alqassas is the author of several foundational texts, including A Unified Theory of Polarity Sensitivity: Comparative Syntax of Arabic (Oxford University Press, 2021) and A Multi-locus Analysis of Arabic Negation (Edinburgh University Press, 2019). While his research focuses on the mental faculty of language and comparative variation studies of mainland and diasporic Arabic communities, his teaching and public engagement are dedicated to social and regional Arabic linguistic variation, language policy, the politics of identity, and the analysis of political discourse. He offers specialized courses on dialectology, sociolinguistics, and the role of language in shaping regional power dynamics, central to the study of Culture and Politics and contemporary international affairs.

Peer-Reviewed Books

-Alqassas, A. (2025) Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XXXV. Studies in Arabic Linguistics 14. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

-Alqassas, A. (2021) A Unified Theory of Polarity Sensitivity: Comparative Syntax of Arabic. Oxford University Press. [Oxford Studies in Comparative Syntax]

https://global.oup.com/academic/search?q=Alqassas&cc=us&lang=en

-Alqassas, A. (2019) A Multi-locus Analysis of Arabic Negation: Micro-variation in Southern Levantine, Gulf and Standard Arabic. Edinburgh University Press. [Edinburgh Studies in Theoretical Linguistics]

https://www.academia.edu/36822770/Alqassas_A._2019_._A_Multi-locus_Analysis_of_Arabic_Negation

https://www.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.3366/edinburgh/9781474433143.001.0001/upso-9781474433143

Peer-Reviewed Scholarly Articles

Alqassas, A. (2025) Acquisition of Southern Levantine Heritage Grammar. Journal of Arabic Sociolinguistics. Edinburgh University Press.

Alqassas, A. (2025) The interplay of Arabic Negation and Pragmatics. In: Frances Blanchette and Cynthia Lukyanenko (eds.), Perspectives on Negation: Views from Across the Language Sciences. Series: Interdisciplinary Linguistics. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

Alqassas, A. (2024) Acquisition and Pedagogy of the Arabic Emphatic Consonants. Romano-Arabica Journal, XXIV/2024: Arabic linguistics. Center for Arab Studies. Bucharest, Romania.

-Alqassas, A. (2019) The Syntax of Negative Coordination in Jordanian Arabic. In Amel Khalfaoui and Matthew Tucker (eds.), Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics. Volume 30, pp. 93–112. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

-Alqassas. A. (2018) Negative Sensitive Items. In: Elabbas Benmamoun and Reem Bassiouney (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Arabic Linguistics, pp. 104–131. Oxford: Routledge.

-Alqassas, A. (2017) Arabic Diglossia and Heritage Language Acquisition: Remarks on Acquisition Planning. In Héba Medhat-Lecocq (ed.), Arabe Standard et variations régionales. Quelle(s) politique(s) linguistique(s)? Quelle(s) didactique(s)?, pp. 81–97. Paris: INALCO, Éditions des Archives Contemporaines, Coll. PLID.

-Alqassas, A. (2017) Gender and Number Polarity in Modern Standard Arabic Numeral Phrases. Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique, Volume 62(1), pp. 1–17. Cambridge University Press.

-Alqassas, A. (2016) Temporal NPIs and NCIs as Adverb Phrases: The Case of Jordanian Arabic. In Youssef A. Haddad and Eric Potsdam (eds.), Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics, Volume 28, pp. 129–152. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

-Alqassas, A. (2016). The Definite Marker in Arabic: Morphological realization of the syntactic head D or a [DEF] feature. Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 39(1): pp. 1–15. Linguistic Society of America.

-Alqassas, A. (2015) Negation, Tense and NPIs in Jordanian Arabic. Lingua 156: 101–128. 

Peer-Reviewed Conference Papers 

(2025) Relexification in Grammar of Arabic Heritage Speakers. the Arabic Linguistics Forum (ALiF2025), University of Vienne, Wien, Austria, September, 3-5.

(2025) Language, Conflict and Peace-Making. Invited Plenary Talk. Linguistic Society of America, 101st Annual Meeting. Philadelphia, PA.

(2024) L2 Acquisition of the Arabic Emphatic Consonants: Effectiveness of Articulatory, Controlled, Guided and Communicative Activities. Teaching Arabic Language and Culture in Today's Academia, Center for Arab Studies, University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania.

(2023) Development of Southern Levantine Heritage Grammar. The 36th. Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics. University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, March 24-26.

(2023) Arabic Polarity, Disjunction and Syntactic Agreement. Invited Talk at Qatar University, Doha, Qatar; (TBD) 2023.

(2022) Acquisition of Morpho-Syntactic Complexity in Grammar of Heritage Arabic Speakers. The 2022 BATA 2nd Annual International Conference. The University of Westminster, London, UK, June 30– July 1.

(2022) Demystifying Puzzles in Polarity Sensitivity and Coordinate Complexes. Invited Talk at University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada; April 22, 2022.

(2022) Polarity Sensitive Coordination: Comparative Syntax of Arabic. Invited Talk at Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey; March 31, 2022.

(2020) The Syntax of Polarity and Coordination in Arabic. Keynote Talk. The 34th. Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics. University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, February 28- March 1.

(2020) Revisiting Negative Concord as Syntactic Agreement: Evidence from True Negative Indefinites. Linguistic Society of America, 94th Annual Meeting. New Orleans, LA January 2-5.

(2019) Agreement Puzzles in the Arabic Coordinate Complexes. Association Internationale de Dialectologie Arabe, AIDA 13. Akaki Tsereteli State University, Kutaisi, Georgia, June 10-13.

(2019) Heritage Learners in the East and West: Common features and pedagogy. The First International Conference on Arabic Heritage Education: Arabic Heritage Education: Pedagogy, Challenges, and Prospects. Georgetown University-Qatar, April 24-25.

(2019) The syntax of Coordinate Complexes in Arabic. The 33rd. Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics. The University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, April 5-7.

(2019) Sentential Negation in Heritage Southern Levantine Arabic. The Georgetown University Round Table (GURT) on Languages and Linguistics: Linguistics and the Public Good: Representing the Language of Underrepresented Groups, March 29-31.

(2018) The Syntax of Coordination in Arabic. Invited Talk at the Linguistics Department's Friday Speaker Series, Georgetown University, April 27.

(2017) The Syntax of Negative Coordination in Jordanian Arabic. The 31st. Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics. The University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, March 30-April 1.

(2017) Syntactic Variation and Change in Jordanian Arabic Negation. The Georgetown University Round Table (GURT) on Languages and Linguistics. Variable Properties: Their Nature and Acquisition [organized by David W. Lightfoot], March 10-12.

(2016) On the Syntax of Tense and Aspect in Jordanian Arabic. The 30th. Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics. Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, March 31- April 3.

(2015) The Locus of Negation in the Clause Structure of Standard Arabic. Talk at the department of Arabic and Islamic Studies, Georgetown University, Washington DC, December 4.

(2015) Presuppositional Negation in Gulf Arabic. Linguistics in the Gulf Conference-5. Qatar University, Qatar, March 29-30.

(2015) Clausal Architecture and Standard Arabic Negation. The 29th. Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics. University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, April 9-11.

(2014) On the Locus of Negation and NPI Licensing in Jordanian Arabic. The 28th. Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics. The University of Florida, Gainesville, March 13-15.

(2014) Arabic Diglossia and Heritage Language Acquisition. British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES)-- Mapping Arabic Heritage: Language, Literature and Culture. American University of Sharjah, Sharjah, UAE, April 14-16.

(2014) Arabic Heritage Learners: an emerging field. Presented at GU-Q Faculty Research Colloquium, Georgetown-SFSQ, November 26.

(2013) Gender and Number Polarity in MSA Numeral Phrases. The International Conference on Linguistics Petra I: Petra, Jordan, November 18-21.

(2013) Teaching Arabic as a Heritage Language. Talk presented at Georgetown University-SFSQ, January 23.

(2013) The Definite Marker in Arabic: Morphological Realization of the Syntactic Head D or a [DEF] Feature. The 39th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (BLS), University of California, Berkeley, February 16-17.

(2011) Politeness Strategies in Jordanian Arabic. Linguistics talk presented at Earlham College, February 9.

(2010) Morphosyntactic Analysis of Definiteness in Arabic and Hebrew Synthetic Genitives, The 38th North American Conference on Afroasiatic Linguistics (NACAL), The University of Texas at Austin, February 13-14.