1 Vera Tsukanova, Philipps-Universität Marburg Partial restructuring in West-Sudanic Arabic 1. Problem statement The grammars of Nigerian and Chadian Arabic mention the feature that represents a remarkable isogloss of the West-Sudanic Arabic region: a prefix ;ঝͿal- appears in the reflexive or anti-causative verbal forms instead of a regular prefix ta-/Vt-: Nigerian Arabic (Owens 1993) (1) al-kallam he spoke = MSA ta-kallama (2) al-ŵāzaŶ he ǁas ǁeighed ~ MSA ta-wāzaŶa to ďe ďalaŶĐed Chadian Arabic (Zeltner, Tourneux 1986): (3) ঝal-kassar he ǁas ďrokeŶ, he broke = MSA ta-kassara (4) ঝal-kātalo theLJ fought each other = M“A ta-Ƌātalū The origin of this prefix, to my best knowledge, has not been addressed thus far. In the Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics , grammars (Hagège 1973, Jullien de Pommerol 1999, Owens 1993, Roth 1979, Roset 2018, Zeltner & Tourneux 1986) or other works mentioned in the Reference list, only the synchronic account is presented. 2. What is West-Sudanic Arabic? Arabic dialects of Chad, Cameroon and Nigeria. Other names: Baggāra, Shuwa Arabic. The map below is from (Owens, Hassan 2011):