The uncommonness of <i>rāħ</i> in Egyptian Arabic

Abstract Egyptian Arabic contains a semantically bleached verb rāħ whose functions have been thoroughly studied and identified; however, the motivation for its use remains unclear. Current theories about its motivations have resulted in a long list of seemingly disparate functions which cannot explain its high frequency within narratives or its occurrence outside of them. The theory of foregrounding offers a possible motivation for rāħ ’s pattern of use. Identifying rāħ as a foregrounding device would require that its use either violate a grammatical rule or deviate from the norm. I will argue the latter by presenting corpus-based data which suggests that rāħ ’s frequency is uncommon in narratives when compared to its use in daily Egyptian speech. The data will also show that rāħ ’s frequency in narratives is not such that it has become the norm.