English to Arabic Art/Literary Linguistics

Henkin (2010: 134, 141) notes four variants in Negev Arabic (iṯṛā(t), iṯrīt, ṯarīt and aṯariy). These forms are quite divergent and some show etymological kinship with the lexeme -ṯ-r ‘footsteps, tracks’. The author considers that such particles are presentatives, like arˤ and hay ‘look here’, and that her second subcategory of particles are ‘presentatives of conversational discourse’.
iṯṛāt, iṯrīt and ṯarīt are ‘evidential presentatives’ which appear both in spontaneous discourse and in storytelling. At times Henkin translates them by ‘apparently’, at others by ‘it turns out that’ because, based on evidentiality, she perceives a combination of several modal concepts:
(i) noncommitment to the information, which is secondhand knowledge
(ii) findings contrary to expectations

tāri aḥmad msāfer
tāri ahmad travel.
‘I learnt that [contrary to what I thought] Ahmed is gone’.