Arabic Perfect and temporal adverbs Abdelkader Fassi Fehri

32 Pages·2003·0.13 MB·English

Arabic Perfect and temporal adverbs
Abdelkader Fassi Fehri
Languages use grammaticalized inflections (GIs), auxiliaries (Auxs), and
temporal adverbials (PPs or NPs, etc.; = Advs) to express various kinds
of temporal reference (TR). It is largely acknowledged in the literature
that GIs are ambiguous or underspecified with respect to TR, and that
their forms, even when identical, may lead to different interpretations
within the same language, or across languages (even from the same fam-
ily). Advs can be equally ambiguous in producing various temporal
meanings. Common categories assumed to contribute to (as well as or-
ganize) linguistic TR include Tenses (Ts), Aspects (Asps), and Aktion-
sarts (Akts). They project as functional categories in scopal hierarchical
syntactic structures. The latter are assumed to reflect morphosyntactic
and lexical properties of these components, and organize their contribu-
tion to TR meanings. The descriptive program of crosslinguistic and
language specific temporalities appears then to be to identify which in-
gredients of TR grammar and meaning are contributed by which GI,
Aux, or Adv, or their combinations. The aim of this article is essentially
to describe some salient properties of the Arabic Perfect (= Perf) within
this perspective, by taking into account some crosslinguistic variation.1
The study of the Arabic Perf is not only of interest for its own sake, but
it is of central importance to understanding how the various ingredients
of the Arabic temporal/aspectual system are organized, compared to
other language systems. First, Perf interacts significantly with Past and
Perfective (= Pfv), exhibiting various TR ambiguities, which need to be
properly identified, in parallel to the examination of the distribution and
interpretation of collocational Advs. Second, various kinds of Perf
documented in the literature will be investigated here, to see whether
they are instantiated in Arabic, and how they exhibit similar or different
properties. My approach to general semantic and morphological ques-
tions is based on the assumption that there are natural (or canonical)
mappings between temporal/aspectual forms and their semantic inter-
pretations. Forms are productively ambiguous, but they are associated
with abstract syntactic and selective properties, which then provide room
for language specific differentiations. The latter are captured properly
only if the semantics involved is made precise, to allow accurate com-
parative work2. My grammatical description of TR relations, expressions,
and distributions will typically make use of a hierarchical architecture in
which Perf is generated higher than Asp (which is basically ± Pfv) as
70 Abdelkader Fassi Fehri
some ‘relative’ T or T2. The latter is lower than the ‘deictic’ or ‘abso-
lute’ T, or T1 (denoting Past, Present, or Future). The core temporal ar-
chitecture that I adopt is then as follows:
(1)
T 1(±Past)
T (±Perf)
2
Asp(±Pfv)
VP(±Tel)
1. The Arabic T/A-system
The Arabic system of T/A expressions exhibit a number of typical prop-
erties that are worth describing within a comparative perspective. Four of
these properties are briefly investigated in this section.
1.1. Polyfunctionality of T/A-forms
The T/A system is dominated by the polyfunctionality of its T/A forms.
First, there is no morphological distinction between an inflected root
verb and an embedded ‘participle’: both are finite, and they carry the
same temporal and agreement features. In other words, the form of ex-
pression of T1 (and Agr1) and T2 (and Agr2) is identical, and the mor-
phology is not discriminatory as far as the T1/T2 distinction is con-
cerned3. This uniformity is exemplified in the two following pairs of
constructions. The first pair contrasts the two basic simple tenses avail-
able in the system: Past and Present (or non-Past), which express seman-
tic PAST and PRESENT, respectively:
(2) katab-a r-risaalat-a.
wrote-3 the-letter-acc
‘He wrote the letter.’
(3) y-aktub-u r-risaalat-a.
3-write-indic the-letter-acc
‘He is writing the letter.’
The second pair contains the same forms embedded under auxiliaries,
and functioning as Perfect and Imperfect ‘participles’:
Arabic perfect and temporal adverbs 71
(4) kaan-a katab-a r-risaalat-a.
was-3 wrote-3 the-letter-acc
‘He had written the letter.’
(5) kaan-a y-aktub-u r-risaalat-a.
was-3 3-write-indic the-letter-acc
‘He was writing the letter.’
In other words, the ‘tense’ forms can also function as ‘aspect’ forms.
Second, the duality between Past/Present and Perfect/Imperfect is
further complicated by the fact that these forms may express a Perfec-
tive/Imperfective opposition. For example, Past in (2) is interpreted as
PFV, and Present in (3) or (5) as IPFV. To be neutral and for ease of
comprehension, I will designate the two forms as Past/Pres and
Perf/Imperf interchangeably and depending on contexts. I will also refer
to their varied semantics by capital letters, when necessary. Clearly, the
terminological dispute about morphological forms is meaningless in the
absence of precise and clear-cut semantic associations.
1.2. The PresPerf-split: synthesis and analysis
A second characteristic feature of the Arabic T/A system is the syn-
thetic/analytic split of its PresPerf forms. The synthetic form (which is
homophonous with that of the Past) is limited to PRES interpretations,
which will be detailed in this article. It is exemplified in (6), which can
also have a Past interpretation:
(6) jaraa.
ran
‘He has run.’
Analytic forms, however, in which the Pres auxiliary kaana ‘be’ is
overtly realized, do not have PRES interpretation. They normally ex-
press a futurate Perf (= FUTPERF), as in (7), and they collocate with
future time adverbs:
(7) !-akuunu !anhay-tu r-risaalat-a "#adan.
I-am finished-I the-letter-acc tomorrow-acc
‘I will have finished the letter tomorrow.’
They can also express ‘iterative’ readings, as in (8):
72 Abdelkader Fassi Fehri
(8) bi-haad"aa y-akuunu l-fariiq-u qad sajjala xams-a
with-this is the-team-nom already scored five
marraat-in.
times
‘With this, the team has already scored five times.’
This situation is partly comparable to that of Portuguese, where the
PresPerf is expressed by a simple form (which is also ambiguous with
the Past), as in (9), but the analytic form expresses only a habitual Per-
fect, as in (10):4
(9) Comi.
ate
‘I have eaten.’
(10) Agora jà tem comido.
now I have eaten
‘Now I have taken the habit to eat.’
It is unlike the situation in Germanic or Romance, where the PresPerf, in
addition to the Past and further meanings, is expressed by an analytic
Perf. In German, for example, the PresPerf co-occurs with Past, Pres, and
Fut adverbs (cf. Musan (2001)):

(11) Hans ist gestern um zehn weggegangen.
Hans is yesterday at ten left
(12) Hans ist jetzt weggegangen.
Hans is now left

(13) Hans ist morgen um zehn weggegangen.
Hans is tomorrow at ten left
As we will see, this split is not without consequences for dividing lines of
interpretations and/or ambiguities, as well as crosslinguistic characteriza-
tions.
1.3. The Past-split: simple Past-Pfv and complex Past-Impfv
A third important feature of the T/A system is that it exhibits also an as-
Arabic perfect and temporal adverbs 73
pectual split with respect to the form of expression of aspectual values
for Past. Simple Past is associated with Perfective, whereas Past Imper-
fective must be expressed by two separate finite forms: the auxiliary in
the Past, and the thematic verb in the form of the Pres. The two con-
trasting forms exhibiting the split are given in (14) and (15), respec-
tively:
(14) !anhaa r-risaalat-a.
finished the-letter-acc
‘He finished the letter.’
(15) kaana y-unhii r-risaalat-a.
was 3-finish the-letter-acc
‘He was finishing the letter.’
The letter is finished in (14), but not in (15). This split is partly compa-
rable to that of English simple Past and Past Progressive. It contrasts with
the double synthetic nature of this opposition found in e.g. French
(‘passé simple’ vs. ‘imparfait’) or Italian (‘passato remoto’ vs. ‘imper-
fetto’).
There are various ways to assess the perfective nature of the simple
Past. One argument comes from the behavior of the Past in SOT con-
texts. In complement clauses, the simultaneity with the past is solely ac-
ceptable if the Present/Imperfect form is used (i.e. no SOT effect is pos-
sible, just like the situation in Japanese or Hebrew):5
(16) qaal-a l-ii !inna-hu y-aktub-u r-risaalat-a.
said-3 to-me that-him 3-write the-letter-acc
‘He said to me that he was writing the letter.’
The use of the Past/Perfect does not yield that interpretation:
(17) qaal-a l-ii !inna-hu katab-a r-risaalat-a.
said-3 to-me that-him wrote-3 the-letter-acc
‘He said to me that he wrote the letter.’
In (17), there is no overlapping of the writing and the saying, unlike the
situation in (16). The writing is rather anterior to the saying (with a
shifted Past reading). This situation is in contrast with SOT behavior in
complement clauses in English, where the embedded verb can be inter-
preted as anaphoric (or simultaneous, with the meaning ‘Mary is ill’):6
(18) John said Mary was ill.
74 Abdelkader Fassi Fehri
Giorgi & Pianesi (1995) compare languages which possess Imperfect
(like Italian) with languages that do not (e.g. German or English). They
observe that Italian Imperfect is a dependent anaphoric tense, which de-
notes Present-under-Past tense, the Past being provided normally by the
matrix verb. Moreover, the (simple) Past cannot be used in this language
as dependent. In embedded contexts, only Imperfect can be used, with
an SOT-effect.7 In contrast, languages like German use Past (ambigu-
ously) as dependent or non-dependent, the latter being neutral with re-
spect to perfectivity. It can be read either way, as simultaneous (Imper-
fective) or non-simultaneous (Perfective):
(19) Hans sagte, dass Marie einen Apfel aß.
a. Hans said that Mary was eating an apple.
b. Hans said that Mary ate an apple.
In (a), the simultaneous reading is available, and Past is interpreted as
Imperfective. In (b), Past is Perfective, and the simultaneous interpreta-
tion is excluded. Thus (simple) Past is necessarily Perfective in Italian,
but not so in German. The conclusion then is that if a language has an
Imperfect Past, as opposed to a simple Past, the latter cannot be used as
dependent in embedded contexts. On the other hand, the Imperfect is
dependent and used to denote simultaneity. In languages in which the
Past is unspecified, it can be used as dependent/simultaneous. Arabic is
close to Italian in this respect. Past is Perfective and non-dependent,
contrary to Imperfect, as illustrated above.
A second argument comes from the availability of continuous read-
ings. Consider e.g. (6), expressing a Past activity (repeated here as (20)
for convenience), and its Past Imperfective counterpart, given in (21):
(20) jaraa.
ran
‘He ran.’
(21) kaana r-rajul-u y-ajrii.
was the-man-nom 3-run
‘The man was running.’
In (20), the event is completed or terminated. It cannot be further ex-
tended. This is in contrast with (21), which is non-terminated and can be
extended. Hence the sequence in (22) can be used after (21), but it leads
to ungrammaticality after (20):
Arabic perfect and temporal adverbs 75
(22) [...] wa maa zaalay-ajrii.
and still 3-run
‘and he is still running.’
In fact, the combination of (20) and (22) can be acceptable, but only if
two events are involved, one terminated to make the first clause true, and
one non-terminated and ongoing at UT, to make the second sequence
possible.8
1.4. The Past/Perf-ambiguity
A fourth significant property of the system consists in a genuine
Past/Perfect ambiguity of the Past/Perf form. As observed above, there is
only one temporal (suffixing morphology) in Arabic which can express
both PAST meaning and PRESPERF meaning. Thus (2) or (6) above are
ambiguous between what I represent in a very sketchy way as (23) and
(24), using a simplified Reichenbachian representation of time:
(23) ET, RT < UT
(24) ET < RT, UT
In the first representation, the Perf form is expressing PAST tense, and in
the second PERFECT ‘aspect’. The representation in (23) raises no sig-
nificant problem. That in (24) is more disputable. I will ignore the po-
tential objections for the moment, and focus only on the fact that PAST
specifies a reference time (RT) which is prior to the utterance time (UT),
while PERFECT does not. To the extent that an anteriority component is
involved in the PERF interpretation, that anteriority should involve other
argument times than UT. This subsection provides grounds for assessing
that the Past/PresPerf ambiguity represented here is genuine, rather than
thinking of it as an ambiguity arising within the PresPerf semantic con-
figuration itself, the interpretation differences being associated with the
various temporal adverb specifications. My task is then basically to pro-
vide arguments establishing that in various constructions that contain the
Perf form RT cannot be (⊆) UT, but what is involved is rather RT < UT,
which is basically what PAST expresses. But before going on providing
such arguments, I will sketch, for concreteness, a reasonable view of what
Tenses and Aspects are, although I will not address the details of the new
developments of Tense and Aspect theories, the points to be made being
neutral with respect to any viable version of them.9
76 Abdelkader Fassi Fehri
1.4.1.Aspects and tenses
As stated above, Reichenbachian (1947) terminology will be used. The
time denoted by a semantic tense is called reference time (= RT). Ak-
tionsarten are located in time by means of a relation that connects RT to
an event time or event state (= ET), instantiating the Aktionsart. This re-
lation can be called an ASPECT relation, after Klein (1994). RT may
INCLUDE (⊇) ET in the ‘Perfective’, RT may be INCLUDED (⊆) in
ET in the ‘Imperfective’, or RT may follow ET, being POST (>) in the
‘Perfect’.10 Asp relations, viewed as ‘temporalizers’, can be defined, af-
ter AvS (2002b), as follows:11
(25) ASPECTS
a. ||PERFECTIVE|| = λPλt∃e.t ⊇ τ (e) & P (e), P of type <v,t>
b. ||IMPERFECTIVE|| = λPλt∃e.t ⊆ τ (e) & P (e)
c. ||PERFECT|| = λPλt∃e.t > τ (e) & P (e)
Elaborated definitions for TENSES are also provided by AvS (ibid), in
line with Partee’s (1973) reference tense theory, and Heim’s (1994)
proposal that tenses be viewed as restrictors of temporal variables:12
(26) TENSES
are symbols of type i which bear time variables as indices. Let c be
the context of the utterance, with t the speech time, g is a variable
c
assignment, then
a. ||NOW||g,c is the speech time conceived as a point.
b. ||PAST||g,c is defined only if g(j) precedes the speech time t . If
j c
defined, ||PAST||g,c = g(j).
j
c. ||FUTR||g,c is defined only if g(j) follows the speech time t . If
j c
defined, ||FUTR||g,c = g(j).
j
These definitions (or simplified versions of them) will be adopted here,
except for Perf, which needs further elaboration in order to account for
its various meanings, but also its (usually) higher position in the tree ar-
chitecture, compared to Pfv/Ipfv (which I take to be the core Asp oppo-
sition), in conformity with (1).
As an illustration of the PAST/PERFECT contrast, consider (27). The
latter can be interpreted as PAST, or PRESPERF, hence giving rise to the
two LF forms (28) and (29), respectively:

(27) sakan-a barliin-a.
lived-3 Berlin-acc
Arabic perfect and temporal adverbs 77
a. ‘He lived in Berlin’
b. ‘He has lived in Berlin.’

(28) [PAST [ PFV [He live in Berlin]]]
TP ASPP VP
(29) [NOW [be [ [He live in Berlin]]]]
TP PERFP ASPP VP
The representation (29) reflects the overall architecture of the system, in
which PerfP (or T2) is higher than AspP (which contains ± PFV). I have
introduced ‘be’ as a head of PerfP, although it is not realized. It could
be that this introduction is not necessary, and the ‘participle’ licenses
both PERF and PRES.13 If we follow AvS (ibid, fn. 16, p. 10), then PERF
here is an existential quantifier that introduces a time/event prior to RT.
Its interpretation is as in (30):14
(30) ∃t t < NOW & He lives in Berlin at t.

Note that the construction (27) can also have an extended-now (XN)
interpretation, in fact a natural one. Consider the following variants of
(27):

(27’) a. sakan-a barliin-a mund"u 1990.
lived-3 Berlin-acc since 1990
‘He has lived in Berlin since 1990.’
b. sakan-a barliin-a xams-a marraat-in mund"u 1990.
lived-3 Berlin-acc five-acc times-gen since 1990
‘He has lived in Berlin five times since 1990.’

Like English since, mund"u can introduce a time span through α, its
complement, i.e. a position in time given by a date or some other tempo-
ral description. Mund"u α modifies the XN introduced by Perf, and it
indicates that α is the left boundary (LB) of XN. The construction (27b)
is best analyzed as an XN-Perf, in this case an Existential Perf (E-Perf).
The quantificational adverb xams-a marraat-in has to be confined within
XN. The meaning of the E-Perfect can be represented as follows:
(31) ∃t XN (t, NOW) & LB (1990, t) & ∃5t’⊆ t He live in Berlin at t'.
NOW is the meaning of the semantic PRES, the speech time conceived as
a moment. XN (t’,t) means that t is a final subinterval of t’. LB (1990,t’)
means that 1990 is LB of t’.
The construction (27a) can be interpreted as a Universal Perf (U-
Perf). The U-reading can be formulated as follows:15
78 Abdelkader Fassi Fehri
(32) ∃t XN (t, NOW) & LB (1990, t) & ∀t’⊆ t He live in Berlin at t'.
1.4.2.Positional ‘deictic’ adverbs
To disambiguate PAST and PRESPERF meanings, positional deictic ad-
verbs can be used. The contrast is provided in (33) and (34), where past
and present adverbials are used. Note that the temporal morphology is
not compatible with future adverbs:
(33) katab-a r-risaalat-a !amsi (*"#ad-an).
wrote-3 the-letter-acc yesterday (*tomorrow)
‘He wrote the letter yesterday.’
(34) katab-a r-risaalat-a l-aan-a (*"ad-an).
wrote-3 the-letter-acc now (* tomorrow)
‘He has written the letter now (* tomorrow).’
The positional adverb diagnostic suggests that the adverb is taken to
modify RT. It has been used for English successfully, at least since Jes-
persen (1924). But this test appears to be disputable, once the behavior
of PresPerf in other languages is taken into account. Consider the fol-
lowing pair of German examples (=(13a) and (14) of Löbner’s (2002)):

(35) Karla ist gestern hier eingezogen.
Karla is yesterday here move-in
‘Karla (has) moved in here yesterday.’
(36) Jetzt, wo Karla gestern hier eingezogen ist,
now, where Karla yesterday here move-in is,
brauchen wir einen Schlüssel fürs Klo.
need we a key for-the toilet
‘Now that Karla has moved in here yesterday, we need a key for
the toilet.’
The first construction is ambiguous between a Past reading and a
PresPerfect reading. But the Perfect can have only a PRESPERF reading
in (36), although it combines with a past adverbial. This suggests that the
adverb is modifying the aspect phrase or some lower phrase, the VP (de-
noting ET). Thus the compatibility of Perf with past and non-past time
adverbials cannot count as an argument in favor of the ambiguity of the