Structure and Function of the Arabic Verb

249 Pages·2007·2.19 MB·English

by  Maher Bahloul

STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION OF
THE ARABIC VERB
Structure and Function of the Arabic Verbis a corpus-based study that unveils the
morpho-syntaxand the semantics of the Arabic verb.
Approaches to verbal grammatical categories – the constituents of verbal
systems – often rely on either semantic–pragmatic or syntactic analyses. This
researchbridges the gap between these two distinct approaches through a detailed
a nalysis of Taxis, Aspect, Tense, and Modality in Standard Arabic. This is
a ccomplished by showing, first, some basic theoretical concerns shared by both
schools of thought and, second, the extent to which semantic structures and
invariant m eanings mirror syntactic representations.
Maher Bahloul’s findings also indicate that the basic constituents of the verbal
system in Arabic, namely the Perfect and the Imperfect, are systematically
differentiated through their invariant semantic features in a markedness relation.
Finally, this study suggests that the syntactic derivation of verbal and nominal
clauses are sensitive to whether or not verbal categories are specified for their f eature
values, providing therefore a principled explanation to a long-standing debate.
This reader-friendly book will appeal to both specialists and students of Arabic
linguistics, language, and syntax.
Maher Bahloul is Assistant Professor of English and Linguistics at the American
University of Sharjah.
ROUTLEDGE ARABIC LINGUISTICS SERIES
General Editor: Clive Holes, University of Oxford
Editors:
El-Sa’id Badawi, American University in Cairo
Adrian Gully, University of Exeter
Yasir Suleiman, University of Edinburgh
Keith Walters, University of Texas
The Routledge Arabic Linguistics Series publishes high-quality, academically
rigorous research on Arabic linguistics to two main readerships: non-Arabist general
linguists with an interest in Arabic, and students and researchers already in the field
of Arabic language and linguistics. Both synchronic and diachronic s tudies of Arabic
are welcome which aid our understanding of the historical evolution and the present
state of Arabic, whether dialectal or standard. Works written from a s ociolinguistic
(e.g. language variation), socio-historical (e.g. l anguage history), sociological
(e.g.language planning), or psycholinguistic (e.g.language acquisition) perspective
are welcome, as are studies of Arabic stylistics, pragmatics, and discourse analysis.
Descriptive dialectological works also fall within the scope of the Series, as do works
which focus on the evolution of medieval Arabic linguistic thought. Proposals or
scripts for the Series will be welcomed by the General Editor.
Previously Published by Curzon:
MEDIEVAL ISLAMIC PRAGMATICS
Sunni legal theorists’ model of textual communication
Mohamed Mohamed Yunis Ali
JEWISH AND MUSLIM DIALECTS OF MOROCCAN ARABIC
Jeffrey Heath
LANGUAGE CONTACT AND LANGUAGE CONFLICT
IN ARABIC
Variations on a sociolinguistic theme
Edited by Aleya Rouchdy
Published by Routledge:
STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION OF THE ARABIC VERB
Maher Bahloul
STRUCTURE AND
FUNCTION OF THE
ARABIC VERB
Maher Bahloul
First published 2008
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
an informa business
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
© 2008 Maher Bahloul
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Bahloul, Maher, 1963–
Structure and function of the Arabic verb / Maher Bahloul.
p. cm. – (Routledge Arabic linguistics series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Arabic language – Verb. I. Title.
PJ6145.B34 2007
492.7'5–dc22 2007003135
ISBN 0-203-94556-5 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN10: 0–415–77215–X (hbk)
ISBN10: 0–203–94556–5 (ebk)
ISBN13: 978–0–415–77215–0 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978–0–203–94556–8 (ebk)
TO AMAL, NOUR, AND RAYAN

CONTENTS
List of illustrations xi
Foreword xiii
Acknowledgments xv
List of abbreviations xvii
List of symbols xix
1 Introduction 1
The language and the data 2
Background assumptions 3
Organization of the study 4
2 Verbal categories, clause structure, and modality 7
Introduction 7
Verbal categories and sentence structure 8
Verbal categories and modality 18
Concluding remarks 27
3 Verbal morphology, structure, and function 29
Introduction 29
Identifying verbal morphemes 29
The Perfect paradigm 31
The Imperfect paradigm 35
Previous analyses of verbal forms 37
Summary 43
4 The Perfect, use, and invariant meaning 44
Introduction 44
The Perfect construction 45
vii
CONTENTS
The Perfect and temporal relations 47
Summary and proposal 62
Contextual variants and markedness 63
The Perfect within the ATM system 64
The Perfect and the invariant 68
Conclusion 70
5 The Compound Perfect, and the modal QAD 72
Introduction 72
Previous analyses 73
Conclusion 77
An alternative approach 77
The syntactic distribution of QAD 78
The invariant function of QAD 85
More on the characteristics of QAD 89
QADand the coordinators WA, LA,andFA 89
Towards a solution 96
QADas an ATM category 96
QADand invariance 101
Conclusion 102
6 The Imperfect, use, and invariant meaning 104
Introduction 104
The Imperfect and temporal relations 104
Present time reference 104
Gnomic interpretation 108
Futurity and modality 113
The Imperfect and future time 121
The Imperfect and past time 126
Summary and proposal 131
Variation and invariance 132
The Imperfect within the ATM system 135
The Imperfect and negation 137
The Imperfect vs. the Perfect 140
Concluding remarks 147
7 ATM categories, derivation, and the verbal clause 149
Introduction 149
The derivation of ATM categories 150
viii
CONTENTS
The structure of Taxis–Aspect and tense 152
Taxis–Aspect, tense, and negation 154
Taxis–Aspect, tense, and conditionals 156
Taxis–Aspect, tense, and compound tenses 157
Conclusion 166
8 ATM categories, derivation, and the nominal clause 167
Introduction 167
Nominal clauses and modality 169
Some properties of modality 170
Verb movement into modality 171
The copula in wh-contexts 173
The copula and modality 176
Co-occurrence relation between ATM categories 179
Summary and conclusion 183
9 Conclusion 185
Appendix 188
Notes 201
Bibliography 212
Index 225
ix