A prosodic morphophonological analysis of the trilateral perfect passive verbs in Qassimi Arabic

Abstract

This paper advances a comprehensive account of the pattern of trilateral perfect passive verbs (TPPVs) in Qassimi Arabic (QA), a major variety of Najdi Arabic. Data were collected from 31 native QA speakers from three different generations. Qualitative data collection included both structured and semi-structured interviews along with the researchers’ observations. A mixed analysis approach was used, allowing for both qualitative and descriptive quantitative analysis. Two important points arose from the findings. First, QA exhibits a hybrid morphophonological system and, hence, adopts different trilateral perfect passive patterns (TPPPs), which diverge from those in Modern Standard Arabic in their template and prosodic structures as well as in the morphophonological processes applied to derive these patterns. Second, the study confirms that one feature of a language is changeability since the pattern of TPPVs in QA reveals several diachronic changes among the generations of QA speakers. It is hoped that these findings will add notable insights to the literature on QA, and to the passive construction in particular.