On the Grammaticalization of Iterative Aspectual Markers in Rural Jordanian Arabic

Abstract

This article explores the grammatical functions of iterative aspectual markers in Jordanian Arabic from a synchronic perspective. It will be argued that the aspectual markers in question are functional elements that have been grammaticalized from lexical items belonging to the verbal category. It will be shown that, as a consequence of grammaticalization, reduplication of verbs whose second and third radicals are identical has led to the development of an iterative aspectual marker, and that another marker with the same function has emerged from the active participle naazil ‘descending/going down’ which is a derivative of the verb nizel ‘descended/went down’. Special attention will be paid to the linguistic features of the aspectual markers at hand, including their syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic properties.