The imperfective verb and the progressive aspect in Arabic

Abstract

This paper discusses how Arabic dialects disambiguate between the progressive and the habitual aspect, using grammaticalized participles of the verbs for ‘sit’ and/or ‘work’ to mark the progressive aspect. These grammaticalized aspect markers appear in full and truncated forms. Synchronic data from various Arabic dialects suggest that there is an ongoing grammaticalization process of the progressive aspect (Caubet, 1991; Camilleri & Sandler, 2017). A syntactic analysis is offered to explain the distribution of the full forms arguing that they are merged low in the structure and then undergo raising to Asp. The reduced form is directly merged as Aspect head. This difference in behavior follows from the directionality of the diachronic change and is motivated by principles of Economy (Roberts & Roussou, 2003; van Gelderen, 2011). The proclitics used with the imperfective verb in some dialects, such as bi- in Egyptian Arabic and Levantine Arabic dialects, and ka- in Moroccan Arabic (MA), have received different treatments in the literature, including describing them as progressive aspect markers. The paper discusses the different environments where bi and ka morphemes are found and suggests that even though they do not have a clear grammatical function, they started their existence as grammaticalized progressive aspect markers as evidenced by data from Makkan Arabic.