Abstract
This paper discusses tense in Arabic based on three varieties of the language: Classical Arabic (CA), Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), and the Taif dialect (TD). We argue against previous analyses that suggest that Arabic is a tenseless language, which assume that tense information is derived from the context. We also argue against the suggestion that Arabic is tensed, but that its tense is relative, rather than absolute. We propose here that CA, MSA, and TD have closely related verb forms, and that these are tensed verbs. Tense in Arabic is absolute in a neutral context and verb forms take the perfective and imperfective aspect. Similar to other languages including English, verb forms in Arabic may take reference from the context instead of the present moment. In this case, we argue that this does not mean that tense in Arabic is relative, because this would also imply that tense in many languages, including English, is relative. Further, we argue that the perfective form indicates only the past tense and the imperfective form, only the present; all other interpretations are derived by implicature.
Highlights
This paper is organized as follows: section 2 presents a theoretical overview of tense, including the difference between absolute and relative tense and the meaning of past, present, and future tense
We argue that the perfective form indicates only the past tense and the imperfective form, only the present; all other interpretations are derived by implicature. keywords: perfective, imperfective, absolute tense, relative tense 1
Relative tense is different from absolute tense in that the reference point that is used for locating the situation in time is given by the context, whereas this point is the present moment in the absolute tense
Summary
There are two types of tense: absolute tense and relative tense. This section discusses them, their differences, and the main absolute tenses as these are relevant to our analysis of tense in Arabic. In English, some subordinate clauses use relative tense and take their point of reference from the main clause. In this kind of relative tense, clauses are usually non-finite. The following example illustrates relative tense in English In this example, the subordinate clause, which is a non-finite clause, contains a participle, and the situation in this clause occurred in the past. We will use the term absolute to refer to tenses that take any point in the present as the deictic center These tenses are the basic ones, namely past, present, and future. The following sections will explain these main three tenses in general and discuss some issues related to them
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