Tense and Aspect in Arabic from a Systemic Functional Perspective

What is it about?

There is a general agreement about how difficult it is to come up with a description of how to construe temporal values in Arabic. Many studies have failed to agree about even the most basic fundamentals as for instance whether the system is an ASPECT or a TENSE system or both. It is interesting to notice though that while Arab linguists seem to interpret the data from a temporal angle, western and orientalist studies seem to fully dismiss the system ability to construe time and have treated it as fully aspectual. Both camps have been inspired by the work of traditional Arab grammarians who clearly stated that the system is not exclusive and who described its potential without delving into this controversy as clearly their description by default revolved around the system’s ability to construe time. Based on Comrie’s work on aspect and his assertion that some ‘aspect’ languages can also construe different temporal values, I will suggest that it may be time to treat temporal descriptions with more flexibility and instead of dividing languages into two dichotomous groups, place them on a temporal spectrum where at one end there is tense and the other there is aspect. Based on Comrie’s work on aspect and his assertion that some ‘aspect’ languages can also construe different temporal values, I suggest that it may be time to treat temporal descriptions with more flexibility and instead of dividing languages into two dichotomous groups, place them on a temporal spectrum where at one end there is tense and the other there is aspect.

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Photo by Skyler Gerald on Unsplash

Photo by Skyler Gerald on Unsplash

Why is it important?

It is important because there is a certain level of innovation in the approach the topic has been dealt with and also because it is one of the few studies which is fully based on text. By locating the system of TENSE at word rank, instead of group rank as Matthiessen and Halliday have done, most of the past studies have overlooked a whole range of perspectives such as serial verb constructions and above all the tactic interdependency potential the verbal unit has i.e. its ability for expansion and projection.

Perspectives