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Encyclopedia of Arabic tense Language and Linguistics taraqqi Online agu

vaccindi came [nonmasc. sg.]

bassu bus [nonmasc.]

vaccindi came [nonmasc. sg.]

ràmuDu sita Rama and Sita [human pl.]

vaccEEru came [human pl.]

online

reference

àvu cow [nonmasc.]

àvulu vaccEEyi cows [nonhuman pl.] came [nonhuman pl.] bassulu vaccEEyi buses [nonhuman pl.] came [nonhuman pl.] In Arabic, gender differentiation is based upon grammatical criteria, and all nouns are classified into masculine and feminine. Gender is expressed at the pronominal level and in verbal endings. Demonstrative pronouns are declined for masculine and feminine gender. Gender distinction is made in the verbal endings also. Due to the differences in the gender system, the gender of Arabic borrowings has been adapted to the Telugu gender system, e.g. murabbà ‘jam [masc.]’ > Telugu murabba ‘a kind of sweet [nonmasc.]’. The word masjid ‘mosque’ [sg. masc.] became in Telugu masìdu [nonmasc.], with the plural masìdulu [nonhuman pl.], as in the following examples. akkaDa masìdu there mosque ‘There is a mosque’

undi to be

akkaDa masìdu-lu there mosque-PL ‘There are mosques’

unnàyi to be-PL

Arabic verbs are not borrowed directly into Telugu but rather by means of Telugu conjunct verbs, which are formed by adding an auxiliary verb to a nominal form: pani work-NOUN ‘to work’

cèyu to do-AUX

Equivalents of Arabic verbs are formed in Telugu by adding the auxiliary verbs ceyu ‘to do’ and agu ‘to happen’ to nouns borrowed from Arabic, e.g.:

progress to happen ‘to improve [intrans.]’ Available online: brillonline.nl & brill.nl/eallo taraqqi cèyu progress to do ‘to improve [trans.]’ šarìk companion ‘to join’

cèyu to do

šarìk companion ‘to be joined’

agu to happen

Bibliographical references

Siddiqui, Abdul Majeed. 1956. History of Golconda. Hyderabad: Literary Publications. Suravaram, Pratap Reddy. 1950. Andhrula Sanghika Caritra. [In Telugu]. Hyderabad: Andhra Saraswata Parishat. V. Swarajya Lakshmi (Osmania University)

Template Obligatory Contour Principle; Morphology

Tense A controversy prevails in the study of Semitic languages, both ancient and modern, namely whether their verbal morphologies mark tense (e.g. past vs. non-past), or aspect (perfective vs. imperfective), or some combination of both. Also something of an issue are mood and modality, but they are not usually as problematic (or they are problematic in different ways) as tense and aspect. Arabic is consistent with other Semitic languages in its nonconcatenative morphology. Verbal and nominal forms alike are typically formed by interdigitation of consonantal roots (ideally consisting of three radicals) and vocalic templates, either with or without affixes. Verbs have historically been classified as ‘perfect’ and ‘imperfect’, using a loose correlation between aspectual meaning and the morphological forms which were perceived as conveying them. These two forms are also referred to as suffix conjugation (qatala) and prefix conjugation (yaqtulu), which are the terms used in this entry. In the

tense

controversy mentioned above, the prefix conjugation is described as either ‘imperfect’ or ‘nonpast’ (or occasionally present/future), and the suffix conjugation is known as either ‘perfect’ or ‘past’. For most Arabic grammarians, the issue was rather simple: since the verb indicates an action, and actions take place in the past, present, or future time, verbal forms by necessity indicate time/tense. In fact, the most current definition of the verb is that it is “what indicates a combination of event and time” (al-fi l mà dalla alà qtiràn ™ada wa-zamàn), a definition to be found, for instance, in az-Zamaxšarì’s Mufaßßal (108.6). The only controversy in classical Arabic grammar centered around the question of whether there actually is such a thing as a present tense (see Zajjàjì, ±î à™ 86–88). According to the Kufan grammarians, the fi l dà±im, i.e. the active participle, fulfilled this role, while the Basran grammarians followed Sìbawayhi in accepting only two verbal tenses, the past and the ‘resembling’ (mu àri ) tense, the latter being ambiguous because it could indicate both the present and the future ( mà ì/mu àri ). For a survey of the Arabic theories about verbal tense, see Fleisch (1979:201–206) and Versteegh (1981). In Western reference grammars of Classical Arabic (Wright 1964:II, 18, “The Imperfect Indicative . . . does not in itself express any time”; Fleisch 1979:169–201), Modern Standard Arabic (Badawi a.o. 2004:362–371), and Arabic dialects (see Eisele 1999), the consensus seems to be that the Arabic verbal system is aspectual in nature, although Badawi a.o. (2004:362) indicate that Modern Standard Arabic “has now also a complete three tense structure replicating that of western languages (signs of which were already apparent in C[lassical] A[rabic]”. A few researchers, notably Aartun (1963), regard the tense opposition as the basic distinction in the Arabic verbal system. Others regard the distinction as irrelevant. Comrie (1976:79) states, for instance, that the basic distinction in the Arabic verbal system is neither one of tense, nor one of aspect, but incorporates both aspect and (relative) tense. It is certainly true that the two are often intertwined, and Payne emphasizes that “tense, aspect, and mode are sometimes difficult to tease apart” (1997:234). A proposal made by Dahl (1985) regarding the crosslinguistic traditional typology of

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Tense(Mood)Aspect or T(M)A systems incorporates the notion of pragmatic implicature into the traditional taxonomy. Dahl (1985:11ff.) discusses ‘secondary meanings’, ‘secondary foci’, and the ‘conventionalization of implicatures’ as potentially pertaining to grammatical categories such as tense and aspect. He defines ‘implicature’ in this sense as “something that can be inferred from the use of a certain linguistic category or type of expression, although it cannot be regarded as belonging to its proper meaning”. In his analysis of the various categories available in the languages in his study, he often distinguishes between those that are overtly marked and others that are merely implicated. Such an account, if found theoretically and empirically sound, may further the resolution of the controversy regarding the Arabic verbal system. In an experiment by Horesh (2002), six native speakers of different Arabic dialects were asked for their reactions to a number of utterances previously recorded by three native speakers of the dialect of Jaffa. They were asked to place these utterances in time (e.g. past, present, future), and in various cases to provide alternatives in their own vernacular. A second component of the interview was a fragment of Dahl’s questionnaire, in which the informants were asked to translate three similar English narratives into their vernacular. The reactions to the sentences were fairly uniform. All suffix conjugations were consistently interpreted as denoting actions in the past. In those cases where the auxiliary verb kàn was juxtaposed to a prefix-conjugated verb (e.g. kàn ya †i ‘he used to give’), it was interpreted as modifying an aspectual (in this case continuous) verb, again, denoting a situation or process in the past. In a sentence like (1) (1) ±ara hàda l-kitàb read.3ms this the-book (min ±awwal-o la-±àxir-o) (from beginning-its to-end-its) ‘He read the book (from cover to cover)’ all informants agreed that the verb meaning ‘read’ was to be understood as ‘read from cover to cover’, even without the adverbial phrase explicating that, which ruled out a Slavic-type perfective interpretation of the suffix conjugation. There was also consensus among the informants about the yištri/uštara contrast in sentence (2).

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(2) rà™ a-s-sù± went.3ms to-the-market yištri/uštara tuffà™ buy.3ms/bought.3ms apples ‘He went to the market to buy/and bought apples’

c. I’ll tell you what happened sometimes to me when I was a child and was walking in the forest. I WALK in the forest. Suddenly I STEP on a snake. It BITE me in the leg. I TAKE a stone and THROW it at the snake. It DIE.

All informants agreed that the sentence with the prefix-conjugated verb contains no information as to whether the subject of the sentence has actually bought the apples. Only an explicit suffix-conjugated verb following the conjunction indicates that the purchase has indeed taken place. The use of participial forms in (3)–(4) as denoting some kind of present perfect, i.e. an action in the past bearing consequences for the present, was controversial.

While there was convergence in the use of the suffix conjugation for events in the past, there was quite some variation for some of the verbs in the narratives, especially those of movement (walking, biting, throwing, stepping), for which intermediate forms like the participle, and combinations of the auxiliary kàn with the participle or a prefix-conjugated verb were used. With respect to the three different contexts, in the context of (5a) and (5b), the suffix conjugation was used fairly consistently by all informants, but in the context of (5c), various intermediate forms were used, including complex forms with the auxiliary kàn. A prefix-conjugated verb was not used for any of the verbs in the narratives, but one informant used a prefix-conjugated verb for ‘you know’ (which, strictly speaking, was not part of the narrative). This informant indicated a number of other stative verbs that may be used in the suffix conjugation without any reference to the past, e.g. ‘to understand’. This is consistent not only with the situation in other Semitic languages (cf. Hebrew katonti ‘I am too small; I am at a loss’), but is in fact a relic from Proto-Semitic, where presumably suffixes were productively indicative of stative verbs, as is the case in the oldest attested Semitic language, Akkadian. On the one hand, therefore, in many instances the suffix conjugation was consistent with an action in the past. Moreover, in many cases where the informants were asked to provide an alternative form while preserving the meaning, they argued that it was impossible to do so. On the other hand, there are a number of stative verbs that may occur in the suffix conjugation without reference to the past. There are also contexts in which the suffix conjugation may be used interchangeably (for some speakers) with a participle to denote a ‘perfective’ aspect, a present result of a past occurrence. And finally, there is the auxiliary verb kàn modifying various other forms (e.g. participles and prefix-conjugated verbs), for instance to place a continuous or habitual action in the past. It therefore seems plausible to conclude that the suffix conjugation

(3) il-malik ßàr the-king became.3ms ‘The king has arrived’

wàßil arriving.Part

(4) miš min zamàn šattat/mšattye Neg from time rained.3ms/raining.Part ‘Not long ago, it (has) rained’ Several subjects rejected it altogether. In some cases, informants argued that even a simple suffix-conjugated verb (rather than a complex auxiliary + participle) would entail that the action or state described has bearing on the present. The second part of the interview yielded somewhat more interesting results. While some speakers showed little variation across contexts, others differed quite radically when shifting from a narrative situated ‘yesterday’ through one pertaining to ‘what just happened to me’ to a narrative describing a distant past habitual. An example of the narratives is given in (5a–c); in the narratives the verbal forms to be translated were given in their base form. (5) a. Do you know what happened to me yesterday? I WALK in the forest. Suddenly I STEP on a snake. It BITE me in the leg. I TAKE a stone and THROW it at the snake. It DIE. b. Do you know what just happened to me? I WALK in the forest. Suddenly I STEP on a snake. It BITE me in the leg. I TAKE a stone and THROW it at the snake. It DIE.

tense

has more than one meaning and is not just a past tense form. Not only that, but given the variety of uses that the prefix conjugation has, with various shades of imperfectivity (inchoativity, habituality, continuous actions, to name but a few), it makes sense to attribute the converse aspect notion, perfectivity, to the suffix conjugation. In the preface to his edited volume on Semitic languages, Hetzron (1997:xvi) quotes Chaim Rabin, who said in a lecture, “Semitic has either aspects that express tenses or tenses that express aspects”. The question remaining now is whether from a pragmatic point of view, what we have here is indeed an implicature, as proposed by Dahl for similar cases across the world’s languages. Levinson (2000:261), in his chapter on grammar and implicature, argues that “the relation between syntax and pragmatics is of a fundamentally different kind than the semantics/pragmatics interface, for it is indirect”. If we accept the notion that the farther away from pragmatics our facts are, the harder it is to incorporate pragmatic theory into the analysis, then the situation with respect to the Arabic verbal forms is even tougher than with the sentential anaphora phenomena examined by Levinson. Elsewhere, Levinson (1983:77–78) follows Lyons in distinguishing between M(etalinguistic)-Tensed and (Language’s)-Tensed, acknowledging that one reason for the two not being entirely compatible has to do with the latter “nearly always encod[ing] additional aspectual and modal features too”. Phrases like used to give scholarships implicating no longer gives scholarships are said to be “permeated by Gricean mechanisms” (Levinson 2000:180), due to the opposition between used and unused temporal references. This may not be compatible with Sadock’s (1978) critical view of the testability of implicatures for their conversational nature. Yet, it may be recalled that Dahl’s arguments on TenseMoodAspect (TMA) categories was that they may be subject to the ‘conventionalization of implicatures’, in which case the need to calculate maxim violations, as is the case for conversational implicatures, may not be necessary. Clearly, the results of the experiment described here represent but the tip of the iceberg, and there is need of a more extensive corpus to be examined. It is not clear whether the

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proper methodology exists for testing hypotheses regarding the pragmatic status of conventionalized grammatical manifestations like the ones dealt with here. Native speakers clearly have intuitions about what denotes what, but for some reason – perhaps due to simplification of grammatical explanations in school – speakers rarely go beyond labeling the forms they use with temporal terminology. Notions like ‘perfective’ and ‘imperfective’, which for linguists may be, at least for some languages, part and parcel of the verbal system (see Comrie 1976:16), are often neglected or misunderstood, and it is therefore necessary to try to devise ways to circumvent the informants’ lack of expertise. Yet, this small-scale experiment indicates that despite quite a few dialectal differences, there is a certain degree of stability in the verbal system of the Arabic dialects. This may have to do with the fact that the suffix conjugation has never in the history of Arabic been very complex. The prefix conjugation, if closely examined, will most likely turn out to be far more complex and quite more variable. This should be examined with a combination of a corpus-based quantitative analysis and a carefully constructed language-specific questionnaire. Bibliographical references Primary sources Zajjàjì, ±î à™ = ±Abù l-Qàsim Abd ar-Ra™màn ibn ±Is™àq az-Zajjàjì, al-±î à™ fì ilal an-na™w. Ed. Màzin al-Mubàrak. Cairo: Dàr al- Urùba, 1959. Zamaxšarì, Mufaßßal = ±Abù l-Qàsim Ma™mùd ibn Umar az-Zamaxšarì, Kitàb al-mufaßßal fì n-na™w. Ed. Jens Peter Broch. Christiania: Libraria P.T. Mallingii, 1870. Secondary sources Aartun, Kjell. 1963. Zur Frage altarabischer Tempora. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Badawi, Elsaid, Michael G. Carter and Adrian Gully. 2004. Modern Written Arabic: A comprehensive grammar. London and New York: Routledge. Comrie, Bernard. 1976. Aspect: An introduction to the study of verbal aspect and related problems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dahl, Östen. 1985. Tense and aspect systems. Oxford: Blackwell. Eisele, John. 1999. Arabic verbs in time: Tense and aspect in Cairene Arabic. Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz. Fleisch, Henri. 1979. Traité de philologie arabe. II. Pronoms, morphologie verbale, particules. Beirut: Dar El-Machreq.

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Hetzron, Robert (ed.). 1997. The Semitic languages. New York: Routledge. Horesh, Uri. 2002. “Tense or aspect: Is Arabic past tense an implicature?”. Ms., University of Pennsylvania. Available at: www.ling.upenn.edu/~urih/ Horesh_TMA_Prag.pdf. Levinson, Stephen C. 1983. Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ——. 2000. Presumptive meanings. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Payne, Thomas E. 1997. Describing morphosyntax: A guide for field linguists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sadock, Jerold M. 1978. “On testing for conversational implicature”. Syntax and semantics. VI. Pragmatics, ed. Peter Cole, 281–297. New York: Academic Press. Versteegh, Kees. 1981. “La conception des ‘temps’ du verbe chez les grammairiens arabes”. Théorie Analyses 3.47–68. Wright, William. 1964. A grammar of the Arabic language. 3rd ed. rev. W. Robertson Smith and M.J. de Goeje. Repr. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Uri Horesh (Franklin & Marshall College)

Terminology 1. D e f i n i t i o n

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Although terminological creation is governed by the same linguistic framework as common vocabulary, it is subject to specific conditions of its own. ‘Terms’ can be defined as words or phrases aiming at the designation of concepts related to a particular field of knowledge or activity. New terms can be introduced either by individuals or by a limited community, in answer to particular needs and under conditions which vary from one field to another. As a result, prime occurrence of terms may – or may not – be produced through conscious activity, and new terms may – or may not – be created in an organized and methodical way. Moreover, their first appearance often leads to divergence between the models of formation that prevail in the common vocabulary and the formation of technical terminologies. Such a process cannot be without consequence for the development of common vocabulary, especially in modern times, owing to the fact that in any given language terminologies have grown at a much quicker pace than the general lexicon. Besides, it should be kept in mind that usages and traditions in creating new terms may vary

from one domain of knowledge and/or activity to another. 2. P e r i o d i z a t i o n o f t h e development of the Arabic lexicon 2.1

Periods of Arabic terminology

Arabic terminology has developed in the overall frame of what may be described as the ‘great periods’ of the vocabulary of the language, which can, on a very general basis, be divided into three parts (Dichy 1998): i. The first great period is that of the ‘language of the Ancient Arabs’ (lisàn al- Arab), which includes the original ancient lexicon. From the viewpoint of today’s lexicographers, this original lexicon appears both prior to Islam and contemporaneous to its foundation. Apart from basic notions, the preIslamic vocabulary, i.e. the original Arabic vocabulary, also includes a set of notions referring to the life and institutions of the Ancient Arabs, e.g. dàr ‘tent’; šahàda [sense 1] ‘testimony; witnessing’; †arab [sense 1] ‘deep joy or sadness; deep emotion [in relation to listening to poetry or singing]’; etc. In this pre-Islamic period, the great majority of terms referring to everyday life (nomadic life, parts of the Bedouin tent, camels, stars, etc.) were of Arabic or Semitic origin. But there already were some non-Semitic loanwords, most of them borrowed from Greek, Latin (often, through Greek and Syriac), or Persian ( Greek loanwords; Latin loanwords; Persian loanwords). An example is the word ßirà† ‘way, road’, which seems to have been directly borrowed from the Latin word stràta ‘pavement’, hence ‘paved way; military road’ (Rabin 1960). This word occurs 45 times in the Qur±àn, mostly in the noun phrase aß-ßirà† al-mustaqìm ‘the Straight Path’ (Q. 1/6). It is nevertheless difficult to trace terminological activity so far back. After the founding of Islam, a number of words belonging to the ancient Arabic lexicon were reused in a new meaning and became part of the semantic system originating in the Qur±àn and the teachings of the Prophet, i.e. in the fundamental religious and/or juridical terminology of Islam, e.g. hudà ‘right way; Guidance’; šahàda[sense 2]

Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics