Tense-aspect constructions in Jish Arabic: Morphological, syntactic, and semantic features

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1.   Introduction

 Describing the tense-aspect constructions of an undescribed language variety can have three major benefits. First, it contributes to the documentation of the variety, a process which is of great importance, especially when it comes to endangered varieties. Such a documentation can reveal the richness of, not only the target variety, but also the culture of the people speaking it. Second, it allows the linguist to conduct contrastive linguistic studies in which the tense-aspect constructions of the target variety are compared to their counterparts in other varieties and/or languages; here, the comparison can be on the morphological, syntactic, and/or semantic levels. Third, it benefits people who wish to learn the variety.

 The tense-aspect constructions in Modern Standard (MS) Arabic have been extensively described throughout the history of this language (Alsaif 2017, Alasmari, Watson & Atwell 2018, Fayyad 1997, Al-Saleemi 1987, Gadallah 2017, 2006, Mohammad 1982, Bahloul 2007, Ryding 2005). They have also been described in a few non-standard Arabic varieties (Eisele 1999, Brustad 2000, Bruweleit 2015, Moshref 2012). Yet, they have not been studied in the overwhelming majority of non-standard Arabic varieties. One of these varieties is Jish Arabic, described in Section 2 below. The aim of this paper is thus to describe the different tense-aspect constructions in this variety and discuss their meanings. This being so, this study is a “micro-linguistic” level study with implications for the fields of pure linguistics (more specifically, language documentation) and applied linguistics (particularly, FL teaching), points that will be elaborated on in the discussion.

Examining the micro-, rather than the macro-, linguistic level can yield more precise results. I employ the term micro-linguistic level to refer to one speech form spoken by a certain community residing in one relatively small town, and I use the term macro-linguistic level to refer to (very) similar speech forms of communities residing in the same region (which can be part of a country, a whole country, or even a number of countries, as is the case with the Arab world). Targeting the macro-linguistic level means viewing similar speech forms of different communities as if they were one speech form. While such speech forms can be very similar to each other (especially those which are geographically adjacent to each other), they are not identical; they can differ phonologically, semantically, morphologically, and/or syntactically.

The structure of this paper is as follows. Section 2 provides a theoretical background, and it is divided into two subsections: Subsection 2.1 defines the concepts of tense and aspect, and Subsection 2.2 introduces the reader to Jish Arabic. Section 3 discusses the method of explicating[1] the meanings of the Jish Arabic tense-aspect constructions in a simple, universal language. Section 4 presents the different Jish Arabic tense-aspect constructions and the explications of their meanings. Section 5 is the discussion, and Section 6 is the conclusion.

2.   Theoretical foundations

2.1.  Background and goals

Before analyzing the Jish Arabic tense-aspect constructions, it is important to clarify what is meant by the terms tense and aspect. From a pedagogical perspective, the meanings of these two terms seem to be regarded as straightforward and easily explained, and one would not fail to notice this if they peruse, e.g., different English grammar textbooks (see, e.g., Dray et al. 1993, Green 1995, Murphy 2019). From a linguistic perspective, on the other hand, the meanings of these two terms are not straightforward. Linguists can disagree on the number of tenses and aspects in, for instance, English because they do not appear to agree on what to include under these two terms (cf. Kroeger 2005: 159). Delving into a detailed treatment of this topic is outside the scope of this article, but a brief discussion of it is still necessary.

The term tense should not be equated with time. Native speakers of any language can talk about the present moment, what preceded it, and what can come after it, as all languages have exact semantic equivalents of the English words now, before, and after (Goddard 2008, Goddard & Wierzbicka 1994, 2002, Peeters 2006). However, not every language expresses time reference through its verbal system, to which the term tense is typically restricted.

Tense can be defined as the expression of the location of an event or state in time via the language’s verbal system (Comrie 1985: 9, Dixon 2012: 5, Givón 2001: 285). While linguists agree on this definition, they do not agree on the number of tenses in a certain language, as this number depends on whether or not linguists confine their definition of tense to the morphology of the verb in that language.

If tense is defined as the time reference indicated by verb morphology, English, for example, would be said to have only two tenses, past and non-past (Crystal 1997: 196). If the verb is in its second form (V₂), it refers to a time in the past (e.g., I played basketball); if it is in its first form (V₁) and is not preceded by to, it can refer to the present (e.g., I play basketball) or future (e.g., I will play basketball tomorrow). If the definition of tense is not confined to verb morphology, English would be said to have more than two tenses.

Exactly how many tenses a language has depends on what the linguist includes under this term. Givón (2001, 286), for example, states that English has four tenses: past (e.g., She watched the whale), present (e.g., She is watching the wale), future (e.g., She will watch the whale), and habitual (e.g., She always watches whales). On the other hand, Rozakis (2003) writes that English has six tenses: present (I live here), past (I lived here), future (I will live here), present perfect (I have lived here), past perfect (I had lived here), future perfect (I will have lived here). Declerck (2015) argues that English has eight tenses; to the six tenses mentioned by Rozakis, Declerck adds the conditional (I would live here) and the conditional perfect  (I would have lived here). It is worth noting that Rozakis’s (2003) analysis is more pedagogical in the sense that it echoes that of EFL grammar textbooks, which present six tenses under the heading “tenses” while the conditionals under their own heading (see, e.g., Murphy 2019).

As can be seen, unlike Rozakis (2003) and Declerck (2015), Givón (2001) does not regard the perfect as a tense; this is because he regards it as an aspect. Kroeger (2005: 159) points out that linguists do not agree on whether to classify the perfect as a tense or an aspect, as it has features of both. But what is aspect?

Aspect can be defined as the way the predicate (roughly, the verb phrase and minimally the verb) is presented. One can speak of two main kinds of aspect, lexical and morphological. Lexically, predicates can be either events (e.g., I ate the apple) or states (e.g., I am here). Morphologically, a predicate can have perfective aspect or imperfective aspect. The perfective aspect presents the event as a whole (e.g.,  I ate the apple) and not as a process. The imperfective aspect presents the event as a process, and it can be of different kinds, such as the progressive (e.g., I am eating the apple), habitual (e.g., I used to eat apples), and iterative (e.g., I will keep on doing it) (Kroeger 2005: 152–57).

When discussing the forms of the verb in Classical and MS Arabic, contemporary Arabic grammarians who write in Arabic follow the traditional grammarians in talking about three ṣiyagh (صِيَغ) ‘forms’: al-ʾamr (الأمر), al-māḍī (الماضي), and al-muḍārīʿ (المضارع) (Alshartuni 1969, Bukhdud 1987, Malik 2007 [13^th cen.]). Al-ʾamr ‘lit. the order’ is the imperative mood. Al-māḍī ‘lit. the past’ is the form used to talk about past states or events in declarative and interrogative statements. This form can also be used to refer to the future in some conditional and optative constructions. For example, the sentence ghafara allāhu laka (غَفَرَ اللهُ لَكَ) can mean either ‘God forgave you’ or ‘May God forgive you.’ Al-muḍārīʿ ‘lit. the similar’ form is employed to refer to the present in declarative sentences, to the past when preceded by, e.g., the negative marker lam (لم), and to the future when preceded by, e.g., the negative marker lan (لن). Consider the following three sentences: (1) yaktubu alwaladu jumlatan (يَكْتُبُ الوَلَدُ جُملَةً) ‘The boy writes a sentence,’ (2) lam yaktubi[2] alwaladu jumlatan (لَمْ يَكْتُبِ الوَلَدُ جُملَةً) ‘The boy did not write a sentence,’ and (3) lan yaktuba alwaladu jumlatan (لَنْ يَكْتُبَ الوَلَدُ جُملَةً) ‘The boy will not write a sentence.’

Linguists describing in English the syntax of MS Arabic or a non-standard Arabic variety use the word perfect or perfective to refer to al-māḍī ‘lit. the past’ form and the word imperfect or imperfective to refer to al-muḍārīʿ ‘lit. the similar’ form. At the same time, they do not agree on whether the verbal system in MS Arabic or any of the non-standard varieties encodes tense and/or aspect (Fayyad 1997, Eisele 1999, Brustad 2000, Holes 2004, Ryding 2005, Aoun, Benmamoun, & Choueiri 2010, Bruweleit 2015, Gadallah 2006, 2017, Alsaif 2017 Alasmari, Watson, & Atwell 2018, Mudhsh 2021). In this paper, I use the term perfective to refer to al-māḍī ‘lit. the past’ form and the term imperfective to al-muḍārīʿ ‘lit. the similar’ form.

It is worth noting that Arabic grammar textbooks written in Arabic focus exclusively on the description of Classical and MS Arabic and never on the non-standard varieties. Thus the grammatical terms al-māḍī and al-muḍārīʿ are familiar to native Arabic speakers solely from Arabic grammar classes at school. While the MS Arabic word al-māḍī has an equivalent in the non-standard varieties, the word al-muḍārīʿ does not. Therefore, whilst the literal meaning of the former term is easily understood, that of the latter is not.

Based on anecdotal evidence gathered from educated Arabic speakers in Jish and elsewhere, I have found that their understanding of al-māḍī and al-muḍārīʿ forms is partially correct. They seem to understand al-māḍī form as referring exclusively to the past. Since al-māḍī and al-muḍārīʿ forms are always contrasted in Arabic grammar classes, native Arabic speakers seem to understand al-muḍārīʿ form as referring to the present. All the native speakers consulted thought that al-muḍārīʿ meant al-ḥāḍir (الحاضر) ‘the present.’ None of them realized that it means mushābih (مشابه) ‘similar’ and that it is so called due to the fact that this verbal form receives the ḍammat (ضمة) ‘indicative marker’ and the fatḥat (فتحة) ‘subjunctive marker,’ which look the same as the nominative and accusative markers attached to nouns (cf. Sibawayh 1988 [8^th cen.]: 13).

In this paper, I will not talk about tense and aspect separately but rather about tense-aspect constructions. In Section 4, I will present the different Jish Arabic tense-aspect constructions and explicate their meanings in a simple, universal language.

Before setting out to explicate the different Jish Arabic tense-aspect constructions, it should be pointed out that verbs belong to different categories. Givón (2001: 287), for example, divides the verbs in the lexicon of all languages into “four major groups in terms of their inherent aspectuality,” that is:

(1)    activity verbs, which describe an activity or a process and constitute the majority of verbs in any language, e.g. read, eat, and dance; semantically, they imply “doing something for some time”

(2)    compact verbs, which describe events of very short duration and which can be understood as referring to “a moment,” e.g. shoot, kick, and jump

(3)    accomplishment verbs, whose meaning involves the component “someone did something because they wanted something to happen,” e.g. leave and come

(4)    stative verbs, which refer to states, e.g. know, want, and believe.

Owing to space constraints, in this paper, the semantic analyses and explications will be restricted to the first three categories, which refer to action verbs. As the term compact may sound obscure, I will employ the term done-in-a-moment instead. The meanings of done-in-a-moment, accomplishment, and activity verbs can be described via the semantic prime do; consequently, in what follows, I will provide a general explication of each of the three types of verbs using the Jish Arabic verb ʿimil ‘do.’

In Section 4, I will present the Jish Arabic tense-aspect constructions while comparing them to the following English tense-aspect constructions. The order of the presentation is as follows. Subsection 4.1 discusses the past constructions, viz. the Jish Arabic counterparts of the following English constructions:

1. Past simple
2. Past progressive
3. Past perfect simple
4. Past perfect progressive
5. Habitual past

Subsection 4.2 discusses the present tense-aspect constructions, that is the Jish Arabic counterparts of the following English constructions:

1. Present simple
2. Present progressive
3. Present perfect simple
4. Present perfect progressive

I do not include the future for two reasons. The first is space constraints. The second is owing to a lack of consensus among linguists on whether or not the future is regarded as a tense. For example, Givón (2001: 286) treats the English future as a tense, but Dixon (2012: 8) does not; he remarks:

In a language of type II, the grammatical system of tense is confined to past and (in many instances) present time. There is no overarching grammatical term referring to ‘future’. One has instead to choose the appropriate member from a system of modalities. English is of this type. Past time is shown by past tense inflection on the verb, as in John went out hunting yesterday. But if one shifts from ‘yesterday’ to ‘tomorrow’ then the speaker of English must choose between stating an obligation (John should go out hunting tomorrow), or a necessity (John must go out hunting tomorrow), or a prediction (John will go out hunting tomorrow), or a conjecture (John may go out hunting tomorrow), and so on.

The same is true of Jish Arabic. Jish Arabic uses the verb raḥ ‘lit. go’ followed by the imperfective form of the verb to refer to a future event, as in sāndī raḥ yākul ‘Sandy will eat.’

If this construction, that is raḥ+imperfective, is included in this paper, the reader may justifiably wonder why other similar constructions, namely the Jish Arabic equivalents of the English modal constructions, are not included. The length required to treat so many constructions would greatly reduce the readability of this paper. This being so, I will limit the discussion to the constructions mentioned above.

It is worth noting that I discuss the Jish Arabic tense-aspect constructions in reference to (or in partial comparison with) English. I am not discussing them in full comparison with their English counterparts, as I am not discussing the English tense-aspect constructions and comparing them to their Jish Arabic counterparts. Nor am I discussing the Jish Arabic constructions through the prism of English, as the aim of the paper is to explicate the meanings of these constructions in a simple, universal language and thus avoid Anglocentrism. Reference to the English tense-aspect constructions is meant simply to facilitate comprehension of their Arabic counterparts.[3]

2.2.  Jish Arabic

Arabic is a diglossic language; that is to say, it has two forms, High and Low. The High form is the standardized register, but it is not spoken natively by anyone. About 1400 years ago, this form seems to have been the mother tongue of the people of Najd (an area in present-day Saudi Arabia), although some claim that it was merely a literary language (in Fakhouri 1986: 50, in Aoun, Benmamoun, & Choueiri 2010: 1). It was also the language of Arabic poetry; even those poets who natively spoke other forms of Arabic used this form in their poems. The advent of Islam saw the standardization of this form, particularly because it was the language of the Quran. Today, this form is known as Classical Arabic, and its modern version (which has been developed by litterateurs and the media over the years) is known as Modern Standard (MS) Arabic. MS Arabic is used in formal settings, such as courts, schools, and media (Fakhouri 1986: 49–51, Holes 2018).

The Low form consists of a myriad of varieties, and each variety is the mother tongue of a community of speakers. The mutual intelligibility between any two varieties is in inverse relation to the geographical distance between them; the closer they are, the more mutually intelligible they are (Aoun, Benmamoun, & Choueiri 2010: 2). Unlike MS Arabic, none of these varieties has been developed into a variety used in all formal settings.

Jish Arabic is one of those varieties. It is spoken natively by about 3,000 people residing in Jish. Jish itself is a small town in northern Israel, about five kilometers from the Israeli-Lebanese borders. The present author was born, grew up, and resides in Jish and speaks Jish Arabic natively. Its grammar, like the grammar of the overwhelming majority of non-standard Arabic varieties, has not been fully described. In addition, there is no corpus of Jish Arabic, and hence, I rely on my knowledge of the language as well as on consulting other native speakers.

The Jish Arabic verbal system encodes aspect. In the interlinear gloss, the perfective aspect will be indicated by <pfv> and the imperfective aspect by <ipfv>. In addition, verbs can occur in the active participle, which will be indicated by <actptcl>.

3.   Methodology

Discussing the meanings of the different tense-aspect constructions in Jish Arabic requires a method that can evade ambiguity, complexity, and Anglocentrism. Words like tense, perfect, aspect, perfective, imperfective, and durative, for example, do not have equivalents in Jish Arabic. Using them to describe the tense-aspect constructions in Jish Arabic will result in descriptions that cannot be translated into the target language, and thus, cannot be verified by native speakers of this language. Overcoming this obstacle is possible through the Natural Semantic Metalanguage.

The Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) is a theory developed by Anna Wierzbicka, Cliff Goddard, and colleagues for over 50 years (Wierzbicka 1972, 1980, 2021, Goddard & Wierzbicka 1994, 2002a, Goddard 2008a, Gladkova 2010, Gladkova & Larina 2018, Levisen 2012, Goddard & Wierzbicka 2014, Goddard 2018, Bromhead & Ye 2020, Habib 2021, Goddard, Wierzbicka & Farese 2022).  It has a number of key constructs, three of which are semantic primes, universal grammar, and explications.

Semantic primes are simple, universal concepts. They are simple in the sense that they are indefinable, and they are universal in the sense that they have exact equivalents in all languages. Their simplicity is attested through trial and error, and their universality has been proven by locating their exact equivalents in genetically and geographically different languages. Their number stands at 65, as is demonstrated in the table below:

Table 1. Semantic primes (English exponents) (Goddard & Wierzbicka 2014)

NSM research indicates that semantic primes can be combined into simple phrases and sentences, according to patterns which are shared by all languages. These combinations are called canonical sentences or combinatorial frames. The following examples are illustrative: ‘something happened at this time,’ ‘someone was doing something for some time,’ and ‘people can know when it happened.’

NSM linguists use combinatorial frames to build larger text-like structures called explications. An explication is an elaborate definition of a certain concept or grammatical structure. It states the meaning of this concept or structure in a simple, universal language. In this paper, I will provide an explication of each of the different Jish Arabic tense-aspect constructions.

Different NSM researchers have demonstrated the effectiveness of NSM in uncovering the relationship between a verbal form and its linguistic behavior, especially when it comes to the category of aspect. To give but two examples, Wierzbicka (2002) and Gladkova (2008: 36–114) have used semantic primes in the analysis of the Polish and Russian categories of aspect, respectively.

4.     Analysis

In this section, I present the Jish Arabic past and present tense-aspect constructions while referring to their English counterparts. As has been mentioned above, the English constructions are used as a familiar point of reference. This does not make the presentation prone to Anglocentrism, because, in the end, each Jish Arabic construction is explicated using a simple, universal language.

4.1.  Jish Arabic past tense-aspect constructions

4.1.1.  V_pfv (عِمِلْ): Jish Arabic counterpart of English past simple

Jish Arabic uses the perfective form to talk about an action that began and ended in the past, usually at a definite time. Thus it is the equivalent of English past simple. The following example is illustrative:

(1)     ساندي أكل التفاحة مبارح

sāndī akal                   it-tuffaḥa mbēriḥ

Sandy eat(3sg.m.pfv) def-apple yesterday

‘Sandy ate the apple yesterday.’

There does not seem to be any semantic difference between the Jish Arabic tense-aspect construction and its English counterpart, and both can be explicated as follows:

(A)    Someone ʿimil ‘did’ something (X) [activity verb, e.g. ʾara ‘read’ or ʾakal ‘eat’]

1. 1. Sometime before now, something happened in one place
   2. People can know when it happened
   3. It was like this:
      
      1. Someone was doing something in that place for some time as this someone wanted

(B)    Someone ʿimil ‘did’ something (X) [done-in-a-moment verb, e.g. ṭakh ‘shoot’]

1. 1. Sometime before now, something happened in one place
   2. People can know when it happened
   3. It was like this:
      
      1. Someone did something in that place in one moment as this someone wanted

(C)    Someone ʿimil ‘did’ something (X) [accomplishment verb, e.g. tarak ‘leave’]

1. 1. Sometime before now, something happened in one place
   2. People can know when it happened
   3. It was like this:
      
      1. Someone did something in that place because this someone wanted something to happen
      2. This thing happened as this someone wanted

A few comments are in order. First, component (a) of each explication has the semantic primes before now because some languages (like Malay) do not encode the time of action morphologically but instead semantically through a temporal expression. This component also specifies that the action happened in one place, as actions of this kind are normally spatially localized.

Second, component (b) states that people can know when the action took place. This is true of both Jish Arabic and English, both of which allow the specification of the time at which the action took place.

Third, component (c) states that the action took place as the agent wanted. This is true of so many verbs that refer to actions over which the agent has considerable control (cf. Goddard 2015: 4).

Fourth, the explications of done-in-a-moment verbs have to include the semantic primes in one moment because these verbs depict events of very short duration. In contrast, the meanings of activity verbs involve a process (hence the need for the subcomponent ‘someone was doing something for some time’), at the end of which there is a result that the doer wanted (hence the need for ‘as this someone wanted’). The meanings of accomplishment verbs, on the other hand, do not focus on a process but on the end result.

4.1.2. kān ʿam V_ipfv / kān V_actptcl (كانْ عَمْ يِعْمِلْ / كانْ جايّْ):  Jish Arabic counterpart of English past progressive

To talk about a continuous action in the past, Jish Arabic uses the auxiliary verb kān ‘be’ followed by ʿam (progressive marker) and the imperfective form of the main verb. The auxiliary verb kān ‘be’ and the main verb are conjugated for person, number, gender, and aspect. The continuous action was either in progress during a specific time in the past as in (2), or was interrupted by another action as in (3), or was simultaneous to another continuous action as in (4).

(2)     مبارح بمتل هدا الوقت، كنت عم باكل

mbēriḥ     bi-mitil    hādā          il-waʾit    kun-it         ʿam    bā-kul

yesterday prep-like this(sg.m) def-time be-1sg.pfv prog 1sg.ipfv-eat

‘I was eating at this time yesterday.’

(3)     كانت عم تاكل لما إجيت

kān-at            ʿam    tā-kul            limmā ij-īt

be-3sg.f.pfv prog 2sg.ipfv-eat when   come-1sg.pfv

  ‘She was eating when I came.’

(4)     كنت عم تاكل لما كنت عم بنضف

kun-it            ʿam    tā-kul           limmā kun-it          ʿam   ba-naḍḍif

  be-2sg.pfv prog 2sg.ipfv-eat when  be-1sg.pfv prog 1sg.ipfv-eat

‘You were eating while I was cleaning.’

This tense-aspect construction is expressed in English using the past progressive; its explication is as follows:

(D)    Someone kān ʿam yiʿmil ‘was doing’ something (X) [activity verb, e.g. ʾara ‘read’ or akal ‘eat’]

1. 1. Sometime before now, something was happening in one place for some time
   2. it was like this during that time:
      
      1. Someone was doing something (X) in that place as this someone wanted

(E)     Someone kān ʿam yiʿmil ‘was doing’ something (X) [done-in-a-moment verb, e.g. ṭakh ‘shoot’]

1. 1. Sometime before now, something was happening in one place for some time
   2. it was like this during that time:
      
      1. Someone did something (X) in that place in one moment as this someone wanted
      2. This someone did the same thing (X) many times

(F)     Someone kān ʿam yiʿmil ‘was doing’ something (X) [accomplishment verb, e.g. tarak ‘leave’]

1. 1. Sometime before now, something was happening in one place for some time
   2. it was like this during that time:
      
      1. Someone was doing something (X) in that place because this someone wanted something to happen
      2. This thing was happening as this someone wanted

4.1.3.  kān ṣār V_actptcl (كانْ صارْ عامِلْ):  Jish Arabic counterpart of English past perfect simple

 In Jish Arabic, to indicate that a certain action took place before another action or point in time in the past, the auxiliary verbs kān ‘be’ and ṣār ‘become’ are used followed by the active participle of the main verb. Both of the Jish Arabic auxiliary verbs are conjugated for person, number, gender, and aspect. Take the following example:

(5)     لما إجا، كنت صرت ماكل التفاحة

limmā ijā,                         kun-it         ṣur-it                   m<ā>kel        it-tuffaḥa

When    come(3sg.m.pfv) be-1sg.pfv become-1sg.pfv eat<actptcl> def-apple

‘When he came, I had eaten the apple.’

This tense-aspect construction seems to be semantically the same as the past perfect simple in English.

The explications of the three types of verbs when used in the grammatical construction kān ṣār V_actptcl are as follows:

(G)        Someone kān ṣār ʿāmil ‘had done’ something (X) when something (Y) happened [activity verb, e.g. ʾara ‘read’ or akal ‘eat’]

1. 1. Sometime before now, something (Y) happened in one place
   2. People can know when it happened
   3. Before it happened, it was like this:
      
      1. Someone was doing something (X) in that place for some time as this someone wanted
   4. When this thing (Y) happened, people could know something

(H)        Someone kān ṣār ʿāmil ‘had done’ something (X) when something (Y) happened [done-in-a-moment verb, e.g. ṭakh ‘shoot’]

1. 1. Sometime before now, something (Y) happened in one place
   2. People can know when it happened
   3. Before it happened, it was like this:
      
      1. Someone did something (X) in one moment in that place as this someone wanted
   4. When it happened, people could know something

(I)          Someone kān ṣār ʿāmil ‘had done’ something (X) when something (Y) happened [accomplishment verb, e.g. tarak ‘leave’]

1. 1. Sometime before now, something (Y) happened in one place
   2. People can know when it happened
   3. Before it happened, it was like this:
      
      1. Someone did something (X) in that place because this someone wanted something to happen
      2. It happened as this someone wanted
   4. When this thing (Y) happened, people could know something

Three comments are in order. First, of the two actions (X) and (Y), only (Y) can be described with a time expression (see component (b)). This is true of both Jish Arabic and English. Action (Y) is described using a verb in the perfective form in Jish Arabic and in the past simple in English, and both allow for the specification of time at which action (Y) took place. On the other hand, the Jish Arabic kān ṣār V_actptcl form and its English counterpart—past perfect simple—do not allow such a specification. In English, for instance, one can say ‘I wrote a letter yesterday’ but not ‘*I had written a letter yesterday,’ and the same holds for Jish Arabic. One may claim that there is a contradiction. On the one hand, there is a specification of the time at which action (Y) happened; on the other, there is a restriction against adding a time adverb/expression to action (X). This apparent contradiction is resolved when we bear in mind that the perfect encodes an action that took place prior to the temporal reference point (at which action (Y) took place); when exactly action (Y) took place is either not known or is not in view.

Second, component (d) of each explication presents a shared feature of the English perfect and its Jish Arabic counterpart, which is their lingering relevance. Although action (X) happened before action (Y), it is deemed relevant not at the time when it occurred but at the time when action (Y) occurred (cf. Givón 2001: 296). This is why this component states that people in the place where action (Y) took place could know something; the thing they can know can be about the person who did action (X), as in ‘When I arrived, Sam had already left’ (here, the speaker knows something about Sam, namely that Sam left before the speaker’s arrival) or about something or someone else, as in ‘By the time the firefighters arrived, the fire had burned the entire field’ (here, people know something about the field, i.e. that it got entirely burned before the firefighters’ arrival).

Third, the reader may wonder whether the words ‘because it (Y) happened’ should be added to the last component, so that it would read ‘when this thing (Y) happened, people could know something because it (Y) happened.’ This could be applicable to some, but certainly not all, situations. For example, if the speaker tells his friend that he was near a field that had entirely been burned when the firefighters arrived, the speaker knows about what happened to the field because he witnessed that and not because of the arrival of the firefighters. In a similar vein, the speaker’s friend knows about what happened to the field because of the speaker and not because of the arrival of the firefighters.

4.1.4. kān ṣār-l-P_gen ʿam V_ipfv (كانْ صارْلُه عَمْ يِعْمِلْ):  Jish Arabic counterpart of English past perfect progressive

 The Jish Arabic tense-aspect construction kān ṣār-l-P_gen ʿam V_ipfv is employed to talk about a continuous or repeated action that began before and continued until another action began, as is illustrated by examples (6) and (7). It is also employed to describe states that began before another action and continued until the other action began, as is seen in example (8).

(6)     لما إجا، كان صرلي نص ساعة عم باكل

limmā ijā,                     kān                  ṣār-l-ī                                             nuṣ

when come(3sg.m.pfv) be(3sg.m.pfv) become(3sg.m.pfv)-prep-1sg.gen half

sēʿa  ʿam    bā-kul

hour prog 1sg.ipfv-eat

‘When he came, I had been eating for half an hour.’

(7)     لما إجا كان صرلي نص ساعة عم بجرب أعمل هدا الإشي

limmā ijā,                      kān                 ṣār-l-ī                                             nuṣ

when come(3sg.m.pfv) be(3sg.m.pfv) become(3sg.m.pfv)-prep-1sg.gen half

sēʿa ʿam    ba-jarrib      a-ʿmil   hādā          il-ishī

hour prog 1sg.ipfv-try 1sg-try this(sg.m) def-thing(sg.m)

‘When he came, I had been trying to do this for half an hour.’

(8)     لما إجا، كان صرلي هون نص ساعة

limmā ijā,                      kān                  ṣār-l-ī                                               hōn

when come(3sg.m.pfv) be(3sg.m.pfv) become(3sg.m.pfv)-prep-1sg.gen here

nuṣ sēʿa

half hour

‘When he came, I had been here for half an hour.’

Note that this tense-aspect construction is expressed through the third-person singular masculine perfective form of the auxiliary verbs kān ‘be’ (which is not conjugated) and ṣār ‘become’ (which is conjugated for person, number, gender, and aspect, and to which the preposition -(i)l- ‘to’ and a pronoun in the genitive form are attached) followed by ʿam (the progressive marker) and the imperfective form of the main verb.

At first glance, the English past perfect progressive seems to have an exact equivalent in Jish Arabic. A closer look, however, reveals a difference. Unlike in Jish Arabic, in English, the past perfect progressive can be used for a continuous or repeated action that stopped a little before another action began. In example (9) below, it is clear that Sandy stopped his continuous action of swimming and got out of the pool only right before the speaker saw him.

(9)         I knew that Sandy had been swimming in the pool because his trunks were wet.

In Jish Arabic, this sentence is expressed using the auxiliary verbs kān ‘be’ and ʿam (progressive marker) but not ṣār ‘become.’ I regard this as the Jish Arabic equivalent of English past progressive, explained in Subsection 4.1.2.

Another difference between this Jish Arabic tense-aspect construction and its English counterpart is that in Jish Arabic a specific duration of time has to be mentioned.

The meaning of kān ṣārlu ʿam ipfv(3sg.m) can be couched in NSM as follows:

(J)          Someone kān ṣār-l-u ʿam yiʿmil ‘had been doing’ something (X) for some time when something (Y) happened [activity verb, e.g. ʾara ‘read’ or akal ‘eat’]

1. 1. Sometime before now, something (Y) happened in one place
   2. People can know when it happened
   3. Before it happened:
      
      1. Someone was doing something (X) in that place for some time as this someone wanted
   4. People in that place could know for how long

Explication (J) captures the idea that two actions/events took place, one before the other. Component (a) refers to the one that chronologically took place second, and component (b) indicates that its timing is known. Component (c) refers to the action that chronologically took place first, hence the phrase ‘Before it happened’, where it refers to the second action/event. The first action was continuous and was taking place as the doer wanted. Component (d) tells the reader that people can know the duration of the action (X).

Explication (K) below is identical to explication (J) above except for component (c). In explication (K), component (c) introduces a done-in-a-moment action that is repeated for some time.

(K)        Someone kān ṣārlu ʿam yiʿmil ‘had been doing’ something (X) for some time when something (Y) happened [done-in-a-moment verb, e.g. ṭakh ‘shoot’]

1. 1. Sometime before now, something (Y) happened in one place
   2. People can know when it happened
   3. Before it happened:
      
      1. Someone was doing something (X) in one place for some time as this someone wanted
      2. It was like this:
      3. This someone did something (X) in that place in one moment
      4. For some time, this someone did this thing (X) many times
   4. People in that place could know for how long

Note that accomplishment verbs cannot be used in this tense-aspect construction either in Jish Arabic or in English.

4.1.5.  kān V_ipfv (كانْ يِعْمِلْ): Jish Arabic counterpart of English habitual past

 To talk about habitual actions in the past, Jish Arabic uses the auxiliary verb kān ‘be’ and the imperfective form of the main verb, both of which are conjugated for person, number, gender, and aspect, as is exemplified in (10):

(10)      ساندي كان ياكل تفاح زمان

sāndī  kān                   y-ākul               tuffāḥ       zamān

Sandy be(3sg.m.pfv) 3sg.m.ipfv-eat apple(pl) in.the.past

‘Sandy used to eat apples in the past.’

The meaning of this tense-aspect construction can be spelled out in NSM as follows:

(L)         Someone kān yiʿmil ‘used to do’ something (X) [activity verb, e.g. ʾara ‘read’ or akal ‘eat’]

1. 1. Sometime before now, it was like this for a long time:
      
      1. Someone was doing something for some time as this someone wanted
      2. This someone often did the same thing
   2. People can know that it is not like this anymore

Component (a) tells the reader that the action took place in the past and was repeated over a long period of time. The word often is a portmanteau used in NSM instead of the phrase at many times. Component (b) is necessary because a sentence in the habitual past implies that the action is not done in the present.

(M)       Someone kān yiʿmil ‘used to do’ something (X) [done-in-a-moment verb, e.g. ṭakh ‘shoot’]

1. 1. Sometime before now, it was like this for a long time:
      
      1. Someone did something in one moment, as this someone wanted
      2. This someone often did the same thing
   2. People can know that it is not like this anymore

One may wonder whether or not component (a.i.) should include the words many times and read ‘someone did something many times. When this someone did it, this someone did it in one moment.’ After all, a sentence like ‘My rabbit used to jump everywhere each time it was released from its cage’ implies that the jumping was repetitive. While this is true in this case, it is not always necessarily so. Consider the sentence ‘Sam used to slap me on the face each time he saw me.’ This sentence means that Sam used to slap the speaker once each time he saw him. The semantic difference between the two sentences stems from the verb jump and its combination with the word everywhere.

(N)        Someone kān yiʿmil ‘used to do’ something (X) [accomplishment verb, e.g. tarak ‘leave’]

1. 1. Sometime before now, it was like this for a long time:
   2. Someone did something because this someone wanted something to happen
   3. This thing happened as this someone wanted
   4. This someone often did the same thing
   5. People can know that it is not like this anymore

 It is noteworthy that, without context or a time expression indicating long duration, this tense-aspect construction—when used with done-in-a-moment and activity verbs—can refer to a continuous action in the past. In this case, its meaning is identical to that of kān ʿam V_ipfv discussed in Subsection 4.1.2.

 Additionally, unlike the explications in the previous subsections, the explications in this subsection do not have the semantic primes in this place. This is because a habitual action is not necessarily confined to one place.

4.2. Jish Arabic present tense-aspect constructions

4.2.1.  V_ipfv (بْيِعْمِلْ): Jish Arabic counterpart of English present simple

 In Jish Arabic, if the imperfective form of the verb appears without any auxiliary verb, it can convey habitual semantics, as in example (11), a fact, as in (12), or a scheduled event, as in (13). This tense-aspect construction is the Jish Arabic equivalent of English present simple.

(11)      دايما بسبح ع 5:00

dāyman  ba-sbaḥ           ʿal     5:00.

always   1sg.ipfv-swim prep 5:00

‘I always swim at 5:00.’

(12)      البابا فرنسيس هو بابا روما

il-bābā      fransīs  huwwi bābā rōmā.

def-pope Francis  3sg.m  pope Roma

‘Pope Francis is the Pope of Rome.’

(13)      الترين بطلع ع 6:00

li-trēn       bi-ṭlaʿ                 ʿa      6:00

def-train 3sg.m.ipfv-leave prep 6:00

‘The train leaves at 6:00.’

The above examples raise the following four points about habituals and facts. First, habitual actions (he eats apples) or states (he sleeps early) repeat themselves. In the absence of adverbials (e.g., every day, almost never, sometimes or occasionally), the repetition is understood to be highly regular (at many times or at all times).

Second, every habit that exists is in the end a fact; however, not every fact is a habit. Example (12) refers to a fact—something that is true—which is not a habit.

Third, a fact can refer to an action or state that people either believe to be true (like any fact pertaining to our world) or wish to temporarily assume to be true (such as any piece of information that is mentioned in a fictional novel).

Fourth, one may be tempted to claim that all that has been mentioned here applies to the English past simple and future simple, as well as to their Jish Arabic counterparts. This is partially, but not entirely, true. A sentence like ‘He always ate apples and will always do the same’ refers to a habit in the past and future. The meaning of the habit, I would argue, stems from the adverb of frequency always and not from the tense-aspect construction. In the absence of adverbials expressing frequency, such a sentence would normally be understood to refer to a particular action and not to a habit.

(O)    Someone byiʿmil ‘does’ something (X) [activity verb, e.g. ʾara ‘read’ or akal ‘eat’]

1. 1. People can know that it is like this at many/all times:
      
      1. Someone is doing something for some time as this someone wants

(P)     Someone byiʿmil ‘does’ something (X) [done-in-a-moment verb, e.g. ṭakh ‘shoot’]

1. 1. People can know that it is like this at many/all times:
      
      1. Someone does something in one moment as this someone wants

(Q)    Someone byiʿmil ‘does’ something (X) [accomplishment verb, e.g. tarak ‘leave’]

1. 1. People can know that it is like this at many/all times:
   2. Someone does something because this someone wants something to happen
   3. It happens as this someone wants

Scheduled events actually refer to the future, not to the present. In addition, it carries the meaning of planning and letting other people know about the plan. The meaning of planning involves deciding to do something, the explication of which is as follows:

(R)    someone byiʿmil ‘does’ something X after now

1. 1. Sometime before now, someone thought like this for some time:
      
      1. ‘I want to do something (X) after now
      2. I want other people to know this’
   2. Because of it, people can know this:
      
      1. ‘this someone will do this thing (X) after now’

4.2.2.  ʿam V_ipfv and V_actptcl (جايّْ/ عَمْ يِعْمِلْ):  Jish Arabic counterpart of English present progressive

In English, the progressive aspect of the present tense is formed by am/is/are with the present participle of the verb and is employed to refer to an action that is happening at the time of speaking or around the time of speaking, as in (14) and (15). It is also used to talk about planned events in the future, as in (16).

(14)      She is speaking to you now.

(15)      I am studying English this year.

(16)      We are coming for dinner this evening.

Examples (17)–(19) are rendered in Jish Arabic as follows:

(17)      عم تحكي معك إسا

ʿam    ti-ḥki                    maʿ-ak         issā

prog 3sg.f.ipfv-speak prep-2sg.m now

‘She is speaking to you now.’

(18)      عم بتعلم إنچليزي هاي السنة

ʿam    ba-tʿallam        inglīzī   hay           is-sinni

prog 1sg.ipfv-study English this(sg.f) def-year

‘I am studying English this year.’

(19)      إحنا جايين عالعشا اليوم المسا

iḥnā j<ā>yy-īn                     ʿa=l-ʿashā           il-yōm     il-masā

1pl  come<actptcl>-pl.m prep=def-dinner def-day def-evening

‘We are coming for dinner this evening.’

Examples (17) and (18) demonstrate two facts. First, the English present progressive is rendered in Jish Arabic through the progressive marker ʿam and the imperfective form of the main verb (which is conjugated for person, number, and gender). Second, the English present progressive and its Jish Arabic counterpart are used to talk about an action that is taking place at or around the time of speaking. However, unlike English am/is/are +Ving, the Jish Arabic progressive marker ʿam and the imperfective form of the main verb cannot be used to talk about planned events in the future. To express a planned event in Jish Arabic, the active participle form of the verb and a future time expression are employed, as is seen in  example (19) above.

Here are the explications of the actions taking place at the time of speech:

(S)     Someone ʿam yiʿmil ‘is doing’ something (X) now [activity verb, e.g. ʾara ‘read’ or akal ‘eat’]

1. 1. Something is happening in one place now
   2. It is like this:
      
      1. Someone is doing something (X) in that place for some time as this someone wants

(T)     Someone ʿam yiʿmil ‘is doing’ something (X) now [done-in-a-moment verb, e.g. ṭakh ‘shoot’]

1. 1. Something is happening in one place now
   2. It is like this:
      
      1. Someone does something (X) in that place in one moment as this someone wants
      2. This someone does the same thing (X) many times

(U)    Someone ʿam yiʿmil ‘is doing’ something (X) now [accomplishment verb, e.g. tarak ‘leave’]

1. 1. Something is happening in one place now
   2. It is like this:
      
      1. Someone is doing something (X) in that place because this someone wants something to happen
      2. It happens as this someone wants

Here are the explications of planned future actions:

(V)    Someone ʿāmil ‘is doing’ something after now [activity verb, e.g. ʾara ‘read’ or akal ‘eat’]

1. 1. Sometime before now, someone thought like this for some time:
      
      1. ‘sometime after now, I want to do something for some time’
   2. Because of it, this someone can think like this now:
      
      1. ‘I know this: I will do this thing sometime after now’

(W)  Someone ʿāmil ‘is doing’ something after now [done-in-a-moment verb, e.g. ṭakh ‘shoot’]

1. 1. Sometime before now, someone thought like this for some time:
      
      1. ‘I want to do something in one moment sometime after now’
   2. Because of this, this someone can think like this now:
      
      1. ‘I know this: I will do this thing sometime after now’

(X)    Someone ʿāmil ‘is doing’ something after now [accomplishment verb, e.g. tarak ‘leave’]

1. 1. Sometime before now, someone thought like this for some time:
      
      1. ‘I want to do something sometime after now’
   2. Because of it, this someone can think like this now:
      
      1. ‘I know this: I will do this thing sometime after now’

In the three explications (V)-(X), component (a) is about the past. It refers to a process of deciding and planning that took place before the time of speaking. In this process, the speaker thought about what they wanted to do and chose to do it. Component (b) refers to the time of speaking whereby the speaker says that they will execute the scheduled event.

 It is worth noting that, with some verbs, such as the Jish Arabic counterparts of English live and sleep—and in the absence of a future time expression—the active participle of these verbs refers to a state in the present, as in Example (20) and (22), and not to a future planned event. If these verbs are in the imperfective and are preceded by the progressive marker, their meanings change. It is not clear what these verbs have in common. Compare:

(20)      أنا عايش هون

anā          ʿ<ā>yish                     hōn

1sg.nom live<actptcl>(sg.m) here

‘I live/am living here.’

(21)      أنا عم بعيش حالة صعبة

anā         ʿam    ba-ʿīsh            ḥāli        ṣiʿbi

1sg.nom prog 1sg.ipfv-live situation difficult

‘I am going through a difficult situation.’

(22)      هو نايم

huwwi          n<ā>yim

3sg.m.nom sleep<actptcl>(sg.m)

‘He is sleeping/asleep’

(23)      هو عم بنام

huwwi         ʿam    bi-nām

3sg.m.nom prog ipfv-sleep

‘He is falling asleep.’

In (20) and (22), the active participle of Jish Arabic ʿāsh ‘live’ and nām ‘sleep’ refer to living and sleeping, respectively. On the other hand, in (21) and (23), the progressive marker ʿam and the imperfective form of ʿāsh ‘live’ and nām ‘sleep’ mean ‘going through’ and ‘falling asleep’ respectively.

 While the reader may agree that ʿāyish ‘living’ and ʿam baʿīsh ‘going through’ are semantically different, they may question the semantic difference between nāyim ‘sleeping’ and ʿam binām ‘falling asleep.’ To clarify the matter, consider the following two sentences huwwi ʿam binaʾʾib ilḥāmiḍ issā ‘He is picking the lemons now’ and huwwi mnaʾʾib ilḥāmiḍ bukra ‘He is picking the lemons tomorrow.’ Both refer to the same process of picking, although this process is taking place at different times; in the first sentence, the process is taking place at the time of speaking while, in the second sentence, it will take place on the following day. The same does not go for the sentences huwwi nāyim ‘He is sleeping now’ and huwwi ʿam binām ‘He is falling asleep,’ as the former refers to a state while the latter to a process.

4.2.3.  ṣār V_actptcl (صار عامِلْ):  Jish Arabic counterpart of English present perfect simple

 The present perfect simple is used in English to talk about an action that happened in the past but has an effect on the present, such as in the sentence “I have eaten, and therefore, I am not hungry.” Jish Arabic does not have the equivalent of have done X (as it is the same as did X), but it does have the equivalent of have already done X. Put differently, the sentences ‘I ate’ and ‘I have eaten’ are rendered in Jish Arabic in exactly the same way using the perfective form of the verb. However, ‘I have already eaten’ is expressed differently. Compare:

(24)      أكلت التفاحة

akal-it          it-tuffāḥa

eat-1sg.pfv def-apple

‘I ate/have eaten the apple.’

(25)      صرت ماكل التفاحة

ṣur-it                    m<ā>kel                    it-tuffāḥa

become-1sg.pfv eat<actptcl>(sg.m) def-apple

‘I have already eaten the apple.’

As can be seen from example (25), Jish Arabic uses the auxiliary verb ṣār ‘become’ and the active participle of the main verb to convey the idea that something has already happened. The auxiliary verb ṣār ‘become’ is conjugated for person, number, gender, and aspect, while the main verb is conjugated for number and gender only. Like English have done, Jish Arabic ṣār ʿāmil ‘have done’ cannot be followed by a time expression.

 The meaning of this tense-aspect construction can be spelled out as follows:

(Y)    Someone ṣār ʿāmil ‘has already done’ something (X) [activity verb, e.g. ʾara ‘read’ or akal ‘eat’]

1. 1. Sometime before now, it was like this:
      
      1. Someone was doing something for some time as this someone wanted
   2. Because of this, people can know something

(Z)     Someone ṣār ʿāmil ‘has already done’ something (X) [done-in-a-moment verb, e.g. ṭakh ‘shoot’]

1. 1. Sometime before now, it was like this:
      
      1. Someone did something in one moment as this someone wanted
   2. Because of this, people can know something

(AA)   Someone ṣār ʿāmil ‘has already done’ something (X) [accomplishment verb, e.g. tarak ‘leave’]

1. 1. Sometime before now, it was like this:
      
      1. Someone did something because this someone wanted something to happen
      2. It happened as this someone wanted
   2. Because of this, people can know something

Component (b) of each explication aims to convey the idea that this tense-aspect construction implies something that the addressee can know. Think of English I have eaten (which implies that the speaker does not want to eat anymore) or I have watched the movie many times (which implies that the speaker likes this movie); in both cases, the addressee understands the implied information because of the English tense-aspect construction. The same goes for the Jish Arabic form. Note that what the addressee can know can be about the speaker or about someone or something else. If, say, Elizabeth asks Sandy where her bag is, and Sandy answers ‘I have put it in the car,’ Elizabeth knows something about the bag, i.e. that it is now in the car.

4.2.4. ṣār-l-P_gen ʿam V_ipfv (صارْلُه عَمْ يِعْمِلْ):  Jish Arabic counterpart of English present perfect progressive

 To talk about an action that started in the past and continues into the present, Jish Arabic employs the following components: (1) the third-person singular masculine perfective form of the auxiliary verb ṣār ‘become,’ (2) the preposition -(i)l- ‘to’ and a pronoun in the genitive form, (3) the progressive marker ʿam, and (4) the imperfective aspect of the main verb (which is conjugated for person, number, gender, and aspect). This is the Jish Arabic equivalent of the English present perfect progressive. Here are three examples:

(26)      صرلكن خمس ساعات عم تحضروا الفيلم

ṣār-il-kun                                        khamis siʿ-āt      ʿam     ti-ḥḍar-u

become(3sg.m.pfv)-prep-2pl.gen five        hour-pl.f prog 2ipfv-watch-pl

il-filim

def-film

‘You have been watching the movie for five hours.’

(27)      صرلنا هون من الساعة خمسة

ṣār-l-ā                                                  hōn   min   is-sēʿa     khamsi

become(3sg.m.pfv)-prep-3sg.f.gen here  prep  def-hour five

‘She has been here since five o’clock.’

(28)      صرلنا عم نحضر الفيلم من لما وصلنا

ṣār-il-nā                                         ʿam    ni-ḥḍar            il-filim   min

become(3sg.m.pfv)-prep-1pl.gen prog 1pl.ipfv-watch def-film prep

limmā wsil-it

when arrive-2sg.m.pfv

‘We have been watching the movie since you arrived.’

As can be seen from example (26), Jish Arabic does not use a word which is the equivalent of English for to indicate a period of time. Also, as is seen from examples (27) and (28), like English since, the Jish Arabic preposition min is used to indicate a point in time when the action started. When this preposition is followed by a verb, as in example (28), the verb is in the perfective aspect, akin to English, in which the verb that comes in the since-clause is in the past simple.

The meaning of this tense-aspect construction can be spelled out as follows:

(BB)    Someone ṣārlu ʿam yiʿmil ‘has been doing’ something (X) for some time [activity verb, e.g. ʾara ‘read’ or akal ‘eat’]

1. 1. Something is happening in one place now
   2. It is like this now:
      
      1. someone is doing something for some time in one place as this someone wants
   3. before now, it was like this for some time in this place all the time
   4. People in this place can know for how long

(CC)    Someone ṣārlu ʿam yiʿmil ‘has been doing’ something (X) for some time [done-in-a-moment verb, e.g. ṭakh ‘shoot’]

1. 1. Something is happening in one place now
   2. It is like this:
      
      1. Someone does something (X) in that place in one moment as this someone wants
      2. This someone does the same thing (X) many times
   3. before now, it was like this for some time in this place all the time
   4. People in this place can know for how long

 Like in English, in Jish Arabic, accomplishment verbs cannot be used in this tense-aspect construction. Note that English die can be used in the present perfect progressive, but its Jish Arabic equivalent māt cannot; instead, Jish Arabic uses the verb nāzaʿ ‘be dying.’

5.     Discussion

This study has made two main contributions. First, it contributes to the field of theoretical linguistics (especially morphology, syntax, and semantics) as it uncovers the tense-aspect constructions in a language variety whose tenses and aspects have not been studied before. It also explicates the meaning of each tense-aspect construction in simple, universal terms. This makes the explications easily understood and readily translatable into any language.

Second, it contributes to the field of applied linguistics, and mainly to teaching English as a foreign language. In addition to bringing to light the Jish Arabic tense-aspect constructions, it compares them to their English counterparts. The results show that the two sets share some similarities but also some differences. On the relationship between cross-linguistic similarities and pedagogy, Ringbom and Jarvis (2009: 114) remark that:

given the important role that cross-linguistic similarities play in language learning, a natural question to follow is whether and to what extent they could be put to effective use in teaching. In general terms, a good strategy would be to make use of, and even overuse, actual similarities at early stages of learning.

If the EFL teacher in Jish is aware of these similarities and resorts to them while teaching his or her students, the latter are bound to benefit. These similarities are summarized in the following table:

Table 2. English tense-aspect constructions and their Jish Arabic counterparts

In addition, this study can be of interest and benefit to non-native Arabic speakers who wish to study Jish Arabic or any Arabic variety that is linguistically very close to it.

I hypothesize that what goes for Jish Arabic with regard to tenses and aspects also goes for some other Arabic dialects but not for all of them. For example, Brustad (2000: 150) points out that the use of the auxiliary verb kān ‘to be’ is common in Moroccan, Egyptian, Syrian, and Kuwaiti Arabic, while the progressive marker ʿam is used in Syrian and Egyptian Arabic but not in Moroccan and Kuwaiti Arabic. Alshihry (2017: 87) goes further to point out that the “semantic meanings associated with this form [i.e., ʿam] are not exactly the same in every dialect. For instance, this form is attested in Egyptian Arabic as an intensifying progressive marker…, and this intensifying function is not prominent in modern Levantine dialects.” Exactly which dialects are like Jish Arabic and which are not requires further investigation.

It is worth noting that studies on Arabic varieties tend to focus on the macro-linguistic level, i.e. they target an Arabic variety that is claimed to cover a whole nation (such as Lebanese Arabic, Egyptian Arabic, and Moroccan Arabic). The present study, on the other hand, is at the micro-linguistic level. It investigates the Arabic variety of one small town that is part of the wider Arabic-speaking world. I argue that the micro-linguistic level provides more specificity and, in some cases, more accuracy.

Working at the macro-linguistic level means covering a vast geographical area with numerous people. Although these people may live in the same country (say Iraq), they belong to different communities, and each community lives in a certain area and has its own Arabic variety. There is no question that the Arabic varieties that are geographically adjacent to each other are very similar to each other. At the same time, they are not identical, neither phonologically nor semantically, morphologically or syntactically (Albirini, Benmamoun & Saadah 2011: 275). Two examples can be illustrative. Fassuta is an Arabic-speaking town that is about 20 kilometers from Jish. Despite its relative closeness to Jish and even though Fassuta Arabic and Jish Arabic are very similar to each other, one cannot fail to notice some phonological and semantic variations; for example, in final position, the close front unrounded vowel [i] in Jish Arabic is pronounced as the open-mid unrounded vowel [ɛ] in Fassuta Arabic. The word for sheep is kharūf in Jish Arabic but ʿabūr in Fassuta Arabic. Kufr al-Labad is a small town in the West Bank, and it is about 140 kilometers from Jish. In this town the word kāʿid (the active participle of kaʿad ‘sat’) can be used as a locative copula as in the sentence makka kāʿidi fī al-saʿūdiyya ‘Mecca is in Saudi Arabic’ (Camilleri & Sadler 2019: 18); in Jish Arabic, its equivalent, i.e. āʿid, cannot be used as a copula.

This being so, it is hoped that this study will trigger other studies of the same type in which the Arabic “micro-varieties” of individual communities (especially those regarded as belonging to the same macro-variety) are investigated. This will enable microscopic comparisons of these varieties and will make the similarities and differences between them more prominent.

6.     Conclusion

 This paper has investigated the Jish Arabic tense-aspect constructions and provided an explication of each form. The explications use a simple, universal language; their simplicity makes them easily understandable, and their universality makes them readily translatable into any language. This, in turn, makes their meanings accessible to everyone. Additionally, this paper has demonstrated that these forms have equivalents in English. This matter can be of considerable importance to the area of EFL teaching and learning, especially as similarities can lead to positive transfer. Positive transfer, in turn, can facilitate the learning process. As Arabic varieties that are geographically adjacent to each other are highly mutually intelligible and are similar to each other, it can be argued that what goes for Jish Arabic goes also for the Arabic varieties that are adjacent to it. That said, further investigation needs to be carried out.

About the authors

Sandy Habib

Author for correspondence.
Email: mhsandy3@gmail.com
ORCID iD: 0000-0001-8450-5361

linguist and a Catholic priest. He is a Senior Lecturer at the English Teacher Education Program at Tel-Hai Academic College, Israel. In addition, he is the parish priest of St. Maroun’s Church in Jish, which belongs to the Maronite Archdiocese of Haifa and the Holy Land.

References