Reading Working Papers in Linguistics 4 (2000) - The University of ...

EMERGENCE OF TENSE AND AGREEMENT
different forms due to phonological considerations. In general there is no
gender distinction in the 1 st person inflection in the language.
Table 1 Present / Imperfect inflections in KA a
Verb root
Person Number Gender Morpheme
Gloss
(l-b-s)
SG - (!) a- albis I wear
1
PL n(a)- nalbis We wear
SG M t(a)- talbis You (m) wear
SG F t(a)- iin talbisiin You (f) wear
2
PL - t(a)- oon talbisoon You wear
SG M y(a)-/i- yalbis He wears
SG F t(a)- talbis She wears
3
PL - y(a)- oon yalbisoon They wear
a SG= singular, PL= plural, M=masculine, F=feminine, -= common.
Table 1 characterizes 3 features about the present tense inflections.
Firstly, the 2 nd masculine and the 3 rd feminine prefixes are homonymous,
therefore, either overt subject or context is essential in comprehension.
Secondly, the prefix vowel varies according to the stem as in ye-roo! ‘he
goes’ and ya-lbis ‘he wears’. Finally, the glottal stop prefix for " is not
widely used in KA. The classical suffix -n in the present tense is preserved
in KA and other countries in the area (Iraq, and the Arabian Peninsula)
while other Arab countries just disregard it (Motar 1969). As for the 3 rd
masculine prefix, it has two forms either y-or e- and they are not in
complementary distribution. To illustrate, it is appropriate to say ye-roo!
and i-roo! ‘he goes’; however in the root structure lbs the appropriate
form is ya-lbis ‘he wears’ but not *i-lbis. It seems that Kuwaiti speakers of
Arabic do not allow the latter form to avoid confusion with the masculine
imperative form which requires prefix vowel in the CCC root structure.
Table 2 that follows demonstrates the past tense paradigm in Kuwaiti
Arabic. Looking at the table, it is clear that all past tense inflections are
suffixes. The 1 st person singular and 2 nd masculine are homonymous
accordingly overt subject and context are important in comprehension. The
third point that needs to be mentioned is the fact that 3 rd person masculine
has no specific grammatical inflection in the dialect while in CA and MSA
the inflection has the suffix form /-a/. Accordingly, the 3 rd masculine verb
form is unmarked form and it is homophonous with its own stem. In the 3 rd
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