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Camilleri, Maris & Sadler, Louisa: Posture Verbs and Aspect: A View from Vernacular Arabic

This paper discusses a construction found in contemporary Arabic vernaculars (but not in Modern Standard Arabic) which constitutes an instance of a common grammaticalisation path in which a a posture verb with a core lexical meaning of ‘sitting’ has grammaticalised into an ASPECTual marker. We bring together data from a range of dialects and provide substantial evidence of grammaticalisation, in which the active participle (ACT.PTCP) of the ‘sit’ verb has developed a range PROGRESSIVE, DURATIVE and CONTINUATIVE senses. We argue there is also evidence for a further grammaticalisation of the posture verb form into a copula. Our aim is to present a comprehensive cross-dialectal picture of the data and use LFG to account for change and grammaticalisation.


December 22, 2022
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