The Grammaticalization of the Motion Verb “Raħ” as a Prospective Aspect Marker in Syrian Arabic

Al-AʿrabiyyaJournal of the American Association of Teachers of Arabic

العربيةمجلة رابطة أساتذة اللغة العربية

Volume 47 | 2014

00i-130_Al-Arabiyya_47_1p.indb 1 5/29/14 3:29 PM

Al-ʿArabiyya: Journal of the Association of American Teachers of Arabic

Editor: Reem Bassiouney, Georgetown UniversityAssistant Editor: Emily VealeyBook Review Editor: Reem Bassiouney, Georgetown University

Editorial Board Emad Abdul- Latif, Cairo UniversityMahmoud Al- Batal, University of Texas

at AustinMohammad T. Alhawary, University of

MichiganKirk Belnap, Brigham Young University

John Eisele, College of William and MaryCatherine Miller, Centre national de la reserche

scientifiqueMustafa Mughazy, Western Michigan UniversityKarin C. Ryding, Georgetown University

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Contents

Editor’s Note v

Essays

Key to Mass Literacy or Professor’s Hobby? Fiske’s Project to Write Egyptian Arabic with the Latin Alphabet 1

Liesbeth Zack

Perceptual Dialectology of the Arab World: A Principal Analysis 21Irene Theodoropoulou and Joseph Tyler

Scripted Ideologies: Orthographic Heterogeneity in Online Arabics 41Becky Schulthies

Arab(ic) Language Anxiety: Tracing a “Condition” 57Yasir Suleiman

Code- Switching in Egyptian Arabic: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Twitter 83Zoë Kosoff

The Grammaticalization of the Motion Verb “Raħ” as a Prospective Aspect Marker in Syrian Arabic 101

Najib Ismail Jarad

Book Reviews

Alif Baa: Introduction to Arabic Letters and Sounds, Third Edition, Kristen Brustad, Mahmoud Al- Batal, and Abbas Al- Tonsi 119

The Oxford Handbook of Arabic Linguistics, Jonathan Owens 123

Contributors 127


Al-ʿArabiyya, 47 (2014), 101–118

The Grammaticalization of the Motion Verb “Raħ” as a Prospective Aspect Marker in Syrian Arabic

Najib Ismail Jarad, University of Sharjah

Abstract

This essay examines the development of a prospective future particle from a motion verb, a topic that, crosslinguistically, has played a key role in the development of the gram-maticalization theory. The essay posits that the Syrian Arabic prospective future particle developed out of the Classical/Standard Arabic verb “rāħ” (go). The essay focuses on the uses of this future particle and lays out the grammaticalization stages of the “raħ”-future in Syrian Arabic. The grammaticalization path from the Classical/Standard Arabic verb “rāħ” to a prospective future particle in Syrian Arabic resulted in semantic shift (dese-manticization), morphological shift (decategorialization), phonetic shift (erosion), and morphophonological shift (cliticization).

Introduction

In this essay, I show that the future uses of the Syrian Arabic “raħ” are said to have gram-maticalized from the Classical/Standard Arabic lexical verb “rāħ” (“go”) to the extent that it can be analyzed as a future marker for which there is an intention (see Hop-per and Traugott 2003, 1–3 for a discussion of English “BE going to”). The path that a motion verb follows is from andative (1) through purposive (2) to future intention uses (3, 4) (Bybee, Pagliuca, and Perkins 1994, 268).1 The path from andative through

Al-Arabiyya: Journal of the American Association of Teachers of Arabic, Vol. 47, 2014. Copyright © Georgetown University Press.

102 naJib isMaiL Jarad

purposive to future intention uses is a well-documented crosslinguistic development (Bybee, Pagliuca, and Perkins 1994; Croft 2000; Heine and Kuteva 2002a; 2002b).

(1) (ʔana) rāyiħ ʕa -j-jamʕa [lexical verb]I going to- the-university“I am going to university”

(2) (ʔana) rāyiħ šūf rifʔāt-i [future particle]I FUT- see friends-my“I am going to see my friends”

(3) (ʔana) raħ rūħ ʕa-s-sīnǝmǝ baʕdēn [future particle]I FUT go to- the- cinema afterwards“I am going to go to the movies afterwards”

(4) l-madrasǝ ħa- tǝʕlin n- nǝtāyij bukra [prefix]The-school FUT-announce the- results tomorrow“The school is going to announce the results tomorrow”

Following Hopper and Traugott’s (2003, 2–3) discussion of the development of English “be going to” as a future marker, I argue that the change occurs in the contexts of purposive directional complements (2) but not in the contexts of directionals in which the locative adverb is present (1). The change is made possible by the fact that there is an inference of futurity from contexts like (2) (Hopper and Traugott 2003, 3): the fact that I am going in order to see my friends in the university entails that the meeting will be in the future. Therefore, it is contexts like (2) that are responsible for the rise of the “raħ”-prospective (future) reading. The transition from the cognitive domain of space (i.e., from the motion sense of “rāyiħ” [going]) to the conceptual domain of time (i.e., prospective sense) involves the use of “rāyiħ” (going) in a series of intermediate contexts, of which the sentence “ʔana rāyiħ šūf rifʔāt-i” (I am going to see my friends) would be one instance. This continuous chain, according to Heine, Claudi, and Hunnemeyer (1991, 70–73), has a metonymic structure because in sentences situated in the middle of the chain, the expressions of motion and of futurity are recoverable from the same context; that is, they are somehow adjacent in that context, and metonymy is defined in terms of contiguity. The shift from lexical sense (1) to future sense (2) involves syntactic reanalysis not only of “rāyiħ” (going) but also of the verb following it. Thus “[TP ʔana [T ] [AspP [Asp ][vP rāyiħ [VP šūf rifʔāt-i]]]] ” (I am going to see my friends) is syntactically reanalyzed as [TP ʔana [T] [AspP [Asp rayiħ][vP v [VP šūf rifʔāt-i]]]] ” (I am going to see my friends). Once the reanalysis has taken place, “rāyiħ” (going) can undergo changes typical of aux-iliaries, such as phonological reduction. The reduction of the participle “rāyiħ” (going) is possible only because there is no longer a boundary between “ħa-” and the following verb (4).



The rest of this essay proceeds in the following order. The first section provides an overview of grammaticalization. Then I examine the functions of “rāħ” as an indepen-dent verb and as a prospective particle “raħ.” In the next section, I offer the explanations for the grammaticalization of the motion verb in Syrian Arabic. Then I provide evidence for the grammaticalization of the motion verb “rāħ” from other Arabic dialects. The final section concludes the essay.

An Overview of Grammaticalization

When a motion verb becomes a tense marker through the process of grammaticaliza-tion, it undergoes structural, phonological, and semantic change. Structurally, it may become more closely linked to the main verb that it modifies, even losing its own inflec-tions and becoming a verbal affix, and it may undergo phonological reduction. Semanti-cally, the grammaticalized item loses its argument structure; that is, as a lexical verb, it has certain theta roles to assign, but when it becomes a grammatical element, it loses its argument structure. Scholars of grammaticalization have identified several grammaticalization path-ways through which markers of future time develop cross-linguistically with remarkable regularity. These include motion verbs such as “go” and “come”; volition verbs such as “want”; the verb of action, “do”; and the verb “have” (Heine, Claudi, and Hunnemeyer 1991; Bybee, Pagliuca, and Perkins 1991, 1994). Grammaticalization is the process whereby some GRAMS (i.e., members of functional categories, including tense and aspect markers) come into being in a language, resulting from the reanalysis of lexical categories and constructions containing lexical material in specific morphosyntactic contexts (see Hopper and Traugott, 2003, xv; Heine 2003, 575; Heine and Kuteva 2002b, 2; Heine and Kuteva 2007, 32; Bybee 2010, 30, 106; Lehmann 2004,155; Heine and Narrog 2011, 2f; Traugott and Dasher 2002, 81; Traugott and Trous-dale 2010, 2ff).2 For example, the Modern English future auxiliary “will” developed out of the Old English content word “willan” (to want) (Hopper and Traugott 2003, 97), and the Modern Greek future particle “thelo” developed out of the Middle Greek phrase “thélo hína” (I want to) (Hopper and Traugott 2003, 24; Roberts and Roussou 2003, chap. 5). Scholars of grammaticalization agree that grammaticalization involves both struc-tural and semantic change, and that semantic change either precedes structural change (Givon 1991; Nicolle 2002) or occurs in parallel with it (Bybee, Pagliuca, and Perkins 1994, 106). To begin with, certain inferences frequently associated with the use of the grammaticalizing expression become conventionalized and the expression undergoes “semantic bleaching” (or “generalization”) in which components of meaning relating to perceivable events and relations between entities are lost. Hopper and Traugott (2003, 101) noted that semantic generality of a lexical item is important for its grammaticalization. This is keyed to the fact that a semantically highly specific lexical item has very limited distribution, and it is this limited distribution that does not allow it to become grammaticalized. When the semantic content of a lexical



item is lost, the lexical item becomes less restricted in occurrence; that is, it becomes functionally enriched. Scholars of grammaticalization have argued that the meaning of a lexical item becomes generalized when a metaphor is involved. According to Traugott and Dasher (2002, 27), semantic change is triggered by two mechanisms, namely, metaphor (a way in which one entity is viewed as another) and metonymy (a means by which one entity stands for another). Construed as an analogi-cal principle, metaphorization is employed by a language user to express a concept in an abstract domain by means of a concept in a concrete domain (or along this path “local > temporal > abstract” [Heine, Claudi, and Hunnemeyer 1991, 172]). For example, the basic idea is that the transfer is from the more concrete domain of space in “John is going [to the hotel]” to the more abstract domain of time in “John is going [to ask the recep-tionist].” According to the conceptual metaphor TIME IS SPACE (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 135), movement through space is conceptualized as movement through time. The second mechanism that triggers semantic change is metonymization. Metony-mization involves a cognitive process whereby connections between entities within a given conceptual domain are established through contiguity and association. Most grammaticalization processes involve metonymical inferences (Wischer 2006, 131). For example, in the sentence “John is going [to the hotel],” the verb “go” is used in its lexical sense, followed by an obligatory prepositional phrase functioning as an adverbial complement, and a movement in progress with a local direction is expressed. In “John is going [to ask the receptionist],” this particular syntactic structure forms a critical con-text that allows pragmatic inferencing on the basis of a metonymical relationship (see Diewald 2002, 109ff). In other words, this particular syntactic structure leaves out refer-ence to the destination of the motion and instead refers to the intentional action to be carried out at this destination (ask the receptionist).Through frequent use in similar con-texts, speakers generalized this inference, using [be going to] to convey a more general future meaning even when the original reading was still available. The syntactic reanaly-sis of [be going to] became more obvious when the use of [be going to] as an auxiliary was analogically extended to contexts where the original lexical meaning is no longer possible, as in “It is going to be another rainy day.”3 In this example, the pronoun “it” is a dummy pronoun and therefore does not refer to an agent of an intentional movement. When a lexical item splits into two uses, the lexical form retains its full phonetic form whereas the grammaticalized item undergoes phonetic reduction resulting from frequency increase (see Bybee 2003, 2007). Therefore, in the process of grammaticalization of the future marker, “going to” was phonetically reduced to “gonna.” According to Heine and Kuteva (2007, 42), phonological erosion is “usually the last to apply in grammaticalization processes, and it is not a requirement for grammaticalization to happen.” In other words, phonetic reduction is neither a necessary nor a sufficient property of grammaticalization. Within the generative framework where the emphasis is placed on how and why grammars can change in the process of acquisition by new generations of learners, Rob-erts and Roussou (2003) treat grammaticalization as a regular case of parameter change. They highlight the importance of the properties of individual features to account for language change. In other words, they view diachronic change as small differences in how features with given values relate to each other.



Roberts and Roussou (2003, 201) and Roberts (2010, 49) put forward a mecha-nism of grammaticalization which results in the loss of movement.

(5) a. [XP Y+X [YP ty ]] " b. [XP Y=X [YP..Y..]]

What this mechanism means is that a functional head that was previously realized by movement is realized by a morphophonological matrix provided by the lexicon. For example, English modals (Y), a subclass of lexical verbs that were once moved to T (X) are directly merged in T(Y=X), that is, reanalyzed as elements of T. Therefore, the transi-tion from stage (a) to stage (b) is the loss of movement. The transition (reanalysis) also generates a categorial change in a subset of linguistic items that share certain proper-ties and undergo semantic bleaching and phonological reduction. The procedure gives rise to a new exponent for a higher functional head (Roberts and Roussou 2003, 200). According to Roberts and Roussou, grammaticalization is a natural form of endogenous change and is consistent with the fact that it is the most common parameter setting mechanism. In view of this approach, parametric change will take place whenever lan-guage learners converge on a type of parameter setting that differs from the one adopted by adult grammars. Hence, the phenomenon of grammaticalization highlights the rela-tionship between parameter setting and syntactic change. Crosslinguistically, the grammaticalization of motion verbs has been extensively studied; however, no effort on the study of grammaticalization in Syrian Arabic has been made to date. This essay claims to be the first in its focus on the grammaticalization of the Classical/Standard Arabic motion verb “rāħ” as a prospective future marker in Syr-ian Arabic. Evidence from Syrian Arabic seems to support the claim that future mark-ers derived from motion verbs will be in the progressive form, as is the case of English “be going to” construction (Bybee and Pagliuca 1987, 116; Bybee, Pagliuca, and Perkins 1991, 30). In addition to the active participle “rāyiħ” (going), Syrian Arabic uses other forms of this particle: “raħ,” “raħa,” “laħ,” “laħa,” and “ħa-.” The forms “laħ,” “laħa” are typical of Damascus and certain other areas (Cowell 2005, 322; Mitchell and el-Hassan 1994, 24). It should be highlighted here that there are no historical records of Syrian Arabic; therefore, the reconstruction of the grammaticalization path of “raħ” cannot depend on historical evidence from the language.4 However, on the basis of the findings and gen-eralizations of grammaticalization theory (regarding a well-documented language like English) and synchronic evidence from present-day Syrian Arabic, this essay attempts to provide a reconstruction of the step-by-step evolution of the prospective future marker “raħ.”

Uses of “Raħ”

The verb “rāħ” functions both as an independent verb expressing an immediate future and a particle expressing future time reference (see appendix A). The prospective par-ticle “raħ” also coexists with the b-future.5



(6) l-wlād rāħ-o yenām-o [independent verb (past)]the-boys went-they sleep-they“The boys went to sleep”

(7) maryam rāyiħ-a ʕa sūrya [independent verb (active participle)]Maryam going-she to Syria“Maryam is going to Syria”

(8) maryam raħ t-sāfer ʕa sūrya baʕd šahr-ēn [particle]Maryam FUT she-travel to Syria after month-two“Maryam is going to travel to Syria after two months”

(9) ʔemta ħa- t-sāfer maryam ʕa sūrya [prefix]When FUT she-go maryam to Syria“When’s Maryam going to travel to Syria?”

The particle “raħ” is very common in Syrian Arabic and other spoken Arabic dia-lects, especially in Gulf Arabic and Egyptian Arabic. Morphologically, it can surface as an active present participle “rāyiħ” or as “raħ,” “raħa,” “laħ,” “laħa,” and “ħa-” derived from the present participle, but temporally, it is interpreted as a prospective future particle. Unlike the participle “rāyiħ” (going), “raħ” is a true particle, not taking any agreement or inflection that would mark it as an auxiliary (see appendix B). Cowell (2005, 322–23) calls “raħ” “the particle of anticipation.” He points out that “the particle of anticipation generally indicates that what the following verb refers to is impending in the future, as a consequence of present intentions or a course of events already under way. It is commonly translatable as ‘going to.’ Often, however, it carries a sense of imminence or immediacy, best translated as ‘about to.’ ” For example:

(10) raħǝ šǝf-lak yāha w- rǝdd-ǝllak xabarI.FUT see-to-you her and return-to-you news“I’m going to see her (for you) and let you know”

(11) byeẓhar laħǝ t-ǝnzel maŧ ar ʔawiyyeit.appear FUT it-fall rain heavy“It looks as though there’s going to be heavy rain”

(12) ʔaddēš raħ tidfaʕ ajār l-bētHow much FUT you-pay rent the-house“How much are you going to pay for house rental?”

Furthermore, “raħ” is used to talk about plans that have been made (13) or when there is evidence that an action will happen (14).



(13) t-taksi raħ tāxid-na ʕa-l-maŧārthe-taxi FUT take-us to-the-airport“Taxi’s going to take us to the airport”

(14) byeẓhar ʔinno raħ t-maŧ ir\t-šattiit-appear that FUT it-rain“It appears that it’s going to rain”

“Raħ” is also used with the past tense auxiliary “kān” (was) to describe what was a future plan or intention at a certain point in the past that may or may not have taken place.

(15) a. kān raħ yǝštrī-li mobāil jǝdīd bas māwas FUT he-buy-to me mobile new but NEGkān maʕ-o maṣāri kāfiyǝwas with-him money enough“He was going to buy me a new mobile, but he did not have enough money”

b. kint raħ rūħ ʕa-l-ħaflǝ bas rfīʔ-i mǝriḍwas-I FUT go to-the-party but friend-my sick

w-kān ʕǝlayye sāʕd-oand was on me help-him“I was going to go the party, but my friend got sick, and I had to help him”

“Raħ” is used to describe an event which takes place in the immediate (16) or distant (17) future.

(16) raħ yūʔaʕ (said of a clown walking on a rope)FUT he-fall“He is about to fall”

(17) raħ yǝ-rūħ yǝ-drus fī america baʕd s-sanaweiFUT he-go he-study in America after the-secondary “He’s going to go to study in America after finishing secondary school”

In sentence (16), the event of falling is imminent while in (17) the event of studying in America is distant.

According to Cowell (2005, 323), “many future events may be referred to either with the particle “raħ” or with the simple b-imperfect. However, in some contexts where the simple b-imperfect would more naturally be taken to indicate a generality or disposi-tion, “raħ” is used to make it unambiguously future.” Compare (18) with (19).



(18) mīn raħ yŧaʕmi w-yǝksi kǝll hal ʔaŧfāl ǝl-fǝʔarawho FUT feed and clothe all those children poor“Who will clothe and feed all those poor children?”

(19) mīn b-yŧaʕmi w-yǝksi kǝll hal ʔaŧfāl ǝl-fǝʔara“Who clothes and feeds all those poor children?”

The Development of “Raħ” into a Prospective Particle

Before considering the development of “raħ” into a prospective particle, let us define what is meant by the term “prospective aspect.” According to Comrie (1976, 64), pro-spective aspect expresses a relationship between the moment of speaking (present) and a subsequent event (future). Comrie gives examples from English, French, Igbo, and Fante in which motion verbs like “go” or “come” have been grammaticalized to mark the prospective aspect (Comrie 1976, 64, 106). Temürcü (2011, 116) points out that “prospective aspect establishes a causal relation between a posterior and a simultaneous temporal location.” The causal relation is the relation that exists when the cause of a future event becomes either physically apparent or known by other means to the speaker. For example:

(20) raħ t-maŧir\t-šattiFUT it-rain“it’s going to rain”

(21) raħ yǝ-drus ŧob fī faransaFUT he-study medicine in France“He’s going to study medicine in France”

The present cause for the future event is the amassing of clouds in the sky in (20) and the existence of an intention or an expectation for a future event to happen in (21). In other words, prospective aspect expresses the current relevance of a future event.6 This amounts to saying that the prediction in (20) is based on indications of the future event at the time of speaking. I turn now to the function of “raħ” as a prospective particle with other verbs. First, the transition from lexical to grammatical meaning is seen in contexts where a move-ment interpretation is not possible. For example, the co-occurrence of the particle “raħ” with the lexical verb “rāħ”:

(22) (ʔana) raħ rūħ ʕa-s-sīnǝmǝ l-yomI FUT go to-the-cinema the-day“I am going to go to the movies today”



(23) maryam w-hassan raħ yǝ-rūh-o ʕa-l-mōlMaryam and Hassan FUT go-they to-the-mall“Maryam and Hassan are going to go to the mall”

These examples clearly show that “raħ” is not compatible with the earlier lexical meaning of the verb “rāħ” (go). The second stage in the grammaticalization of “raħ” involves extension in semantic content. As its meaning extended from movement to intention and then to prediction, it started to appear in passive structures (24a) and with inanimate subjects that lack voli-tion, as in (24b) from Syrian Arabic and (25) from English:

(24) a. farī?-na raħ yǝnġǝlib bukrateam-our FUT beaten tomorrow“Our team is going to be beaten tomorrow”

b. raħ tuʔaʕ l- kasseFUT fall the- glass“The glass is going to fall”

(25) The ladder is going to fall

In (24a), the subject of “raħ yǝnġǝlib” (is going to be beaten) is neither an agent nor intentional. The passive sentence is interpreted to mean: some team is going to beat our team. Here, “farī?na raħ yǝnġǝlib” (our team is going to be beaten) does not convey that the sub-ject beats someone but that the subject is beaten. The use of “raħ” in a passive construc-tion is a crucial step in the transition from the motion sense of “raħ” to its futurity sense. Furthermore, the use of inanimate subjects argues against any “movement” or “intention” interpretation in (24b) and (25). Therefore, what these examples show is that “prediction” is the only semantic feature that can be retained. Bybee and Dahl (1989, 92) observe that this construction is used when the object concerned (the glass or the ladder) is already in an unstable position at the reference time. The prospective interpretation follows from the idea that “TIME is metaphorically conceptualized in terms of SPACE” (Lakoff and John-son 1980, 135); that is, that “motion in space” is generalized to the more abstract “motion through time” (Bybee, Pagliuca, and Perkins 1994, 25; Sweetser 1988, 391–93). This reflects the view that during grammaticalization constructions typically become more abstract. The grammaticalization of the lexical verb “rāħ” also results in desemanticization or semantic bleaching. Desemanticization or bleaching is understood as semantic reduc-tion or loss in meaning content. In other words, what normally occurs is a move from a more lexical to a more grammatical meaning (Heine and Kuteva 2002a; 2002b; Heine and Kuteva 2007). In Classical/Standard Arabic, the verb “rāħ” is a two-place predicate that subcategorizes for an external NP and an internal NP <agent, location> and/or an external NP and a PP <theme, PP goal>.



(26) a. rāħ-a l-ħadīqat-a li-l-nuzha <agent, location>went-he the-park-ACC to-the-outing“He went to the park for an outing”

b. rāħ-a l-falāh-u ?ila- l- ħaql-i <theme, PP goal>.went-he the-farmer-NOM to- the-field-GEN“The farmer went to the field”

The <agent, location> structure is not attested in Syrian Arabic. Therefore, the argu-ment structure for the verb “rāħ” in Syrian Arabic is <theme, PP goal>. When “rāħ” isreanalyzed as a prospective future marker “raħ,” it is not compatible with any argumentstructure. In other words, the theta-roles of “rāħ” are bleached out, leaving only the pro-spective relation of futurity.

Furthermore, grammaticalization is a process that affects the phonology of thegrammaticalizing item. Thus, prior to grammaticalization, there existed a word bound-ary that was reduced through grammaticalization to a morpheme boundary, and finallyto an indivisible fused form (ħa-). Moreover, the status of “rāħ” has changed from anautonomous morpheme to one that is less autonomous. In other words, grammaticaliza-tion involved decategorialization (i.e., a change from an open word class to a closed wordclass).

In generative terms, the basic structure assumed in this paper involves an AspP pro-jection placed between TP and vP:

(27) [TP T [AspP Asp [vP v [VP V]]]]

In this structure, the lexical verb is merged in V and then moved to v and T. V in thelower VP assigns the GOAL theta-role while the small v assigns the THEME theta-role.The reanalysis of “rāħ” as a prospective future marker means that this marker is directlymerged in Asp; that is, reanalyzed as an element of Asp (see Roberts and Roussou 2003, 47). The main motivation for this structure comes from the fact that the past tense aux-iliary “kān,” which is merged in T, consistently precedes the prospective marker “raħ,”as in:

(28) kān raħ yǝsāfir ʕa(la) faransawas FUT he-travel to France“He was going (was about) to travel to France”

(29) kint raħ rūħ ʕa- l-ħaflǝ bas rfīʔ-i mǝriḏwas-I FUT go to-the-party but friend-my sickw-kān ʕǝlayye sāʕd-oand was on me help-him“I was going to go the party, but my friend got sick, and I had to help him”

The transition from a full-fledged verb meaning “to move from one place to another”to a prospective future marker can be represented schematically as follows:



" rāyiħ/rāħ (lexical) " rāħ(30) rāħ "

" rāyiħ/raħ (grammatical) " ħa-7

Standardly, grammaticalization tends to display a uniform directionality along sev-eral clines: from the more concrete to the more abstract and from the more linguisti-cally autonomous to the more linguistically dependent (Heine and Reh 1984, 74; Bybee,Pagliuca, and Perkins 1994, 12–14, 104; Hopper and Traugott 2003, 99–100). Hopperand Traugott (2003, 99) indicate that grammaticalization is “hypothesized to be pro-totypically a unidirectional phenomenon.”8 It is interesting to note that these unidirec-tional tendencies are not language specific but are governed by crosslinguistically oreven universally valid principles (Bybee, Pagliuca, and Perkins 1994).

(31) Content item > grammatical word > clitic > inflectional affix

This structural divergence corresponds to the “cline of grammaticality,” which syn-chronically refers to a continuum at one hand of which is a fuller lexical form, and atthe opposite end, a reduced grammatical form (Hopper and Traugott 2003, 7; Hopper1991, 22–24). That is, the concrete meaning of physical motion and directionality ofthe verb “rāħ” gradually shifts to a prospective future particle when grammaticalizationoccurs. Given this, it can be claimed that the verb “rāħ,” as a prospective future marker,has moved to the stage of being grammatical. Put differently, the verb “rāħ” has never beencompletely replaced by the grammatical particle “raħ.” Both exist side by side, but in theprocess of grammaticalization the lexical item “rāħ” had just developed an additional use.

Evidence from Other Arabic Dialects

The grammaticalization of the Classical/Standard Arabic verb “rāħ” is not restricted toSyrian Arabic, as it is also found in other Arabic dialects. First, all Levantine Arabic dia-lects (Lebanese Arabic, Jordanian Arabic, Palestinian Arabic, and Syrian Arabic) use thesame particle to express the prospective future.

(32) raħ yǝdruswill he-read“He will read.”Lebanese Arabic (Aoun, Benmamoun, and Choueiri 2010, 31)

(33) rāyiħ ʔazūr ʔil-madrasa bukraI -will visit the school tomorrow.Jordanian Arabic (al-Saidat and al-Momani 2010, 403)

The Egyptian future particle “ħa-” or “ha-” can also be etymologically related to thereduced form of “rāyiħ,” the active participle of the verb “go.” Egyptian Arabic speakersconsistently use the reduced particle (prefix) “ħa-.”



(34) iftakart-u ħa-yruħthought-I-him FUT-go“I thought he was going to go”

Egyptian Arabic (Brustad 2000, 208)

(35) miŝ ħa-yibʔa ħilw ʕalayyaNeg FUT-become pretty on me“It won’t look good on me.”

Egyptian Arabic (Aoun, Benmamoun, and Choueiri 2010, 32)

In Iraqi Arabic, the two prefixes “raħ” and “ħa-” are also added to the imperfective verb to express a future time reference.

(36) raħ adrus ŧobFUT-study-I medicine“I shall study medicine”

(37) raħ yiqra ktābFUT read-he book“He will read a book”

The prefix “ħa-” has the same meaning as “raħ” but sometimes connotes the immedi-ate future (Alkalesi 2006, 141).

(38) adrus “I study”

(39) ħa-drus “I am going to study”

Abu Haider (1991, 89) also shows that the particle “raħ” is usually used before the imperfective verb to talk about a future event in the Christian Arabic of Baghdad.

(40) ġaħ nƏštƏġi bēt ʕa-l-baħaġFUT we-buy house on-the-sea“We shall buy a house by the sea”

(41) ġaħ yƏġōħōn lƏl ʕƏġāq bƏ-ṣ-ṣēfFUT they go to-the- Iraq in-the-summer“They will go to Iraq in the summer”

It is interesting to note that the alveolar liquid [r] is consistently pronounced as a velar fricative [ġ] in this dialect.

Johnstone (1967, 143, 152, 163, 169) points out that the particle “raħ” usually indi-cates intention in Kuwaiti, Bahraini, and Qatari dialects. Persson (2008, 33) also notes



the use of “raħ” with future time reference in Gulf Arabic dialects. A close parallel to the development of the “raħ” particle in Syrian Arabic and other Arabic dialects is the Moroc-can Arabic future particle “ġad(i)/ġa,” which expresses prospective aspect and derives from the Classical Arabic root “ġada” (to go away) (Caubet 1993, as cited in Rubin 2005; Benmamoun 2000, 33). Tunisian Arabic uses “baš,” a variant of “maš,” which originates from the active participle “maši” (walking) (Gibson 2009, 569). According to Bouch-erit (2006, 65), the active participle “ṛāyiḥ” (going) expresses the immediate future in Algiers. In Libya, the particle “ħa-” is also used to express the future (Pereira 2009, 555). Interestingly enough, Maltese marks the future by the prospective particles “se/ser/sa-” derived from the active participle “sejjer” (going), whose source is Classical Arabic “sāra” (to go, to set out) (for examples, see Ebert 2000, 763–64). Additionally, Maltese has another future particle “ħa-”, cognate with Syrian Arabic “raħ/ha-”.

Conclusion

I have shown that the Classical/Standard Arabic motion verb “rāħ” (go) is the source concept from which the prospective future particle “rāyiħ”/“raħ” developed. We have seen that the development of this future particle took place along a continuum compris-ing movement > intention > prediction. In the light of universal tendencies, this devel-opment is not surprising. The grammaticalization path from the Classical\Standard Arabic verb “rāħ” to a prospective future particle in Syrian Arabic resulted in changes at the semantic, syntactic, and phonological levels. At the semantic level, the grammatical-ization involved the metaphorical extension of the original meaning (Bybee, Pagliuca, and Perkins 1994, 286) (i.e., a change from the cognitive domain of space (“rāħ” as a verb of movement) to the domain of time (“raħ” as a prospective future particle). At the syntactic level, recategorization occurred, since the verb “rāħ” became a particle. Pho-nologically, the particle “rāħ” is realized as a proclitic “ha-” probably via the process of metathesis. The overwhelming preponderance of evidence from a number of Arabic dia-lects confirms the transition from a full-fledged verb meaning “to move from one place to another” to a prospective future marker. Although the changes that the motion verb “rāħ” underwent resulted in losses in the semantic, syntactic, and phonological properties, there were also some gains. The lexical item “rāħ” has never been completely replaced by the prospective particle “rah.” What actually happened in Syrian Arabic is that the source lexeme “rāħ” split into two diver-gent uses. The novel linguistic structure was analogically extended to contexts where it was not previously admissible. In other words, the grammaticalization of the prospective particle “rah” has been extended from an animate, mobile subject to an inanimate event.

Appendix A

Paradigm for the lexical verb “rāħ” in Syrian Arabic.



Present participle

Past formIndicative form

(non-past)

1st sing rāyiħ riħ.t (a.)rūħ2nd SM rāyiħ riħ.t tƏ.rūħ2nd SF rāyħ.a riħ.ti tƏ.rūħ.i3rd SM rāyiħ rāħ yƏ.rūħ3rd SF rāyħ.a rāħ.it tƏ.rūħ1st PL rāyħ.īn riħ.na n.rūħ2nd PLM rāyħ.īn riħ.to tƏ.rūħ.o2nd PLF rāyħ.īn/rāyħ.at riħ.to tƏ.rūħ.o3rd PLM rāyħ-īn rāħ.o yƏ.rūħ.o3rd PLF rāyħ.īn/rāyħ.at rāħ.o yƏ.rūħ.o

Appendix B

Note that the participle form “rāyiħ” inflects for gender and number agreement whereas the reduced form “raħ” does not.

Examples

1st sing ʔana rāyiħ ʔi.drus “I am going to study”2nd SM ʔinta rāyiħ ti.drus “You are going to study”2nd SF ʔinti rāyħ.a ti.drsi “You are going to study”3rd SM huwwe rāyiħ yƏdrus “He is going to study”3rd SF hiyye rāyħ.a ti.drus “She is going to study”1st PL nihna rāyħī.n ni.drus “We are going to study”2nd PLM ʔintu rāyħī.n ti.drso “you are going to study”2nd PLF ʔintu rāyħī.n ti.drso “you are going to study”3rd PLM hinne rāyħī.n yƏ.drso “They are going to study”3rd PLF hinne rāyħī.n yƏ.drso “They are going to study”

Notes

1. “Andative” refers to a verb form in which an agent moves away from the deictic center in order to do something, literally “be going to do something.” Such a form generally derives his-torically from the verb “go” being reduced to an auxiliary verb or a verbal affix and may in turn be grammaticalized to an aspectual morpheme (Bybee, Pagliuca, and Perkins 1994, 320).

2. The term “GRAM” is used by Bybee, Pagliuca, and Perkins (1994, 2) as a short form for “grammatical sized morphemes;” that is, morphemes that are formed with lexical items through the process of grammaticalization.

3. According to Traugott (1982, 256ff), the first recognized instance of “be going to” with a sense of futurity goes back to the fifteenth century; see Danchev and Kytö (1994, 61).



4. An anonymous reviewer raised the question of what the essay’s position is on the dia-chronic relationship between Classical Arabic and Syrian Arabic. The essay assumes that Syrian Arabic, as well as other Arabic dialects, directly descends from Classical Arabic. The diachronic relationship between Classical Arabic and the contemporary Arabic dialects has been investigated by several researchers. For example, Miller (1986) provides a review and evaluation of a number of theories vis-à-vis the origin of modern Arabic dialects. The discussion of the various claims and counterclaims falls beyond the scope of the present essay. Readers interested in this controversial topic are referred to Ferguson (1959), Versteegh (1984, 1997, and 2004), Miller (1986), Holes (1995), Owens (2006), and al-Sharkawi (2010), among others. I am grateful to this reviewer for raising this question. 5. The use of the b-prefix indicates a state of affairs which involves nuances of volition, will-ingness, and intention, whereas “raħ” reflects the speaker’s certainty that some event is impending in the future and asserts the proximity or imminence of the future event (Cowell 2005, 322–23; Mitchell and el-Hassan 1994, 19). The discussion of the use of the b-future marker in Syrian Arabic falls beyond the scope of the present study and therefore will not be attempted. 6. This is parallel to the present perfect tense in English, which expresses the current rel-evance of a past event. 7. The creation of the prefix “ħa-” presumably resulted from a process of metathesis from “raħ,” but how and when that happened is unclear due to the absence of diachronic evidence. 8. The question of unidirectionality attracted a lot of criticism (see especially Newmeyer 1998; Haspelmath 1999; Fischer, Norde, and Perridon 2004; Campbell 2001; Janda 2001, among others). Although some instances of change in the opposite direction—namely, from abstract to concrete—have been identified (e.g., Ramat 1992), such cases are far fewer than the numerous examples concerning the unidirectionality hypothesis (Newmeyer 1998, 275–76; Haspelmath 1999).

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The Grammaticalization of the Motion Verb “Raħ” as a Prospective Aspect Marker in Syrian Arabic

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