The Expression of Durativity in Arabic

This paper presents a comparative study of preverbal aspect markers, used with the ‘imperfect’ verb forms in four spoken dialects of Arabic (those of Tunis, Fes, Cairo, and Damascus). The discussion of the forms and functions of these preverbal markers (PMs) is put in a diachronical perspective, in order to explain the apparent similarities between the PMs in different dialects, as well as their – sometimes slight – divergence in meaning.