Auxiliary verbs in Jordanian Arabic

Abstract

There are a number of helping verbs in Jordanian Arabic that are confused with light verbs or serial verbs. This paper, first, establishes the criteria on which they have been identified as auxiliary verbs. The paper shows the similarities and differences between the inflection of lexical verbs and AUX's in JA. It also tackles the loss of θassigning properties which is the crucial property that differentiates between AUX and lexical and serial verbs. Second, given the fact that Arabic has rich verbal morphology which provides enough justification for factoring TP into TP and AspP (and perhaps AgrP), the study adopts an articulated version of the IP, in which inflection is separated into its constituent components, each has a maximal functional projection. The study also builds on Ouhalla's proposal (1990, 2005) that auxiliaries originate outside the VP shell. Based on evidence from the distribution of VP adverbs, negation and floating quantifiers, the paper proposes that auxiliaries in Jordanian Arabic are classified under two lexical auxiliary groups. T-aux are borne in a functional projection under T, but raise to T 0 to carry and reflect tense, while Asp-aux are base-generated under Asp 0 and only raise to T in the absence of a T-Aux.

The Auxiliary Verb in Contemporary Jordanian Arabic: A Historical Descriptive Study

“…Many studies have tried to connect the linguistic levels of contemporary Arabic dialects with classical Arabic (Al-Gharaibah 2008;Abu Nawas and Thawabih 2018). Especially with the existence of Jordanian Arabic helping verbs which might be confused with light or serial verbs (Yasin and Hussein 2021). The exact function of the auxiliary verbs is proposed by another Arabic dialect such as Najdi Arabic.…”