Tense in Standard Arabic: A Minimalist Account of Morphological Realization and Feature Checking

Abstract

This paper investigates the morphological realization of tense and the syntactic checking of the tense feature in Standard Arabic (SA). The empirical point of departure is a distribution puzzle: SA possesses only two verbal forms, the perfective and the imperfective, yet expresses three temporal distinctions. A substantial body of scholarship treats tense in Arabic as either entirely abstract, inferrable from agreement morphology or blocked from surface realization by morphological constraints (Benmamoun 2000; Watson 2002; Ryding 2005; El Fenne 2023), or as morphologically realized via the vocalic template (Bahloul 2008; Tucker 2011; McCarthy 1993; Embick 2010). Both positions are shown to make false predictions for the distribution of verbal forms in negative sentences. Working within Chomsky's (1993, 1995, 2000, 2001) Minimalist Program, this paper proposes a positional account: the past tense morpheme is identified with the voice morpheme realized root-internally (between C₁ and C₂ of the triconsonantal root), while the present tense morpheme is abstract. The two verbal forms differ at the template level in their CV structure (perfective: CVCVC; imperfective: CCVC) and in the distribution of agreement morphology (suffixal in the perfective; discontinuous in the imperfective), a structural difference that underlies the positional diagnostic proposed here. The perfective form is lexically marked [+Past]; the imperfective exists in two lexical entries, one bearing [+Present] and one tense-neutral. The [Tense] feature is uniformly strong, triggering overt V-to-T movement, with tense-bearing particles checking tense in negative and future contexts via movement to T°, while the verb checks its mood feature in Mood° (Ouhalla 1993, 1994). Implications for the typology of strong tense features and for the organization of the SA verbal system are discussed.