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Article published In:
What is a verb? – Linguistic, psycholinguistic and developmental perspectives on verbs in Germanic and Semitic languages
Edited by Eva Smolka and Dorit Ravid
[The Mental Lexicon 14:2] 2019
► pp. 209–236

Verbal patterns in Palestinian Arabic

| Bar-Ilan University
| Bar-Ilan University
| Bar-Ilan University

The study examines the distribution of verbal patterns and their semantic-syntactic functions as they are used in spoken narrative text production by adult native speakers of Palestinian Arabic. 30 native Palestinian Arabic adult speakers from Kufur Qareʕ, a village in Central Israel, were shown a clip demonstrating conflicts and were asked to produce an oral narrative text based on it. The verbs used in these narratives were examined according to root, pattern, transitivity and semantic class. The results revealed strong tendencies with regard to the distribution of the patterns that were used. CaCaC was the most productive pattern by type and token counts. This stands in contradiction to the results for verb innovation, where the CaCCaC and tCaCCaC patterns are selected almost exclusively, and it highlights the gap between productivity based on new formations and productivty based on basic forms in use. In addition, some verbal patterns were extermely rarely used. The results also show that there was no transparent form-function relation with respect to the semantic functions of verbal patterns. Most semantic functions were delivered in a small number of patterns (between 1–3) and the majority of them were in were found in one pattern, CaCaC. The results shed light on the actual usage of Arabic verbal patterns in text production and their semantic and syntactic features.

Keywords: verb, verbal pattern, Arabic, narrative texts, form-function relations
Article outline
  • The verbal system of PA
    • Traditional classification of the verbal patterns
    • Semantic-syntactic relations between verb patterns: A psycholinguistic perspective
  • Methodology
    • Participants
    • Procedure
    • Coding
  • Results
    • Pattern distribution
    • Semantic-syntactic classification of verbs patterns
    • Semantic functions across patterns
    • Root-related verbs
  • Discussion
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 15 January 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ml.00005.lak
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