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Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XXXV: Papers from the Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics, Washington, D.C., 2022
Edited by Ahmad Alqassas
[Studies in Arabic Linguistics 14] 2025
► pp. 158–179

Chapter 7
Imperfect verbal prefixes as discourse markers

| University of Bayreuth
| University of Bayreuth
Many varieties of Arabic have one or more pre-verbal imperfect markers. While some, like the Egyptian future prefix ħa- or ha-, have a clearly profiled meaning, many defy simple definition. We concentrate on two of these with numerous shared attributes: Iraqi da- and an Upper Egyptian morpheme with many allomorphs conventionally identified as ʕan-. Using corpora of Iraqi and Upper Egyptian Arabic, we describe the syntax-pragmatics of da- and ʕan-, highlighting their pragmatic, procedural basis: both basically signal text coherency. Da- encompasses a global scope while ʕan- is typically used locally in an adjacency pair. We conclude by developing a rough typology of pre-verbal imperfect markers in Arabic, da- and ʕan- constituting a hitherto neglected class of pragmatic prefixes.
Keywords: pragmatics, discourse markers, imperfect prefixes, Egyptian Arabic, Iraqi Arabic, procedural function
Article outline
  • 1.The Issue
  • 2.Form and geographical distribution of da- and ʕan-
  • 3.Variationist remarks
    • 3.1Iraq
    • 3.2Egypt
      • 3.2.1ʕan-
      • 3.2.2bi-
  • 4.The data
  • 5.The grammar and meaning of da- and ʕan-, a basic account
    • 5.1Basic lexical and syntactic information
      • Dependent clauses
    • 5.2Meaning and function
      • 5.2.1da-
      • 5.2.2ʕan-
  • 6.Basic distributional statistics
    • 6.1Statistics
    • 6.2Cairene b- imperfect
  • 7.Basic comparison of da- with ʕan-
  • 8.Typological and historical issues
  • Author queries
  • Notes
  • References
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