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Verb Valency Changes: Theoretical and typological perspectives
Edited by Albert Álvarez González and Ia Navarro
[Typological Studies in Language 120] 2017
► pp. 258–284

Arabic ‘labile verbs’ in form III

Lability or something else?

| National Research University, Higher School of Economics, Moscow

The article discusses labile (also known as ambitransitive) verbs in literary Arabic. I show that, though Arabic does not have a rich system of labile verbs, some existing cases of lability (labile verbs of form III) are particularly interesting from the typological point of view. Their unusual property is that the opposition between semantically causative vs. non-causative uses (and number of syntactic arguments) do not always correlate with syntactic (in)transitivity. Verbs of form III have both possible types of non-standard uses: transitive non-causative and intransitive causative uses, as well as the two standard uses (transitive causative and intransitive non-causative uses). I link this non-standard type of lability to some general features of voice and transitivity in Arabic. At the end of the article, some cases of lability outside form III are discussed.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Definition and distribution of labile verbs
    • 2.1The state of research
    • 2.2A-lability vs. P-lability
    • 2.3Lability and syntactic transitivity
  • 3.Arabic verb system and transitivity
    • 3.1Verbal patterns
    • 3.2Syntactic indefiniteness
    • 3.3Form III and non-standard transitivity
  • 4.Lability in form III
    • 4.1 sāwā
    • 4.2 mātala
    • 4.3 ṣālaħa
    • 4.4 fāraqa
    • 4.5 qāraba
    • 4.6 ṭābaqa
    • 4.7 wāzana
    • 4.8Intransitive structures with bayna: What is the functional motivation?
    • 4.9Variation in form III: Summary
  • 5.Labile verbs of other forms
  • 6.Lability of derived verbs: Some parallels in other languages
  • 7.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 30 September 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.120.10let
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