Tense and text in classical Arabic : a discourse-oriented study of the classical Arabic tense system / by Michal Marmorstein.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 241-252) and index.

Front Matter -- Introduction -- The Verb in Arabic Grammatical Tradition -- The Verb in Arabistic Literature -- The Structure of Context -- The Verbal Inventory -- The Syntagmatic Structure of the Clause -- The Verbal Paradigm in Embedded Clauses -- The Predicative Paradigm -- The Verbal Paradigm in the Dialogue -- The Verbal Paradigm in the Narrative -- The Verbal Paradigm in the Generic Utterance -- Conclusions -- References -- Index.

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In Tense and Text in Classical Arabic , Michal Marmorstein presents a new discourse-oriented analysis of the indicative tense system in Classical Arabic. Critical of commonly held assumptions regarding the binary structure of the tense system and the perfect-imperfect asymmetry, the author redefines the discussion by analysing the extended syntactic and textual environments in which the paradigm of the indicative forms is used.The study shows that the function of Classical Arabic tenses is determined by the interaction of their inherent grammatical meaning and the overall dialogic, narrative, or generic contexts in which they occur. It also demonstrates the particularizing effect of context, so that temporal and aspectual meanings are always more nuanced, delicate, and pragmatically motivated in actual discourse.