Temporal Deixis in Najdi Arabic

Abstract

This study is concerned with the identification and classification of temporal deixis in the spoken Najdi dialect (NA henceforth) of Arabic. The data used for the analysis comprises a total of ten-hour audio-recording and transcription of face-to-face, informal conversations among six adult Najdi speakers of Arabic. Two categories of time deixis are recognized, namely lexical temporal deixis such as (الحين) alḥi:n (now) and (يوم) youm (day) vs. morphological temporal deixis (tense). Deictic expressions were found to be used gesturally, symbolically, and non-deictically. Results show that lexical encoding of various units and spans of time is very elevated. L-tenses are highly parallel to the M-tenses of the utterances. The detailed affixation of verbs including person, gender, and a number of speakers and addressees exemplifies the strong ties that connect an utterance with its context in NA.