Habituality in Tihami Arabic: Evidence for a Modular Imperfective

Abstract

Habitual readings of the imperfective have been derived by two ways: event plurality (Ferreira 2016) and temporal partition (Deo 2009, 2015). McKenzie (2021) shows, based on Kiowa, that these are not competing alternatives but modular ingredients that can work independently. This contrasts with the standard Arabic analysis, where the imperfective is treated as a semantically empty form and habitual meaning comes from a single covert operator (Hallman 2015). This paper challenges that view with data from Tihami Arabic, which uses two distinct constructions for habitual meaning: the bare imperfective, which requires multiple events scattered across time, and the ma-prefixed form, which asserts that the event lasts the entire relevant time. Following McKenzie (2021), three tests—negation, episodic durations, and untested characteristics—confirm that the two forms are semantically independent.