The linguistic categories of aspect, tense and action are closely interrelated. In the first part of Aspect, Tense and Action in the Arabic dialect of Beirut, Stefan Bruweleit defines the three categories and describes the interplay between them at a metagrammatical level. In the next parts he applies the theoretical findings of the first part to the Arabic dialect of Beirut, investigates the ways temporal, aspectual and actional categories are expressed and shows how to decide whether the verb system of the dialect has to be regarded as aspectual or as temporal. One of the main results of the work is the fact that a thorough understanding of a verb system is only possible through an understanding of the categorial interplay of aspect, tense and action.

The Foundations of Arabic Linguistics, IV, contains sixteen studies on grammatical theories from the earliest period of Arabic grammar (end 8th century C.E.) and the evolution of theory by later grammarians.

Introduction -- Provenance and object history -- The block and its decoration -- The Aten cartouches and epithets -- Architectural inlay -- Reconstruction of the Meritaten Sunshade chapel -- The chapel of Meritaten and the Amarna period Sunshades -- The House-of-Waenre -- A Heliopolitan Horizon-of-the-Aten? -- Damnatio memoriae -- Ramesside reuse at Heliopolis -- Reuse of the Meritaten sunshade block in Islamic Cairo -- Conclusions

The first comparative study of the syntax of Arabic dialects, chosen for their distinction. Based upon natural language data recorded in Morocco, Egypt, Syria and Kuwait, this study takes an analytical approach, combining insights from discourse analysis, language typology and pragmatics.

Coptic, the latest phase of the Ancient Egyptian language, existed from beginning to end in a multilingual space. The indigenous Egyptian language had been in contact with Greek - and other languages - from the first millennium BCE, as well as Arabic, since the Arab conquest of Egypt in 641 CE. In effect, this is the earliest and best-attested situation of stable language contact in the ancient world. It is also a rich source for studies on lexical borrowing, since about 5000 loanwords from Greek and some 500 from Arabic form part of the lexicon of Coptic at various stages. These loanwords are documented in a wide variety of genres and registers, from the language of theology to that of science and everyday life. The focus of the volume is mainly lexical borrowing from Greek into Coptic, but other aspects will be treated as well, e.g., the sociolinguistic situation of Greek and Coptic, Coptic loanwords in Greek, Arabic loanwords in Coptic, and pre-Coptic evidence for lexical borrowing. A special focus will be on the sociolinguistic and functional aspects of lexical borrowing in Coptic.

This monograph provides an extensive syntactic description of the rather well-known but not previously described Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialect of Zakho. The description covers both microsyntax, namely, syntactic relationships within the confines of the sentence: the predicative link, the attributive and completive relationships, and apposition.