Temporality in the Arabic Lexicon: Morphological Encoding of Experiential States in the faʕla:n Adjectival Template

This paper investigates how Arabic morphologically encodes temporality in the adjectival domain by examining the contrast between adjectives of the faʕla:n template (e.g., salma:n ‘being sound’) and adjectives of the faʕi:l/fa:ʕil template (e.g., sali:m/sa:lim ‘sound’) in Modern Standard Arabic and Jordanian Arabic (henceforth MSA and JA, respectively). Drawing on a range of diagnostics (relational PP selection, perceptual accessibility, pluralization, and metaphorical extension), the study demonstrates that the faʕla:n template lexicalizes inherently experiential, temporally anchored states, whereas faʕi:l/fa:ʕil adjectives denote property-level statives whose temporal profile is contextually determined. The data support a two-tiered ontology of stativity and contribute to debates on the lexical vs. compositional sources of stage-level interpretations. We argue that faʕla:n adjectives contain an internal temporal projection headed by T° with an interpretable [Prog]/[NOW] feature, making temporality a syntactically encoded component of their lexical structure. Typological parallels from Semitic and other languages show that Arabic offers a uniquely transparent system for observing how morphology can grammaticalize experiential states.