Reassessing Subjunctive in spoken Arabic

International audience This study investigates typological variation in the marking of subjunctive clauses across spoken varieties of Arabic. Spoken Arabic is traditionally contrasted with Old Arabic due to the absence of dedicated subjunctive suffixes, which have generally been replaced by an unmarked prefixed conjugation (Brustad 2000). In line with this assumption, our analysis explores the morphosyntactic and semantic variability of subjunctive clauses across epistemic, deontic, and performative modalities (Bybee, Perkins & Pagliuca 1994; Bybee and Fleischman 1995). Special attention is given to the interaction between subjunctive marking and the realis/irrealis distinction (Givón 1994), as well as broader TAM patterns. The study also examines additional formal features of subordinate subjunctive clauses, including the presence or absence of overt complementizers, the morphosyntactic encoding of the embedded subject, and the TAM marking of the subordinate verb. The comparative scope encompasses a range of Eastern and Western Arabic dialects (e.g., Hassaniya, Moroccan, Tunisian, Maltese, Sudanese, Omani), as well as Arabic-lexified creoles (Juba Arabic, Ki-Nubi), drawing on both primary data and secondary sources (Caubet 2013; Čéplö 2017; D’Accardio-Berlinguer 2024; Manfredi 2017). Ultimately, the study argues that spoken Arabic varieties indeed encode an indicative/subjunctive distinction and highlights the morphosyntactic diversity shaped by both internally motivated developments and contact-induced change in this grammatical domain.