Rethinking TAM categories in Berber and Chadic

Part of the SOAS Linguistics Research Seminar Series 2025-26

Speakers: Guillaume Guitang (University of Oxford), Jenia Gutova (University of Tromso), Joey Lovestrand (University of Essex) and Aicha Belkadi (SOAS

Abstract

In-depth semantic studies of TAM in Berber and Chadic languages are rare. And, although a substantial body of work now addresses this area, either as a primary focus or as a secondary issue, our overall understanding is still largely fragmentary. A major challenge concerns terminology. Frequently used labels such as perfective, imperfective, and aorist are often defined in highly idiosyncratic ways. Such terminological inconsistency has serious consequences for crosslinguistic comparison, as it creates a risk of generalising from categories that differ substantially in function. Also, the uncritical adoption of terminology generally obfuscates what the exact functions of the target morphology and constructions are.

As a group of researchers working on TAM in Chadic and Berber languages, we have therefore set out to reassess the state of research in our respective languages of specialisation and to develop a benchmark approach for the study of TAM across Afroasiatic. Our overarching aim is to adopt a precise and theoretically informed framework, Klein (1994), for describing TAM. Such an approach will make it possible to identify the conceptual categories expressed in these languages and to assess the extent and nature of cross-linguistic variation. We hope that this work will contribute to situating Berber and Chadic, and Afroasiatic data more generally, within current theoretical and typological debates on TAM.

Image: Raúl Cacho Oses (Unsplash)