Includes bibliographical references (p. 267-269) and index.

Preliminary Material -- 1 General Reflections on Universal Grammar -- 2 Tense -- 3 Aspect -- 4 Action -- 5 The Categorial Interplay -- 6 Negation -- 7 The Reference Point in Aspectual and Tense Languages -- 8 Introductory Remarks -- 9 Some Remarks on the Phonology and the Verb Forms -- 10 Anteriority to the Speech Time -- 11 Plural Situations -- 12 Simultaneity with a Reference Point in the Past -- 13 Anteriority to a Reference Point in the Past -- 14 Posteriority to a Reference Point in the Past -- 15 The Speech Time -- 16 Extratemporality -- 17 Posteriority to the Speech Time -- 18 Simultaneity with a Reference Point in the Future -- 19 Anteriority to a Reference Point in the Future -- 20 Verbs of Perception -- 21 Circumstantial Clauses -- 22 Conditional Clauses -- 23 Summary Arranged According to Chapter -- 24 Summary Arranged According to Verb Form -- 25 The Oppositions in the Verbal System -- 26 Some Remarks on the Evolution of the Arabic Verbal System -- 27 Aspects or Discussed and Narrated World? -- 28 Substitution Test -- 29 The Results of this Work -- Texts in the Dialect of Beirut -- Bibliography -- Index.

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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.