Historical considerations on t- passives with G-stem verbs in North African Arabic

Abstract The present paper investigates the origin and spread of a peculiar trait of North African and Egyptian Arabic, namely the employment of a t- prefix with non-augmented forms of the verb to express the passive voice. According to the literature at our disposal, this trait is present in Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, but generally absent elsewhere. In the paper, traces of the trait are shown to exist in other dialects as well as a result of phonological constraints to the employment of the infaʕala stem. As for the present-day distribution of the trait and its origin, we advance the hypothesis of a Tunisian origin due to convergence with Berber.