Some historical developments of the verb in Neo-Aramaic

Aramaic is a language belonging to the Semitic family. It was one of the major languages of the Ancient Near East and has survived as a spoken language down to modern times in various dialect groups. The largest and most diverse group of these modern dialects is the North Eastern group, which is generally known as North Eastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA). This consists of dialects spoken by Christian and Jewish communities across a wide area encompassing northern Iraq, north-west Iran, south-eastern Turkey, Armenia and Georgia. The Christian dialects in all cases differ from the Jewish dialects, even where the Christians and Jews lived in the same town or region. In this dialect group radical changes have taken place in the verbal system in comparison with earlier forms of Aramaic. One of the most conspicuous changes is the elimination of the finite verbal forms qṭal (past perfective) and yiqṭol (imperfective, future, modal) and their replacement by the passive particle qṭil and the active participle qaṭəl respectively.