Book of Abstracts
ABDELSAYED, Ibraam
Beyond Diglossia: Redefining Stylistic Variation in the Formal-Informal Continuum of Egyptian Arabic Discourse
Ibraam Abdelsayed, University for Foreigners of Siena
Notwithstanding criticisms and the advent of novel frameworks, the diglossia model proposed by Ferguson continues to exert a considerable influence on Arabic sociolinguistic studies (Blanc 1960; Fasold 1984; Ferguson 1991). This is evident in numerous studies that investigate linguistic variation, particularly focusing on the contrast between fuṣḥā (F) and non-fuṣḥā (nF) features across different linguistic levels (Al-Wer & Horesh 2019). In the field of sociolinguistics, it is common practice to interpret stylistic variation based on the association between the presence of “F features” with formality, and their absence— and consequently the use of “nF features”—with informality (Owens 2019; Mejdell 1996, 2006; Kaye 1994). However, this line of reasoning is somewhat circular, as it is based on the assumption that these features are inherently formal or informal. Consequently, further empirical research is required to validate these classifications through actual language use.
This study challenges the simplistic F versus nF dichotomy by exploring stylistic variation in Egyptian Arabic and mapping the continuum between formal and informal styles (Labov 1972a, 1972b; Coșeriu 1981). The research aims to address three key questions:
RQ1. How do spoken genres differentiate along the formal-informal continuum?
RQ2. To what extent are F and nF features distributed within this continuum?
RQ3. How significantly do F features dictate the degree(s) of formality in different styles?
In order to respond to these queries, an analysis was conducted on the LAPE corpus comprising 18 spoken genres in Egypt. The corpus encompasses a diverse range of formal and informal contexts, including casual conversations, public debates, and religious sermons. To address RQ1, we employed the “F(ormality)-score” (Heylighen & Dewaele, 1999, 2002), a quantitative measure that assesses formality by analyzing the frequency of (non-)deictic elements across different parts of speech. The score thus allows for the differentiation between “superficial formality” (attention to form outside of convention) and “deep formality” (attention to form for precise meaning). In this study, we concentrate on the latter.
We then examined the distribution of F and nF features within the continuum (RQ2) and evaluated the extent to which F features determine formality across various styles (RQ3). The analysis encompassed six features, which were classified into two categories: lexical and phonological. The lexical category included demonstratives, negation, and relative pronouns, while the phonological category comprised the uvular /q/ and interdental phonemes /θ/ and /ð/. The selection of these features was based on previous research (Abd-el Jawad & Suleiman 1990; Holes 1993; Mejdell 2006, 2012) and their consistent identification as stylistic markers in Arabic.
The findings challenge the conventional notion regarding linguistic formality. Although F features were more prevalent in formal genres, certain genres displayed lower degrees of deep formality, indicating that deep formality is not exclusively determined by the presence of F features. This study demonstrates the shortcomings of binary classifications (F vs. nF) in fully capturing the intricacies of stylistic variation. It underscores the need for more sophisticated sociolinguistic methodologies to accurately reflect the dynamic and multifaceted nature of (Egyptian) Arabic discourse, contributing to broader discussions on moving beyond simplistic dichotomous frameworks.
Keywords: Sociolinguistic Studies; Stylistic Variation; Formal-Informal Continuum; Egyptian Arabic
References
Abd-el Jawad, H. R. S., & Suleiman, S. M. (1990). “Lexical conditioning of phonological variation”. Language Sciences, 12(4), 291-330.
Al-Wer, E. and Horesh, U. (2019). The Routledge Handbook of Arabic Sociolinguistics. London: Routledge.
Blanc, H. (1960), “Style variations in Arabic: A sample of interdialectal conversation”. In C. A. Ferguson (ed.), Contributions to Arabic Linguistics, pp. 81–156, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Coșeriu, E. (1981). “Los conceptos de «dialecto», «nivel» y «estilo de lengua» y el sentido propio de la dialectología”. Lingüística Española Actual, 3(1), pp. 1–32.
Fasold, R. (1984). The Sociolinguistics of Society. Oxford: Blackwell.
Ferguson, C. A. (1991). “Diglossia revisited”. In A. Elgibali (ed.), Understanding Arabic: Essays in Contemporary Arabic Linguistics (in Honor of El-Said Badawi), pp. 49–67, Cairo: AUC Press.
Heylighen, F. and Dewaele, J. M. (1999). Formality of Language: Definition, Measurement and Behavioral Determinants. Technical Report, B-1050. Brussels: Free University of Brussels.
Heylighen, F. and Dewaele, J. M. (2002). “Variation in the Contextuality of Language: An Empirical Measure”. Foundations of Science 7, pp. 293–340.
Holes, C. (1993). “The uses of variation: A study of the political speeches of Gamal Abd al-Nasir”. In Mushira Eid & Clive Holes (eds.), Perspectives on Arabic linguistics, Volume 5, 13–45, Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Kaye, A. S. (1994). “Formal vs. Informal in Arabic: Diglossia, Triglossia, Tetraglossia, etc., Polyglossia — Multiglossia Viewed as a Continuum”. Zeitschrift Für Arabische Linguistik, 27, pp. 47–66.
Labov, W. (1972a). Sociolinguistic Patterns. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press.
Labov, W. (1972b). “Some principles of linguistic methodology”. Language in Society, 1(1), pp. 97–120.
Mejdell, G. (1996). “Some sociolinguistic concepts of style and stylistic variation in spoken Arabic, with reference to Nagib Mahfuz talking about his life”. In J. R. Smart (ed.), Tradition and modernity in Arabic language and literature, pp. 316–26, Richmond: Curzon.
Mejdell, G. (2006). Mixed styles in spoken Arabic in Egypt. Leiden: Brill.
Mejdell, G. (2012). “Diglossia, code switching, style variation, and congruence: Notions for analyzing mixed Arabic”. al-´Arabiyya, Journal of The American Association of Teachers of Arabic, 44–45, pp. 29–39.
Owens, J. (2019). “Style and sociolinguistics”. In E. Al-Wer and U. Horesh (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Arabic Sociolinguistics, pp. 81–92, London: Routledge.
AVALLONE, Lucia
Teaching and learning the Egyptian vernacular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries
An overview of some textbooks
Lucia Avallone, University of Bergamo
The aim of this paper is to provide a comparative analysis of the chapters on the phonological and graphic system of Egyptian Arabic as they appear in a number of textbooks for foreign learners published in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In particular, the analysis will focus on the organisation of the material, the metalanguage used and the examples given in the text. The content of the paper is part of a larger research project on the written documentation of pedagogical approaches to the Egyptian vernacular from a diachronic perspective.
Keywords: Egyptian vernacular, textbooks, phonology, writing, metalanguage
References
Gairdner, W. H. T. 1917. Egyptian Colloquial Arabic. A Conversation Grammar. Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons.
Nallino, C. A. 1913. L’arabo parlato in Egitto. Milano: Ulrico Hoepli.
Phillot, D. C., Powell, A. 1926. Manual of Egyptian Arabic. Cairo: published by the authors.
Thimm, C. A. 1907. Egyptian Self-Taught. London: E. Marlborough & Co.
Vollers, K. 1895. Grammar of the Modern Egyptian Dialect of Arabic. London: Cambridge University Press.
Willmore, J. S. 1901. The Spoken Arabic of Egypt. London: Savid Nutt.
BENÍTEZ-FERNÁNDEZ, Montserrat
To show or not to show: The Jbala variety as a polyvalent voice
Montserrat Benítez Fernández, Escuela de Estudios Árabes, CSIC, Granada
It is well known that Jbala varieties are amongst the most stigmatized varieties in Morocco. In an urban context, such as Ouezzane, this stigmatization produces two different outputs: 1. Speakers avoid using Jebli marked linguistic traits in order to not give away their Jbala origin, which can result in attrition or lost; 2. Speakers proudly show those Jbala features by a process of covert prestige (Benítez Fernández 2023).
During five different fieldwork campaigns (2014-2021) carried out in the Ouezzane province, both in the city and in the rural/mountainous area, I have observed some speakers both including and avoiding the use of marked Jbala features in their speech.
This paper will deal with this kind of intraspeaker variation. I will analyze the factors that trigger this variation (social aspects, audience, topic, etc.) and explore why speakers need to build a different voice.
References
Benítez Fernández, Montserrat. 2023. “Linguistic Variation, Social Meaning and Covert Prestige in a Northern Moroccan Arabic Variety”. Languages 8(1), 89. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8010089
BETTEGA, Simone
For a “typology of the future”: contributions from Arabic dialectology
Simone Bettega, University of Torino
The use of the label "future" in linguistics has been problematic since at least the publication of Lyons (1977).
While some authors insist on considering it a temporal category, in continuity with the more entrenched terminological tradition, others have observed that the multiple non-temporal uses that distinguish the so- called "future markers" in most of the world's languages impose a rethinking of this notion, and that the future – both as an abstract linguistic concept and in its concrete morphosyntactic manifestations – should rather be rethought as pertaining to the sphere of modality. Still other studies call for a rethinking of "the future" as rather connected to the field of evidentiality (on these issues see Pietrandrea 2004: 54), while there are those who would advocate an overcoming of all these labels in favor of the macro-category of "reality status", that would distinguish the various TAME markers by dividing them into the two subsets of realis and irrealis (see Mauri and Sansò 2016 for an overview of the topic). Finally, non-temporal uses of the future have also been interpreted discursively in terms of subjectivity and intersubjectivity (see Rodriguez Rosique 2015 and Kratochvìlova 2019 for a summary of these perspectives).
With the partial exception of the realis/irrealis dichotomy, it should be remembered that most of these theoretical paradigms have been developed in the context of studies focusing on Indo-European languages, with particular attention to the Romance sub-branch, where the polyfunctionality of future markers seems to be particularly pervasive. It is virtually impossible to find any reference to Arabic in the literature on the subject. While this may be due to the distance that has historically existed between general linguistics and the field of Semitic studies, it must also be pointed out that - as far as spoken Arabic is concerned - almost nothing has been said about the non-temporal uses of the various preverbs that mark the future in the dialects.
The present study aims to fill, in part, this gap, by comparing the uses of future grams in four Arabic dialects, namely Moroccan (where the future is commonly marked by the particle ġadi and its variants), Egyptian (ḥa- /ha-), the dialects of northern Oman (bi-) and the coastal dialect of Dhofar (bā-). We will attempt a comparative analysis of the various modal and aspectual uses of these particles, with a twofold purpose. The first is to bring attention to functions that in many dialects appear to be inherent in these morphosyntactic elements but have never been described (not even in studies specifically focused on these elements, such as Brustad 2000 or Persson 2008). The second objective of the research is to investigate the possible contribution that a study of the uses of the future in a family of languages usually "neglected" by typology, such as that represented by Arabic dialects, could bring to the general linguistic theory on the topic - a topic that remains to this day, in the words of De Brabanter, Kissine and Sharifzadeh (2014: 19), "a messy affair."
References
Brustad, K. (2000), The Syntax of Spoken Arabic, Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.
De Brabanter, P., Kissine, M., Sharifzadeh, S. (2014), “Future tense vs. future time: an introduction”, in: de
Brabanter, P., Kissine, M., Sharifzadeh, S. (Eds.), Future Times, Future Tenses, Oxford University Press, Oxford: 1-25.
Kratochvílová, D. (2019), “The Spanish future tense and cognitive perspective: Tense, modality, evidentiality
and the reflection of the grounding process”, Lingua.
Lyons, J. (1977), Semantics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Mauri, C., Sansò, A. (2016), “The Linguistic Marking of (Ir)Realis and Subjunctive”, in: Nuyts, J., van der
Auwera, J. (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Modality and Mood, Oxford University Press, Oxford:166-195.
Persson, M. (2008), “The Role of the b-prefix in Gulf Arabic Dialects as a Marker of Future, Intent and/or
Irrealis”, Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 8: 26-52.
Pietrandrea, P. (2005), Epistemic Modality: Functional Properties and the Italian System. Amsterdam and
Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Rodríguez Rosique, S. (2015), “Spanish future in evaluative contexts: a case of mirativity?”,
eHumanista/IVITRA 8: 500—516.
BOZZA, Cristiana & MION, Giuliano
Some considerations on the grammaticalization of theophoric formulae in Arabic
Cristiana Bozza, University of Bari
Giuliano Mion, University of Cagliari
As a reflection of the historical mutual influence between Arabic language and Islam, theophoric formulae are widespread throughout (and even beyond) the Arabic-speaking world, and are widely used, in both Classical/Modern Standard Arabic and Arabic dialects, in everyday speech not only in religious settings (for an overview, see, among others, the seminal work of Piamenta 1979). Some of these expressions have developed usages not necessarily related to their original purposes and meanings and convey a range of discourse-pragmatic values, which may differ depending on the variety of Arabic as well as the contexts they occur in. That of yālla is a case in point. Yālla and its variants (< yā ’Allāh ‘Oh God’, originally an invocation for God’s help), is one of the most common pan-Arabic discourse markers (DMs), used by Muslims, including speakers of languages other than Arabic, and by Arabs from other confessional communities as well. As a DM, yālla has mostly an interjective-exhortative value—reflecting to some extent the crosslinguistic pattern of grammaticalization GOD > INTERJECTION found in Kuteva et al. (2019: 219)—, and expresses ‘let’s go’, ‘come on’, often to urge someone to hurry up, not infrequently marking impoliteness. In example (1) below, drawn from Moroccan Arabic, it signals B’s impatience in wanting to cut off the conversation.
(1) A. b-s-sālāma
with-DEF-peace
B. yāḷḷāh, b-s-sālāma, wāxxa, yāḷḷāh
[yāḷḷāh]DM with-DEF-peace [wāxxa]DM [yāḷḷāh]DM
‘A. Goodbye
B. Let’s go, goodbye, OK, hurry up’
In addition, in some dialects, yālla exhibits other functions related to the domains of tense, aspect, and mood/modality (TAM). For instance, still in Moroccan Arabic, it performs temporal values implying ‘just’ (2.a); and, as pointed out by Taine-Cheikh (2024), in Hassaniya Arabic, it is used as a modal expressing mainly necessity (2.b).
(2) a. li’anna yāllāh kəmməlt stāž
because just finish.PFV.1SG training
‘Because I just have finished (my) education’ (Procházka 2012: 393)
b. yāḷḷt-i nəštġal
must.PFV-1SG work.IPFV.1SG
‘I have to/must/should work’
This study explores the theophoric formulae in contemporary Arabic dialects, with a focus on those items in which both discourse marking usages and TAM marking usages are found. In particular, it analyzes the relationship between these two outcomes by discussing it in terms of grammaticalization.
References
Kuteva, Tania, Bernd Heine, Bo Hong, Haiping Long, Heiko Narrog, and Seongha Rhee. 2019. World Lexicon of Grammaticalization. Second, extensively revised and updated edition. Cambridge: CUP.
Piamenta, Moshe. 1979. Islam in Everyday Arabic Speech. Leiden/Boston: Brill
Procházka, Stephan. 2012. “The main functions of theophoric formulae in Moroccan Arabic”. STUF – Language Typology and Universals 65(4): 383–397.
Taine-Cheikh, Catherine. 2024. “Changements sémantiques et fonctionnels dans les domaines de l'altérité et de l’exception.” In Carmen Berlinches Ramos, Jairo Guerrero y Montserrat Benítez Fernández (eds.), AIDA Granada: A Pomegranate of Arabic Varieties, 395-408. Zaragoza: Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza.
CAUBET, Dominique
Casa Revisited
Dominique Caubet, INALCO - LACNAD, Paris
Starting from the existing literature: Aguadé’s articles presenting the dialect of Casablanca (2002, 2003 & 2005), Kampffmeyer’s study at the beginning of the 20th c.), Hachimi’s work on the inhabitants of Fassi origin, and Nassim’s description in her Thesis (1995), the idea is to sum up short notes or remarks published in various articles or investigation projects, where the dialect of Casablanca was not the main objective (see below 2006-2024).
My enquiries on the Moroccan metropolis and “economic capital”, Casablanca, dealt mostly with the alternative music scene from 2005 to the present day and were often linked to youth practices.
It is always interesting to gather linguistic material when dialectology is NOT the main goal, and the material I gathered when filming Casanayda and Dima Punk are precious to analyse, as an afterthougt.
Casablanca is vast geographically and ten years ago, young people claimed that each neighbourhood had its dialect. It is true that Hay Mohammadi had a tendency to affricate more /t, d/’s when I enquired in 2009-2010.
Today, the social media have rendered the Casablanca youth practices even more prestigious, in a counterculture sense… Have other neighbourhoods of Casa, and other youths from the rest of the country tended to imitate this way of speaking? Or is, as we saw in Ziamari et al. 2020, the local identity still very present, as we tried to show on our work on the Ultras (Miller et al. 2023 and Ziamari et al. 2024)?
I will be summing up traits of contemporary Casa, through recordings and through social media of youths and of “younger” people who maintain their youth practices, even when they are 40 and more…
References of previous studies
Aguadé, J. 2002. Textos Marroquies Urbanos: Casablanca (1). EDNA, estudios de dialectología norteafricana y andalusí 6 (2002). 193-219
Aguadé, J. 2003. Notes on the Arabic dialect of Casablanca, in AIDA 5 PROCEEDINGS, CÁDIZ 2003
Aguadé, J. 2005. El dialecto de Casablanca a comienzos del siglo XX. Jorge Aguadé Bofill, Leila Abu-Shams Pagés, Angeles Vicente Sánchez (coord.) Sacrum arabo-semiticum : homenaje al profesor Federico Corriente en su 65 aniversario. Zaragoza: Instituto de Estudios Islámicos y del Oriente Próximo. 55-70
Kampffmeyer, G. 1912. Marokkanisch-arabische Gespräche im Dialekt von Casablanca : mit Vergleichung des Dialekts von Tanger. G. Reimer, Berlin
Hachimi, Atiqa. 2011. Réinterprétation sociale d’un vieux parler citadin Maghrébin à Casablanca. Langage et Société 138. 21-42.
Hachimi, Atiqa. (2005). Dialect leveling, maintenance and urban identitiy in Morocco Fessi immigrants in Casablanca. Thesis (Ph. D.) - University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2005.
Nassim., L. 1994. L’arabe parlé à Casablanca (Maroc). Etude phonologique et morphologique. 2 volumes. Thèse de doctorat, Paris III Sorbonne Nouvelle, ss dir. D. Cohen, 977 p.
Projects on/in Casablanca 2006-2024:
2006-2007: Sabbatical on the new role of Darija in the Moroccan society: CRCT Arabe maghrébin et création: l'émergence de nouveaux courants de création artistique et linguistique au Maroc au début du 3ème millénaire.
16-18 avril 2007, Casablanca, colloque internatioanal Réseau de Sociolinguistique Urbaine, coorganisé par LACNAD, avec l'IREMAM, le LIDILEM et l'Université d'Avignon, Langues et musique, pratiques urbaines plurielles, financement spécial par le MEN (Education Nationale) pour cette activité multi-équipes.
2007: Writing and filming of the documentary Casanayda! Un film écrit par D. Caubet, réalisé par F. Benlyazid & A. Mettour, Casablanca, Sigma, 2007.
2007- ANR Corpafroas on oral corpuses Corpus-based Studies of Lesser-described Languages: The CorpAfroAs corpus of spoken AfroAsiatic languages
2009-2011 Youth language project. Projet AUF « Parlers jeunes » et Projet « Nouvelles pratiques linguistiques, nouveaux espaces urbains : le cas de Casablanca (Maroc) ». recording longer corpora.
2009-2018 Passage to writing and new literacies on social networks
2010-2012 Délégation au CNRS, Centre Jacques Berque, project of a book/documentary on the Nayda movement.
2015-2016 Anthology of the Music scene with Amine Hamma, Jil LKlam, poètes urbains, Senso Unico & Sirocco, Casablanca 2017.2011-2019 Dima Punk project (documentary) film written and directed by D. Caubet, Paris Casablanca 2019. Lardux Films, Pan Production, 2M-TV
2019-2024 Studying the New role of the Moroccan Ultras, with Karima Ziamari & Catherine Miller (several articles, and presentations from 2020).
2022-2026 ANR Autogram project Induction de grammaires descriptives à partir de corpus annotés
Youth Language practices, The Ultras, references:
Ziamari, Karima, Caubet, Dominique, Miller, Catherine & Vicente, Àngeles. 2020. Eléments de caractérisation de pratiques linguistiques de jeunes Marocains (Casablanca, Meknès, Tétouan, Marrakech). In Sociolinguistique des pratiques langagières des jeunes. Faire genre, faire style, faire groupe autour de la méditerranée, sous la direction de Cyril Trimaille, Christophe Pereira, Cyril Trimaille, Karima Ziamari et Médéric Gasquet-Cyrus, Collection Langues gestes paroles, UGA éditions: Grenoble: 23-79.
Miller, Catherine, Caubet, Dominique & Ziamari, Karima. 2023. From emotion to politics. A sociolinguistic analysis of the Moroccan Ultras’ chants. Journal of Arabic Sociolinguistics, Vol. 1.1. March 2023. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh: 50-75.
Ziamari, Karima, Caubet, Dominique & Miller Catherine. 2024. Chants Ultras au Maroc : un style générationnel, des variations locales. In Carmen Berlinches Ramos, Jairo Guerrero y Montserrat Benítez Fernández (eds), AIDA Granada: A Pomegranate of Arabic Varieties, Zaragoza: Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza, Estudios de Dialectología Árab, 457-474.
COMELLI, Paola
Exploring language used in teaching Arabic and its cultural relevance:
insights from a mosque in Italy
Paola Comelli, University of Bergamo
This research explores the languages used to teach Fuṣḥā in a multilingual environment within a non-Arabophone country, focusing on a case study of a mosque in Curno (Bergamo), northern Italy. Drawing on classroom observations and semi-structured interviews with teachers, the study also considers the potential use of Italian and colloquial Arabic, alongside Fuṣḥā, for didactic purposes and to facilitate communication during Fuṣḥā lessons. Furthermore, it investigates the role of Fuṣḥā acquisition and transmission in a diasporic context, highlighting its significance in relation to cultural and religious heritage.
D’ACCARDIO BERLINGUER, Alessia & PEREIRA, Christophe
The semantics of preverbs and the expression of the future tense
in the Arabic of Tripoli (Libya) and Kairouan (Tunisia): a comparative study
Alessia D’Accardio Berlinguer, University of Naples L’Orientale/INALCO-LACNAD, Paris
Christophe Pereira, INALCO-LACNAD, Paris
The expression of the future tense in Maghrebi Arabic remains dramatically understudied, and only a few studies focus on this topic in contemporary spoken varieties (Benmoftah & Pereira 2019; Mion 2017; Taine-Cheikh 2004, 2009). These studies have shown that in addition to the active participle and the prefix conjugation, other morphemes (such as preverbs and adverbs) are used to express the future tense and specify its meaning. Tripoli and Kairouan Arabic are among the varieties of Arabic that exhibit different preverbs usually described as future markers: respectively taw-, bǝš- and mǝš- in Kairouan (D’Accardio Berlinguer 2024) and taw-, ḥā- and b- in Tripoli (Benmoftah & Pereira 2019). The use of these different preverbs to express an action that occurs after the moment of enunciation raises the following research questions: do these markers convey the same future value? Are they different because they are specialized in indicating a distinct value? How do they specialize? Additionally, do these markers express only future tense or do they also convey other modal values? Drawing from spontaneous utterances in our corpora, the aim of our presentation is to describe the formal means employed in Tripoli and Kairouan Arabic to express the future tense, attempting to assign specific values to each marker. Our comparative analysis will also highlight the morphosyntactic and semantic similarities as well as the differences between the two tense-aspect-mood (TAM) systems (Bybee, Perkins &
Pagliuca 1994; Comrie 1985), and will explore whether the same morphemes exhibit the same values in these two geographically close varieties of Arabic.
References
Benmoftah N. & Pereira Ch. 2019. Les futurs en arabe de Tripoli (Libye) : temporalité, aspectualité et modalités. Studies on Arabic Dialectology and Sociolinguistics. Proceedings of the 12th International Conference of AIDA held in Marseille from 30th May – 2nd June 2017. Aix-en-Provence. IREMAM.
Bybee J., Perkins R. & Pagliuca W. 1994. The Evolution of Grammar. Tense, Aspect, and Modality in the Languages of the World. Chicago / London. The University of Chicago Press.
Comrie B. 1985. Tense. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press.
D’Accardio Berlinguer A. 2024. The Arabic Spoken in Kairouan (Tunisia): Towards a Reassessment of the
Arabization of Northern Africa. Unpublished PhD Dissertation.
Mion G. 2017. À propos du futur à Tunis. In Veronika Ritt-Benmimoun (ed.), Tunisian and Libyan Dialects: Common Trends - Recent Developments - Diachronic Aspects, 205–217. Zaragoza. Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza.
Taine-Cheikh C. 2004. Le(s) futur(s) en arabe. Réflexions pour une typologie. Estudios de Dialectología Norteafricana y Andalusí. 8. Zaragoza. IEIOP. 215-238.
Taine-Cheikh C. 2009. Les morphèmes de futur en arabe et en berbère. Réflexions pour une typologie. Faits de langues. 33. Berne. Peter Lang. 91-102.
D'ANNA, Luca
Historical considerations on t- passives in North African Arabic
Luca D’Anna, University of Naples “L’Orientale”
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, instead of the more usual VII augmented stem infaʕala attested in other dialects. 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 marginally 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, and subsequent spread, due to convergence with Berber.
FALCHETTA, Jacopo
Dubbing in Moroccan Arabic: where does it stand on the sociolinguistic map?
Jacopo Falchetta – Università degli Studi di Bergamo / IREMAM, Aix-en-Provence / LACNAD, Paris
This presentation will summarise the partial results of a post-doctoral research project, which revolves around the sociolinguistic significance of dubbing in Moroccan Arabic. The project aimed first and foremost at understanding the ideological motivations underlying the dubbing professionals’ linguistic choices in the composition of the dialogues of the dubbed series (mainly soap-operas); to this purpose, participant observations and interviews were carried out in the dubbing studios themselves in the course of fieldwork. In parallel, Moroccan residents of the Sale-Rabat-Temara conurbation were questioned about their reception of the language of dubbing, to compare linguistic ideologies in and out of the studios. Their sociolinguistic stereotypes were also elicited, to understand how each of them positioned themselves with respect to other linguistically identified groups, and which groups were identified by them. A comparative analysis of these data aims at showing which phenomena of variation are salient for these two populations of Moroccan Arabic urban speakers and how these characterise them in terms of social meanings. Some words will also be spent on the linguistic features that trigger the identification of certain sociolects or regiolects and the information they provide on indexicalities. Finally, on the basis of these observations, an evaluation of the positioning of the language of dubbing with respect to both linguistic variation and language ideologies in Morocco will be attempted.
GANDOLFI, Paola
Sounds, perceptions and variations of the Moroccan dialect among migrants of the first generation and Moroccan migrants’ children in Italy
Paola Gandolfi, University of Bergamo
In Italy, Moroccan migrants are the most ancient and most meaningful community of Arab migrants in terms of numbers. We would like to observe the relations these migrants maintain with the Moroccan dialect which is, for the majority of them, their mother tongue. We will focus on the transformations of the Moroccan dialect as far as sounds, perceptions, imaginary are concerned among the “first” and the “second” generation of migrants. We especially wish to understand how the Moroccan migrants’ children inhabit and reinvent their relatives’s mother tongue and how they move from Italian to Moroccan dialect and viceversa, also by partially mixing the two languages in some specific contexts. We will observe the lingustic contacts of the Moroccan dialect with the Italian, but also the creative and original ways in which the young Moroccan migrant’s children use and “play” with Moroccan dialect and Italian, in the private and in the public spaces, in their daily cultural and linguisitic practices but also, increasingly, in their artistic creations.
GASPARINI, Fabio
Contact between Arabic and MSAL: evidence from Bəṭaḥrēt
Fabio Gasparini, Freie Universität Berlin
This talk will discuss the effects of contact between Arabic and the Modern South Arabian languages spoken in Oman. This phenomenon is intrinsically linked to the history of the tribal groups that historically spoke those languages, and who plausibly have interacted for millennia in a once balanced relationship, which was completely upset after the unification of Oman in the 1970s. The work on the South Arabian languages to date has mainly focused on the description of the individual varieties, which are still not exhaustively described today as a whole, while considering sociolinguistic and contact phenomena only marginally. Despite the absence of diachronic documentary sources, direct observation of the sociolinguistic practices of the Dhofari communities allows to ascertain the relevance that Arabic has today among local communities, and the influence that it has had on the endangered Modern South Arabian languages.
Taking Bettega & Gasparini (2020) as a starting point, this talk will try to add new elements to the picture described there, by discussing the case of Bəṭaḥrēt, the Modern South Arabian variety at the most imminent risk of extinction (Gasparini 2024, Morris & Gasparini forth.). The deep structural influence on Bəṭaḥrēt from Jababa Arabic, the undescribed variety of Arabic spoken locally, will be demonstrated by exploring the peculiar features found in the language, and especially the erosion of the traditional Modern South Arabian vocalic system and the restructuring of the verbal system.
References
Bettega, Simone & Gasparini, Fabio. 2020. Modern South Arabian languages. In Christopher Lucas & Stefano Manfredi (eds.), Arabic and contact-induced change, 351–369. Berlin: Language Science Press.
Gasparini, Fabio. 2024. Why a language dies: The case of Bəṭaḥrēt in Oman. In Katrin Pfadenhauer & Sofia Rüdiger & Valentina Serreli (eds.), Global and local perspectives on language contact, 129–149. Berlin: Language Science Press.
Morris, Miranda J. & Gasparini, Fabio. Forth. A descriptive grammar of Bəṭaḥrēt (Baṭḥari).
GUERRERO, Jairo
Tracking the history of early Modern Moroccan Arabic through a late 17th-century. French source: A linguistic analysis of data from G. Moüette’s captivity account
Jairo Guerrero, Aix-Marseille University - IREMAM
The available data for documenting the history of North-African Arabic vernaculars is extremely scarce and only becomes relatively abundant after the 16th century (Aguadé 2018). This dialectological data can be found in both Arabic and European sources. The first ones encompass different kinds of materials (such as diplomatic documents, letters and literary works) which stand out for their being written in Middle Arabic. As for the second ones, they mainly comprise captivity narratives, dialogues, grammars and dictionaries written by European travellers, captives, priests, diplomats and military members (Guerrero 2023). Among these latter sources, one finds the captivity account of G. Moüette, a Frenchman who spent almost eleven years in the Kingdoms of Fez and Marrakesh and eventually managed to learn colloquial Arabic (González Vázquez 2014). Moüette’s work is unique for including thefirst-known vocabulary of “Moroccan” Arabic. In the present paper, I intend to trawl through Moüette’s captivity account in order to obtain some linguistic data on the varieties of Arabic which were spoken in the geographic area of present-day western Morocco by the late 17th century.
References
Aguadé, Jordi, “The Maghrebi dialects of Arabic”, in C. Holes (ed.),Arabic historicaldialectology. Linguistic and sociolinguistic approaches, Oxford, Oxford University Press,2018, pp. 29-63.
González Vázquez, Araceli. “El árabe marroquí visto por un cautivo francés del siglo XVII:Estudio histórico, social y cultural delDictionaire François-Arabesquede Germain Moüette.”Miscelánea de Estudios Árabes y Hebraicos (Sección Árabe eIslam)63 (2014), pp. 65-90.
Guerrero, Jairo. “Towards a diachronic study of Moroccan Arabic: on some vernacular dialectalfeatures of the sixteenth-century Arabic materials preserved in the Arquivo Nacional da Torredo Tombo”,Al-Qanṭara44, 2 (2023), pp. 1-19.
Moüette, Germain. 1683.Relation de la captivité du Sieur Moüette dans les Royaumes de Fezet de Maroc, où il a demeuré pendant onze ans. Paris.
HACHIMI, Atiqa
Stylized performance of Berber-accented Moroccan Arabic in Stand-Up comedy
Atiqa Hachimi, University of Toronto
In 2011, Amazigh (commonly known as Berber) became a second official language next to Arabic in Morocco after decades of activism for Berber linguistic and cultural rights. With this newly found legitimacy, modest use of the language started manifesting on widely pop cultural shows on prime-time state TV to a nation-wide audience composed of a non-Berberophone majority and a Berberophone minority. This paper examines a performance of stylized Berber-accented Moroccan Arabic (i.e.,ʾərəbiyya mshəllḥa), by a young Amazigh comedian, Zakaria Ouarssam, who won the 2019 season of the Moroccan Stand-Up competition. The talent show aired on prime time on the First national TV channel (Al Oula) and continues to garner millions of views on YouTube, offering a rich sociolinguistic and metacommunicative context for understanding the creative and strategic uses of regional, social, and stylistic variation in contexts of Berber-Moroccan Arabic language contact. It is argued that as a bilingual lower-class youth from Khenifra—a small city in the Middle Atlas—Zakaria’s successful comedic performance sheds new light on the representation of a demographic and local identity that are marginalized both within a broader national culture, as well as the Amazigh movement itself, even as it reproduces certain linguistic hierarchies and ideologies and normalizes a way of being from which he has been excluded. Drawing on four prime shows, this study investigates the linguistic practices and embodied actions undertaken by Zakaria on stage with an eye on the wide range of indexical meanings animated through his playful voicing of different Amazigh characters and personas, and the stances he takes vis-à-vis these voices, but also the evaluation of his performances by different audiences. The analysis shows how Zakaria’s stylized performances, by virtue of their strategic inauthenticity, contribute to the construction and valorization of an “accentless” Moroccan Arabic via a massmediated show, a process which is as much ideological as it is linguistic. At the same time, the analysis of the different audiences’ uptake of his performance reveals that although his stylized mocking is no doubt offensive to some Amazigh identity activists, it is also celebrated, wildly popular, and taken up by many on social media as an expression of Amazigh pride. Overall, the study has broader implications for the role of performance in ongoing sociolinguistic change in Morocco (Hachimi 2022), in so far as it “provides a frame that invites critical reflection on communicative processes” (Bauman and Briggs 1990:61).
LA ROSA, Cristina
Luġa and fiqh: Vernacular Elements in a Maghribi Commentary
Cristina La Rosa, University of Catania
This paper aims at analysing the linguistic approach used by al-Ǧubbī, an alleged Tunisian or Libyan adīb who probably lived between the 10th and the 11th centuries, in his Šarḥ ġarīb alfāẓ al-Mudawwana, that is “Commentary on the unclear words contained in the Mudawwana”.
No data are available about the author, but his work is very interesting, not only from a juridical point of view, but also from a linguistic one. Indeed, it is a commentary to the renowned Tunisian juridical work al-Mudawwana by Saḥnūn (d. 855) in which al-Ǧubbī explains all the obscure terms that may be unclear for a faqīh. Therefore, he guides the reader to a better understanding of the famous legal treatise, by clarifying the meanings of some words.
Many elements of the Šarḥ are interesting: first of all, the author’s notion of ġarīb; secondly, his approach to the linguistic material of the work, and last, but not least, the linguistic ideology subjacent to his approach. Some examples of these aspects will be offered in my presentation.
Keywords: Maġribi Arabic, ġarīb, mixed varieties, dialectalisms, linguistic ideology
LENTIN, Jérôme
From nominal to verbo-nominal: the destiny of CaCCān in Arabic dialects
Jérôme Lentin, INALCO, Paris
In the early stages of Arabic, the CaCCān pattern was of a limited use. Apart from a few verbal nouns, it appeared as a (verbal) adjective for the form I of ‘stative’ verbs. This last use eventually developed, but resulting in an uneven spread across dialects.
Whereas CaCCān remained confined to verbal adjectives in Maghrebi dialects (also unequally: about 15 in ḥassāniyya as against nearly 100 in Moroccan Arabic), it became, in a number of oriental dialects (both Near Eastern and Peninsular), a pattern for active participles of a large class of verbs (over 200 in some dialects), with all the expected verbal characteristics: plain predicative form, aspectual values, verbal rection (kasbāno ‘he has acquired it’), and even ‘conjugated participle’ (samˁāntīha? ‘did you (fem.) hear her?’)
Although concerning mainly stative verbs or verbs denoting changing of state, CaCCān has been sometimes extended to some other verbs belonging to different semantic categories. Moreover, it has also been extended, in a few cases, from form I to derived forms.
More importantly, in the majority of cases, CaCCān is the only possible form of the active participle. In some other cases, it is used alongside CāCiC, generally with (often subtle) semantic differences.
It will be tried to draw a tentative historical sketch of these developments, and to explain the reasons of this contrasted destiny.
MILLER, Catherine
Reconstructing the history of language contact: Arabic varieties of Eastern Africa
Catherine Miller, Aix-Marseille University - IREMAM
Many studies on language contact have for long tried to reconstruct the factors leading to language change, language spread and language maintenance in a given region (Thomason & Kaufman1988). In 2020 Lucas & Manfredi published their important book Arabicand Contact-Induced Changes based on Van Coetsen’s explanatory model concerning two main types of transfer from a source language to a recipient language: borrowing and imposition. Each type of transfer is supposed to reflect a different type of agentivity. In the case of borrowing the first speakers are believed to be dominant in the recipient language; in the case of imposition they are/were dominant in the source language. Luca’s 2015 adds two other type of contact induced-change without transfer: restructuring and convergence. The question is to know if contemporary linguistic features alone are sufficient to reconstruct the process of Arabization and to distinguish between borrowing and imposition, and by extension between former original Arab speakers and former Arabicized speakers. My presentation will summarize what we know or do not know about process of Arabization in a large area covering Chad, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti and Zanzibar mixing historical and linguistic sources.
References
Lucas, Christopher (2015). Contact-induced language change. In Claire Bowern and Evans Bethwyn(eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Historical Linguistics.519–536. London: Routledge.
Lucas, Christopher and Manfredi, Stefano (eds.) (2020). Arabic and Contact-Induced Changes.Berlin: Language Science Press (https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/235).
Thomason, Sarah and Kaufman, Terrence (1988). Language contact, creolization and genetic linguistics. Berkeley: University of California Press.
PENNISI, Rosa
Mixed Arabic: written and oral practices in Moroccan digital media
Rosa Pennisi, IREMAM (Aix-Marseille Université) and University of Catania
This study aims to analyse the written and oral modes of communication in non-standard Arabic in Moroccan digital media. While most studies on intermediate registers and mixed styles (Mejdell 2006, 2017) of the Arabic language focus mainly on the observation of the oral (formal and informal) communication mode between locutors, more recently several researchers have also been interested in digital communication and written productions in non-standard Arabic conveyed through social networks and online platforms, both for the eastern Arabic-speaking regions (Ramsay 2006, 2017; Nordenson 2010, 2017; Pepe 2012, 2015, 2019; Lenze 2019; Riegert 2015; El Khachab 2020; Khalil 2022), and to varying degrees also in Morocco. Here, written Moroccan Arabic has been investigated by Caubet (2017a-b, 2018), who argues that the qualitative shift of ‘literacy’ in (written) Moroccan Arabic is the result of the development of standardisation from below (Kebede & Hinds 2016; Caubet 2017a-b, 2018; Miller 2017, Pennisi 2020, among others).
Through the perspective of the diglossic continuum of the Arabic language (Youssi 1992), this study aims to analyse, on the one hand, the morphosyntactic characteristics of non-standard Arabic in written production through the comparison of oral and written practices emerging from Moroccan digital media production; on the other hand, to interpret on a stylistic and pragmatic level, how the oral and written communicative strategies of contemporary Moroccan media contribute to normalising a journalistic register in mixed Arabic. To achieve these objectives, a multimodal corpus (written, oral and audiovisual data) from Moroccan digital platforms and online newspapers was selected. The data were analysed quantitatively and qualitatively, both morphosyntactically (specifically observing the construction of declarative subordinations) and stylistically (observing discursive strategies and bivalent lexical choices).
The comparative analysis of oral and written practices shows that a mixed register of contemporary (Moroccan) Arabic is spreading in the formal communication of the Moroccan media and that the linguistic practices observed in the selected corpus contribute to normalising an intermediate style of Arabic in which the two modes of production, written and oral, although displaying similar morphosyntactic characteristics, exhibit different but complementary discursive and stylistic strategies.
PIETRANGELO, Valerio
Mutual intelligibility, lexical borrowing and semantic change
The case of Arabic and Urdu in the analysis of Dillī kī sair by Rashid Jahan
Valerio Pietrangelo, University of Bergamo
This paper aims at investigating some of the linguistic interactions between Arabic and Urdu, focusing on mutual intelligibility, lexical borrowing, and semantic change. Through an analysis of the short story Dillī kī sair by Rashid Jahan, the study highlights the influence of Arabic on Urdu, particularly in terms of script, phonology, and vocabulary. Arabic has contributed significantly to the formation of the lexicon of Urdu, both directly and through the mediation of Persian, especially when words are related to the domains of religion, administration, and intellectual discourse. The paper examines how Arabic words have been adapted into Urdu's grammatical structure, including nominal verbs and plural forms, while also discussing gender shifts and semantic changes during this process. Despite the shared script, mutual intelligibility between Arabic and Urdu remains limited due to differences in syntax, morphology, and vocabulary. The study suggests that while borrowings from Arabic enrich Urdu, mutual intelligibility requires that speakers of both languages have at least some knowledge of the other language. The paper calls for further research on mutual understanding between the two languages, especially in diaspora communities and within the framework of language teaching and linguistic sustainability.
References
A. Bastardas-Boada, “Linguistic Sustainability for a Multilingual Humanity”, in Glossa, 2(2), June, 2007
A. Bausani and B. Scarcia Amoretti (eds.), Il mondo islamico tra interazione e acculturazione, Roma 1981
E. Bonvino et al., EuRom5, Milano Hoepli 2011.
P. Caracchi, Grammatica hindi, Laksmi, Savona, 2023
S. R. Faruqi and S. Pollock (ed.), A Long History of Urdu Literary Culture Part 1, Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia, University of California Press 2003
S. S. Hameed and S. Mehdi (eds.), Parwaaz. Urdu Short Stories by Women, Kali for Women, Delhi, 1996
R. A. Islam, The Morphology of Loanwords in Urdu: the Persian, Arabic and English Strands, PdD Thesis, Newcastle University 2011
I. A. Khan, “Lexical Borrowings from Arabic and Semantic Change in Urdu: a Cross Linguistic Analysis”, in Hope Journal of Research, Vol. 2 Issue 3, October 2014.
N. A. Koka et al., “Code-Switching with Arabic: a Case of the Hindi/Urdu Mother Tongue Speakers of the Expatriate Community Working in Saudi Arabia”, in The European Journal of English Language and Literature Studies Vol.6, No.8, pp.41-58, December 2018
C. Shackle & R. Snell, Hindi and Urdu since 1800, London 1990
A. J. Zaidi, A History of Urdu Literature, Delhi, 1993
SALA, Marta
Tunisian Arabic and contact phenomena in University Lectures
Marta Sala, University of Bergamo
The case study explores the usage and functions of Tunisian Arabic in two university lectures delivered in French, recorded in Tunis in March 2023. In the Tunisian context, French represents, alongside with Arabic and, in some cases, English, the main language of higher education. Despite their formal absence, the colloquial varieties of Tunisian Arabic are used from speakers in the academic context, usually marking informality. In the selected corpus, contents are mainly delivered in French. Although, insertions of Tunisian Arabic words sometimes occur in otherwise French utterances, as well as inter-sentential code switching from French to Tunisian Arabic and vice-versa, especially during explanations and discussions. At the same time, due to the prolonged contact between the two linguistic systems, French loanwords are used by the speakers in Tunisian Arabic utterances. The present research aims to show the strategies of code switching used by the professors and the students in the analysed lectures, showing the linguistic features of the sentences where the code switching occurs and its communicative value.
References
Bach Baoueb, S. L., & Toumi, N. 2012. "Code switching in the classroom: A case study of economics and management students at the University of Sfax, Tunisia." Journal of Language, Identity & Education, 11 (4), 261-282.
Bahous, R. N., Nabhani, M. B., & Bacha, N. N. 2014. "Code-switching in higher education in a multilingual environment: a Lebanese exploratory study." Language Awareness, 23(4), 353-368.
Bentahila, A. 1983. "Motivations for code-switching among Arabic-French bilinguals in Morocco." Language & communication, 3(3), 233-243.
Daoudi, M. 2011. "The sociolinguistic situation in Tunisia: language rivalry or accommodation?" International Journal of the Sociology of Language, (211), 9-33.
Sayahi, L. 2011. "Code-switching and language change in Tunisia." International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2011(211).
SERRELI, Valentina
Multilingual repertoires and language hierarchies in Siwa (Egypt)
Valentina Serreli, University of Bayreuth
Sociolinguistic research conducted in Egypt has described the prestige and dominance of Cairene (CA) and Nile Delta Arabic over other Egyptian varieties in Arabic L1 contexts (De Jong 1996, Miller 2005, Sadiq 2016) and the preference for CA among female speakers or younger generations in Arabic L2 contexts (Rouchdy 1991, Serreli 2024). This research contributes to this field with a variationist studythat analyzes the behaviorof plurilingual speakers with the aim of identifying linguistic hierarchies in the Siwa Oasis, a multilingual settingwhere Arabic and Berber varieties are spoken as both L1 and L2.The data for this study are drawnfrom conversations between Shahibiand Siwi menfrom Siwaaged between 18 and 70 years, who speak Arabic as L1 and L2 respectively. The languages usedin these conversations,and shared by all speakers,are Siwi Berber (SB), Shahibat Arabic (SA)and CA. However, the Arabic varieties taken together clearly outweigh SB, a pattern related to SB being a minority language in Egypt. Based on the statistical analysis of selected high-frequency phonological, morphological and lexical variables,I will discuss the distribution of SA, CA and hybrid Arabic variantsand explain their occurrence in relation to the local context of the interaction and the broader context in which the interaction takes place, where certain power dynamics and ideologies are at play. Overall, the results show that, as in other multilingual contexts (Leglise 2022), all speakers engage in multilingual practices characterized by switching, mixing and hybridization at all linguistic levels, but also point to a high degree of interspeaker variation on the one hand and to the different behaviour of individual linguistic variables on the other (see Miller 2005 for similar considerations).
References
De Jong, R. 1996. "Examples of Levelling and Counterreactions in the Dialects of Bedouin Tribes in Northwestern Sinai." Égypte/Monde arabe [Online], Première série, Les langues en Égypte.URL: http://journals.openedition.org/ema/1955.
Leglise, I. 2022. "Documenting Multilingual Language Practices and the Erasure of Language Boundaries." Journal of Language Contact 15: 404-437.
Miller, Catherine. 2005. "Between accommodation and resistance: Upper Egyptian migrants in Cairo." Linguistics 43, 903-956.
Rouchdy, Aleya. 1991. Nubians and the Nubian language in contemporary Egypt. A case of cultural and linguistic contact. Leiden: Brill.
Sadiq, Saudi. 2016. "Dialect Convergence in Egypt: The Impact of Cairo Arabic on Minya Arabic." PhD dissertation, University of York.
Serreli, V. 2024. Language, society and ideologies in multilingual Egypt. Arabic and Berber in the Siwa Oasis. Berlin De Gruyter Mouton.
TAINE-CHEIKH, Catherine
Les effets du contact entre l'arabe et le berbère sur la corrélation d'emphase
L'exemple de la Mauritanie
Catherine Taine-Cheikh, LACITO, CNRS - Université Sorbonne Nouvelle & INALCO, Paris
L'effet du contact entre l'arabe et le berbère est important dans les domaines phonétiques et phonologiques, mais il présente des particularités notables selon l'aire linguistique considérée. Je me propose de traiter le cas de l'emphase en prenant comme point de départ les variétés de Mauritanie – l'arabe ḥassāniyya, parler de type bédouin (Cohen 1963) et le berbère zénaga, parler ‘spirant’ méridional (Taine-Cheikh 1999, 2003) – qui ont déjà fait l'objet de quelques études sur le contact (Taine-Cheikh 1997, 2008a et 2020).
Si on laisse de côté les labio-vélarisées (ṃ, ḅ, f̣ et ṿ), les principaux phonèmes pharyngalisés (‘emphatiques’) sont, en ḥassāniyya, ṣ, ṭ, đ̣, et, en zénaga, ḍ et ẓ – ceux-ci étant réalisés tantôt comme des occlusives [ḍ] et [ẓ], tantôt comme des interdentales [đ̣] et [θ̣]. Par ailleurs, outre le ṛ et très secondairement le ḷ, il faut ajouter des phonèmes emphatiques présents dans les emprunts : en ḥassāniyya, le ḍ des emprunts à l'arabe littéraire et le ẓ des emprunts au berbère ; en zénaga, le ṣ et le ṭ des emprunts à l'arabe.
Cependant, si l'on examine les lexiques du ḥassāniyya (Taine-Cheikh 1988-1998, 2023) et du zénaga (Taine-Cheikh 2008b), on constate que l'origine des lexèmes n'explique pas toujours le caractère ± emphatique des consonnes. La pharyngalisation due au contexte explique, bien sûr, certaines emphatisations, mais sa portée semble plus limitée dans les parlers de Mauritanie que dans d'autres parlers (pour le ḥassāniyya par rapport aux parlers marocains, voir Heath 1997).
En ḥassāniyya, les irrégularités existent non seulement pour d vs ḍ et z vs ẓ, mais également pour s vs ṣ. S'il est contestable que s et ṣ sont de simples allophones, comme l'affirme Zavadovsky (1981 : 26), il est possible que le caractère instable de la pharyngalisation en berbère (Chaker 2024 : 16) ait joué un rôle.
Il existe moins de problème pour la dentale sourde (t vs ṭ) – contra Zavadovsky –, sauf qu'en zénaga l'assourdissement de la géminée ḍḍ en ṭṭ n'est pas aussi régulier qu'ailleurs en berbère (à l'exception de la tetserret, voir Lux 2013, Taine-Cheikh 2021). Plus généralement, l'assourdissement ṭ < ḍ en berbère, y compris pour la non-géminée (Kossmann 2013), pourrait mériter un réexamen à la lumière des observations faites par Al-Jallad (2015) sur l'arabe pré-hilalien.
Au total, il s'agira de déterminer dans quelle mesure les interférences entre l'arabe et le berbère ont influé, non seulement sur les caractéristiques des systèmes consonantiques, mais encore sur les irrégularités constatées dans les formes héritées ou empruntées.
Références
Al-Jallad, A. (2015). "On the Voiceless Reflex of *ṣ́ and *ŧ̣ in the pre-Hilalian Maghrebian Arabic", Zeitschrift für Arabische Linguistik 62: 88-95.
Chaker, S. (2024). Diachronie berbère. Linguistique historique et libyque. Aix-Marseille : Presses Universitaires de Provence.
Heath, J. (1997). Moroccan Arabic Phonology. In A. S. Kaye (ed.), Phonologies of Asia and Africa (including the Caucasus). USA, Eisenbrauns. 1: 205-217.
Kossmann, M. (2013). The Arabic Influence on the Northern Berber Languages. Leiden, Brill.
Lux, C. (2013). Le tetserret, langue berbère du Niger. Description phonétique, phonologique et morphologique, dans une perspective comparative. Köln, R. Köppe Verlag.
Taine-Cheikh, C. (1997), "Les emprunts au berbère zénaga. Un sous-système vocalique du hassaniyya", Matériaux arabes et sudarabiques (GELLAS), Nouvelle série n° 8, pp. 93-142.
— (1999). Le zénaga de Mauritanie à la lumière du berbère commun. In M. Lamberti et L. Tonelli (éds), Afroasiatica Tergestina, Padova (Italy) : Unipress, pp. 299-324.
— (1988–1998). Dictionnaire hassaniyya-français, 8 vol., Paris : Geuthner, CIII + 1718 p.
— (2003). "La corrélation de gémination consonantique en zénaga (berbère de Mauritanie)", Comptes rendus du GLECS, n° 34 (1998-2002), pp. 5-66.
— (2008a), Arabe(s) et berbère en contact : le cas mauritanien. In M. Lafkioui & V. Brugnatelli (eds), Berber in Contact. Linguistic and Sociolinguistic Perspectives, Köln : Köppe Verlag, pp. 113-138.
— (2008b). Dictionnaire zénaga–français. Le berbère de Mauritanie présenté par racines dans une perspective comparative, Köln : Köppe Verlag, XCIX + 649 p.
— (2020), Ḥassāniyya Arabic. In C. Lucas & S. Manfredi (eds), Arabic and contact-induced change: a handbook. Berlin: Language Science Press, pp. 245-263.
— (2021), "Les langues berbères méridionales et les relations sud-sud dans l'histoire", EDB 45-46, pp. 329-340.
— (2023). Dictionnaire hassaniyya-français (arabe de Mauritanie), vol. 9 : gāf/qāf, Collection Méditerranée(s), Paris : Presses de l'Inalco, XX + 216 p. Préface de Jérôme Lentin pp. V-VII. DOI : 10.4000/books.pressesinalco.47497 https://books.openedition.org/pressesinalco/47497
Zavadovskij, J. N. (1981). Mabritanckiy dialekt arabskogo rzuika (xassaniya). Moskva, Izdatelstvo 'Hayka'.
