Book of Abstracts

Despite critiques and the emergence of new linguistic frameworks, Ferguson’s diglossia model retains significant influence in Arab sociolinguistic studies (Blanc 1960; Fasold 1984; Ferguson 1991; inter alia). This prominence is observed in numerous studies that explore linguistic variation, focusing particularly on the contrast between fuṣḥā (F) and non-fuṣḥā (nF) features across various levels of linguistic analysis (AlWer & Horesh 2019). Specifically, stylistic variation is often interpreted through the presence of Features as markers of formality, whereas their absence—and consequently the use of “nF” features—indicates informality (Owens 2019; Mejdell 1996, 2006; Kaye 1994). However, this reasoning appears to be circular, as it relies on pre-existing assumptions about the intrinsic formality or informality of these features. Thus, there is a need for empirical methodologies to validate these classifications based on actual language use. Grounded in the assumption that stylistic variation is not solely dictated by a straightforward shift between F and nF features, this research moves beyond the simple F versus nF dichotomy to explore stylistic variation in Egyptian Arabic, aiming to map the continuum of formal-informal styles (Labov 1972a, 1972b; Coșeriu 1981). The study focuses on three main questions: RQ1. How do spoken genres differentiate within 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 degrees of formality in different styles? To answer these questions, we analyzed a corpus comprising 18 spoken genres in Egypt, drawn from contexts that require various levels of formality, including casual conversations, public debates, and religious sermons, among others. To assess the first question, we employed the "F-score", a quantitative measure of formality that evaluates the frequency of (non-)deictic elements across parts of speech (Heylighen and Dewaele, 1999, 2002). This measure helps distinguish between “superficial formality,” characterized by attention to form out of convention, and “deep formality,” which is attention to form for the unequivocal understanding of precise meaning. Here, the F-score refers to deep formality. Subsequently, the study examines how F and nF features are distributed within the established continuum (RQ2) and evaluates the extent to which F features dictate the degrees of formality in various styles (RQ3). We focused on six features divided into lexical and phonological categories: demonstratives, negation, and relative pronouns for the lexical category; and the uvular /q/ and interdental phonemes /θ/ and /ð/ for the phonological category. This selection is underpinned by extensive prior research, enabling robust analysis and comparison (Abd-el Jawad & Suleiman 1990; Holes 1993; Mejdell 2006, 2012). Additionally, these features are consistently highlighted in the literature as stylistic markers in Arabic discourse. The findings contest traditional notions of formality in linguistic features. Although more F features were present, some genres displayed lower degrees of deep formality, indicating that deep formality is not solely determined by the presence of F features. The results also challenge the misconception that F features represent one end of the formality spectrum, with nF features at the opposite end. Instead, nF features were found prevalent across the entire continuum, with F features—though more concentrated in highly formal contexts—being less prevalent overall and therefore not constituting a distinct pole. These results indicate that while F features correlate with formality, deep formality is not solely dictated by their presence. Notably, certain contexts revealed an overlapping style predominantly favoring F features, highlighting the influence of specific sociolinguistic and ideological factors. These findings demonstrate the inadequacy of traditional binary classifications in capturing the intricate stylistic variations. Consequently, this study underscores the necessity for more sophisticated sociolinguistic methodologies that accurately represent the dynamic and complex nature of Egyptian Arabic discourse, contributing to current debates about moving beyond simplistic dichotomous frameworks.

Keywords: Sociolinguistic Studies; Stylistic Variation; Formal-Informal Continuum; Egyptian Arabic

References

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.

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.

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

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. 

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.

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

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'.