Labial Dissimilation as an Amazigh Substratum in Moroccan Arabic (original) (raw)

Constraint Interaction in the Phonology and Morphology of Casablanca Moroccan Arabic

2001

of the Dissertation The objective of this dissertation is to account for some aspects of the prosodic phonology and morphology of Casablanca Moroccan Arabic within the framework of Optimality Theory as conceived in Prince and Smolensky (1993) and McCarthy and Prince (1993a) and developed in the Correspondence model of McCarthy and Prince (1995, 1999) and other related works. It is argued that prosodic aspects such as the syllable structure and the stress system and morphological aspects such as the nisba adjective, the causative, the passive participle and the diminutive are better understood as cases involving interaction between two types of conflicting universal constraints: markedness constraints and faithfulness constraints. It is shown that a division must be established between two types of syllables: a major syllable whose nucleus is one a schwa or one of the full vowels [i, u, a], and a minor syllable which consists solely of a moraic consonant. Granting a moraic status to ...

Wh-Movement in Standard Arabic: An Optimality-Theoretic Account

Poznan Studies in Contemporary Linguistics, 2010

This paper is meant to delineate the syntax of wh-movement in Standard Arabic within the Optimality Theory framework. The scope of this study is limited to examine only simple, relativized and indirect verbal information questions. Further restrictions also have been placed on tense and negation in that only past tense affirmative questions are tackled here.

Wh-Movement in Taizi Arabic: An Optimality Theory Account

This paper investigates the syntax of wh-movement in Taizi Arabic (TA) within the Optimality theory framework. The scope of this study is limited to examine only simple and multiple questions. Results Show that TA strictly adheres to the Q-marking constraint in the formation of its simple and multiple questions. Findings also show that, like Standard Arabic (SA) Q-scope is dominated by both Q-marking and Stay constraints forcing wh-elements to move to the initial position of simple and multiple questions. Optionality in wh-movement is not observed in TA as it is the case in other dialects of Arabic like Cairene Arabic (CA). Furthermore, the study supports Oshari (2010) and El-touny (2011) proposals that optionality in CA and in some other dialects of Arabic is due to the interaction between the syntax and prosodic constraints, that is, the focalization and topicalization constraints.

An Amazigh substrate in Moroccan Arabic: A sociolinguistic reconstruction of agentives 1

This paper proposes to approach the history of Arabic-Amazigh contact on the basis of the (ir)regularities of Moroccan Arabic participles in comparison with Amazigh agentive nouns. It is argued that MA has developed a category of agentives copied from Amazigh. Four pieces of evidence are advanced in support of an Amazigh substrate in this category: the extension of the " fəʕʕal " pattern, originally associated with occupations, the use of the prefix " m " with active participles derived from triliteral verbs, the use of the same prefix with participles derived from nouns, and the survival of variations with a mixture of these processes. On the basis of these facts, a sociolinguistic reconstruction of the Arabic-Amazigh contact is attempted. The " m " prefix is argued to be an early morphological transfer from Amazigh, when not enough Arabic input was available to Amazigh bilinguals. After the foundation of Fez as the capital of the Idrisids, correct Arabic became more prestigious, a fact which probably encouraged the erasure of salient Amazigh loans, among which was the agentive " m " prefix. The development of the " fəʕʕal " class was probably an attempt by the bilinguals to use what they thought was the correct Arabic participial form, though in fact it was a copy of the Amazigh agentive class. This tendency was further invigorated by later Hilali migrations.

MOROCCAN ARABIC: NOTIONS AND MORPHOLOGY (2014).

2018

Far be it from this paper to pretend to cover the morphology of Moroccan Arabic, but rather it devotes itself, in particular, to a precise aspect, namely that of verb derivations and inflections. The reason behind selecting this topic is to entertain the systematicness of MA in an attempt to describe it in an argumentative and illustrative fashion, so as to see whether it can be qualified to be employed in other domains apart from the conversations it serves in daily life. The first chapter is designed to briefly contain historical and sociocultural information of Moroccan Arabic together with a précis of its subdialects. A key challenge is to find a definite answer as to whether Moroccan Arabic can be conceived of as a language or dialect. I have mused some nagging suspicions that I have about the likelihood to promote Moroccan Arabic to language status by reasoning and weighing up available conclusions and arguments about the distinction between the language and dialect besides other terms as un patois and vernacular. However, this investigation ultimately deduces that Moroccan Arabic is a dialect that can be language provided that it receives the requisite socio-political endorsement. The last two chapters are reserved for Morphology, which is the chief purpose of this paper. The pattern of these chapters go as follows: the former, which happens to be the second of this paper, is geared to the people who lack the fundamental and specialized knowledge of the linguist, thereby it is meant to bring the reader to the light of the basic morphological jargon. The latter, which comes to be the last, seeks to minutely examine the description of the verbs in MA, in general, using an argumentative and illustrative fashion of accounting for the regularities and irregularities present in Moroccan Arabic

The Amazigh influence on Moroccan Arabic: Phonological and morphological borrowing

International Journal of Arabic Linguistics, 2018

This paper outlines some of the main phonological and morphological features that Moroccan Arabic has developed in contact with Amazigh. Based on previous work, it is argued that Moroccan Arabic has lost the Classical Arabic short vowels and has developed a short central vowel, used break up illicit consonant clusters. It is shown that the distribution of this schwa-like vowel is better analysed within a strict CV model where ungoverned empty vocalic positions surface at the phonetic level. In the same vein, it is proposed that the Classical Arabic short [u] is kept in Moroccan Arabic as a labial feature when it occurs in the vicinity of a labial, velar or uvular consonant. Sibilant harmony is another feature that Moroccan Arabic shares with Amazigh. It is analysed as a long distance process which occurs within a specific domain, consisting of the stem template, plus an empty initial CV. This empty site allows for the Moroccan Arabic definite article and the Amazigh causative prefix to harmonize with the stem sibilant. The influence of Amazigh on Moroccan Arabic is also visible at the morphological level. We discuss the behaviour of the circumfix /ta…-t/, which Moroccan Arabic borrowed as an unanalysed complex, used to form abstract and profession nouns.

Metathesis in Moroccan Arabic: Optimality-theoretic account

International Journal of Linguistics Studies

This paper aims to examine the phonological process of metathesis occurring in MA. The article provides preliminary observations and analysis within Optimality Theory and the rule-based approach. Notably, this paper aims to analyse and unveil the constraint interactions responsible for the consonantal sequence alteration occurring in MA. After presenting the MA data, an optimality-theoretical analysis is developed for further scrutiny. The results have highlighted that the SyllCon constraint is an undominated constraint and motivating force behind the metathesis process in MA.

The book Featural Dissimilation in Tashlhit – Avoiding the Repetition of Labial

2017

The book Featural Dissimilation in Tashlhit – Avoiding the Repetition of Labial and Round,published in 2014 by Karim Bensoukas,may well be viewed as one of the rarest Amazigh phonology books that have tried to accommodate a specific phonological phenomenon on a thorough and comprehensive fashion. Crucially, the phenomenon of labial dissimilation in Amazigh, most notably in Tashlhit, has been contended with in a whole range of works such as (El Assri (1991), El Medlaoui (1992), Boukous (1987) and Selkirk (1993)). However, a thorough analysis of labial dissimilationalong with the specification of its locus relative to the various dissimilation phenomena observed in Amazigh has never been achieved for a number of reasons. Foremost among these reasons is presumably the theoretical framework under which the previous works have been couched.