Moroccan Arabic Research Articles

Full Vowel/Schwa Alternations in the Perfective of Moroccan Arabic Hollow Verbs

This paper purports to investigate full vowel/schwa (V/ə) alternations in the perfective of Moroccan Arabic (MA) hollow verbs. Earlier treatments on this issue show that the perfective schwa is derived from full vowels by a special reduction rule applying before /CC/ cluster within the core stem. These accounts fail to give convincing analyses since they make recourse to unmotivated rules and neglect to consider the bimoraicity prosodic requirement in the perfective of MA hollow verbs. The main aim of the present paper is to address this gap in the literature by conducting an Optimality Theory (OT) analysis of V/ə alternations as a result of Foot-Binarity (FT-BIN) in terms of bimoraicity. To achieve this objective, we rely on secondary data, which is taken from published grammar works. The major finding of the paper is that full vowels alternate with schwa in the perfective of MA CVC verbs to achieve the bimoraicity prosodic requirement. This finding provides a strong proponent in favour of the use of the mora in the analysis of V/ə alternations and enhances our understanding of the phonology of MA verbs.

The Meanings of Face as Manifested in Moroccan Arabic Idioms and Proverbs

Face plays a pivotal role in human interaction. Indeed, it is a multifaceted construct that has various connotative meanings in different cultures. It has been used, in various contexts, to refer to social value, social status, self- image, reputation, dignity, honour, and several other notions. In this regard, the aim of this study is to explore the meanings and concepts associated with face in Moroccan Arabic (MA) idiomatic expressions and proverbs. To achieve this objective, the study used a corpus of 30 items from MA. Many expressions were collected by the researcher using his knowledge of MA as a native speaker and his discussions with different people both face-to-face and on social media. Some items of the corpus were collected from available collections of proverbs. The selection of the data has been based on the principle of currency. The data were transliterated and translated into English to explore the meanings and concepts associated with face in MA. The study showed that face in the Moroccan culture is closely related to shame or Moroccan hshuma and that it is associated with the inner state and character of people more than it does in English.

43 Application of the Moroccan Arabic Bedside Western Aphasia battery-Revised in Acute Stroke Care

Objective:Despite the prevalence of aphasia in Morocco, standardized quick assessment tools are not available for use with patients in acute stroke care. The present study set out to (1) describe the processes of linguistic adaptation of a Moroccan Arabic (MA) version of the Bedside Western Aphasia Battery-Revised (WAB-R), (2) examine the test’s sensitivity to the detection of aphasia in an acute clinical setting, and (3) measure the instrument’s ability to detect improvement in language ability in the acute period.Participants and Methods:To achieve the first objective, the English Bedside WAB-R was adapted to Moroccan Arabic by a group of linguists. The instrument’s psychometric properties were established by (1) ascertaining the test’s sensitivity to the presence of aphasia, and (2) verifying the tool’s validity and reliability. Participants included a group of age- and education-matched non-brain-damaged individuals (N = 106), a group of right hemisphere brain-lesioned patients (N = 20), and a group of left hemisphere aphasic patients (N = 52). To accomplish the second and third objectives, the Bedside MA-WAB-R was administered to a group of aphasic participants in the acute period (less than three months post-stroke), and a group of age- and education-matched participants (N = 20). Aphasic patients in the acute stage were tested twice on a seven-day interval (3 days and 10 days post-onset). All data were collected from the Neurology department at the University Medical Hospital Hassan II, and the study received approval from the ethics committee of the Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy, Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdellah.Results:Regarding the first objective, the results indicated that the MA-WAB-R is sensitive to the presence of aphasia, as revealed by the significantly worse performance of the aphasic group on all subtests relative to matched normal and right-hemisphere participants (p = .000). Analyses revealed excellent content and construct validity (correlations between subtests and AQ ranging from .5 to .8) as well as high inter-rater reliability, intra-rater reliability and test-retest reliability (ICC (2,1) > .9). For the second and third objectives, the results supported the test’s sensitivity to the detection of aphasia in the acute phase, as confirmed by the significantly worse performance of aphasic patients relative to matched normal controls (p = .000). The instrument also proved as a reliable measure of language improvement in the acute period, as supported by better scores on the second testing point relative to the first across all subtests.Conclusions:The MA-WAB-R is the first standardized assessment tool that can be used for a quick but reliable screening of aphasia in both chronic and acute clinical settings. The test can inform the initial diagnosis of aphasia, and guide a more comprehensive assessment of patients’ spared and impaired linguistic abilities within a context receiving little attention in the aphasia literature.

The Moroccan Arabic Bedside Western Aphasia Battery-Revised: Linguistic and Psychometric Properties.

The objectives of this study were (a) to linguistically and culturally adapt the English bedside version of the Western Aphasia Battery-Revised (Bedside WAB-R) into Moroccan Arabic (MA) and (b) to assess its psychometric properties. The Bedside MA-WAB-R was piloted on a population of 20 participants after a process of linguistic adaptation from English to MA. To verify the psychometric properties of the test, a group of healthy controls (n = 106) and a group of persons with chronic aphasia (n = 52) completed the Bedside MA-WAB-R. The test's content validity, construct validity, and the concurrent validity of the aphasia classification system were examined. In addition, the interrater reliability, intrarater reliability, test-retest reliability, and internal consistency of the instrument were evaluated. The results indicated that the Bedside MA-WAB-R overall met standard criteria for excellent psychometric properties, as evinced by high content and construct validity and concurrent validity with independent measures of aphasia diagnosis (speech-language pathologists' impression and lesion location) as well as high internal consistency, inter- and intrarater reliability, and test-retest reliability. The test was also found to have very high sensitivity and specificity for the detection of aphasia, as revealed by the performance of controls. By controlling for age and educational level effects, specific cutoff values were determined to optimize the aphasia diagnosis. The Bedside MA-WAB-R is the first standardized quick aphasia assessment tool with associated psychometric properties for clinical use with an MA-speaking population, particularly within the 26- to 58-year age range. It meets standard criteria for a valid and reliable measure than can have a variety of clinical and research applications.

The Structure of the Determiner Phrase in Moroccan Arabic: A Minimalist Approach

This study analyzes the structure of the determiner phrase (DP) in Moroccan Arabic (MA) within the framework of the Minimalist Program (MP). The study focuses on the determiners, adjectives, and possessives within the DP. The findings show that the determination of definiteness or indefiniteness of the noun is crucial and affects the structure of the DP. In this respect, the head of the DP possesses a definiteness feature; thus, noun movement to the determiner position is triggered by both the definiteness feature and the Minimal Link Condition (MLC). Adjective phrases in the DP are analyzed through the functional category AgrP to satisfy the features of the nouns and adjectives locally. Specifically, the uninterpreted features of case, gender, and number are carried in the head of AgrP, and movement is triggered by the need to satisfy the Extended Projection Principle (EPP) and to allow for feature checking while respecting the MLC principle. The paper argues that Carnie's (2013) arguments about the possessive DP are inadequate to account for MA and proposes the insertion of a functional projection "PossP" that dominates the whole DP, enabling the genitive case to be assigned to the possessor DP. The study shows that the MP approach is adequate in analyzing the DP structure in MA, the operations MOVE and MERGE, and the EPP and MLC principles play essential roles in forming DP structures. The paper also notes that when elements move, they leave behind a copy of the model element to preserve the original semantic interpretation.

Moroccan Arabic in TV fiction: promoting de-localised individuals to model speakers

Abstract This paper aims at clarifying the role that TV fiction plays in the indexical redistribution of Moroccan Arabic (MA) linguistic features, and how this is connected to media’s contribution to the non-institutional standardisation of MA. First of all, it shows how six variables are employed in the composition of dialogues for two original Moroccan series and two Turkish series dubbed in MA. In the Moroccan series, the assignment of different features to different characters results in the enregisterment of a linguistic opposition between two social types, distinguished by their attachment to place of origin and attitude vis-à-vis modernity. In the dubbed series, standardisation is at issue in that the authors of the linguistic choices – be they the translators or the dubbers – usually select one single form to the exclusion of all other variants. If this selection of a MA norm is judged on the background of the enregisterment patterns identified in the dialogues of the Moroccan series, it then appears as though such norm favours a type of individual free from particularistic regional affiliations, and with a propensity for an anti-traditionalist and (western-like) modern lifestyle and way of thinking.

The Speech Act of Invitation: A Contrastive Analysis of Moroccan Arabic and American English

The present study has highlighted the similarities and the differences between American English (AE) and Moroccan Arabic (MA) in terms of the speech act of invitation. In fact, several strategies have been used to make, accept, and decline an invitation. The study’s data has been collected via two online questionnaires using Google Forms. In fact, there is one questionnaire which was used to collect data from Americans who speak English as their mother tongue and another one for Moroccan whose mother tongue is Moroccan Arabic. Both questionnaires comprise a number of parts. The first part is where personal information is provided. As a matter of fact, the participants are asked about their region and city as well as their age and sex. They are also asked about their level of education. The second part is composed of four situations for each questionnaire. The participants have to answer in American English when filling out the questionnaire designed in English, whereas others have to answer in Moroccan Arabic when filling out the one in Arabic. The results have shown that there are some similarities between MA and AE in terms of the speech act of invitation. Therefore, it is worthwhile to note that in both AE and MA, there are some indirect and direct strategies which are used to make an invitation. In fact, there are many strategies shared by both MA and AE which indicates that there are similarities. However, there are also some differences given that each language has its own socio-cultural background.

The Moroccan Arabic verb and noun test for language mapping (MAVNT-LP) under nTMS and DES

To maximize tumor resection and minimize postoperative neurological sequelae, intraoperative Direct Electrical Stimulation (DES) coupled with preoperative Navigated Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (nTMS) is adopted as a more valid procedure when a tumor is located in or near language-positive cortical and subcortical brain areas/networks. To map language functions peri- and intraoperatively, naming tasks are usually administered given their sensitivity and practicality in mapping language networks and their association with positive postoperative outcomes. Linguistic protocols designed for stimulation under nTMS are relatively scarce, and non-existent in the Arabic language. The present study attempts to fill these gaps by presenting the processes of development, piloting, and standardization of the first (Moroccan) Arabic object and action naming protocol for use preoperatively under nTMS, and intraoperatively under DES. The MAVNT-LP was developed in accordance with both DES and nTMS time requirements and was balanced for relevant psycholinguistic as well as intrinsic factors. The test underwent piloting on a population of 10 Moroccan Arabic (MA)-speaking individuals and was validated on a population of 50 participants. The standardized version of the test consisted of 61 nouns and 61 verbs. The 122 items included in the test were named accurately by at least 80% of the participants and had a high naming agreement. Correlations between psycholinguistic factors and lexical retrieval are reported and discussed. The MAVNT-LP was found to be a valid instrument for use in a clinical setting either as a planning tool or as a protocol used to stimulate eloquent brain areas under awake brain surgery.

Moroccan Data-Driven Spelling Normalization Using Character Neural Embedding

With the increase of Web use in Morocco today, Internet has become an important source of information. Specifically, across social media, the Moroccan people use several languages in their communication leaving behind unstructured user-generated text (UGT) that presents several opportunities for Natural Language Processing. Among the languages found in this data, Moroccan Arabic (MA) stands with an important content and several features. In this paper, we investigate online written text generated by Moroccan users in social media with an emphasis on Moroccan Arabic. For this purpose, we follow several steps, using some tools such as a language identification system, in order to conduct a deep study of this data. The most interesting findings that have emerged are the use of code-switching, multi-script and low amount of words in the Moroccan UGT. Moreover, we used the investigated data in order to build a new Moroccan language resource. The latter consists in building a Moroccan words orthographic variants lexicon following an unsupervised approach and using character neural embedding. This lexicon can be useful for several NLP tasks such as spelling normalization.

Sound Correspondences of Modern Standard Arabic Moroccan Arabic and Najdi Arabic

This paper studies the process of sound correspondences that occur in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), Moroccan Arabic (MAR), and Najdi Arabic (NAR). It attempts to find answers for the following questions: a) What are the identical word pairs, words couples that have a phonemic correspondence, a phonetic similarity, and a pair of words that contains difference of one phoneme, b) What are the process of morphophonemic in the form of assimilation, metathesis, and epenthesis. It is addressed to portray the process of morphophonemic assimilation, metathesis and epenthesis in three Arabic languages using Crowley’s theory. This study used 207 of Morris Swadesh's basic vocabulary as the key standard procedure for collecting data. The criteria adopted to analyze the data were orthographic, sound-change, phonological, and morpheme contrast. This research used descriptive qualitative method. The source of the data was basic-word vocabulary. The data were gathered from three dictionaries as sources to get information. The data were analyzed by using structural linguistics, especially phonology, morphology, and semantics. This investigation informed several aspects of findings such as identifying prefixes, suffixes, assimilation, metathesis, and epenthesis. Using the Swadesh vocabulary list, the results of this study found 207 vocabularies for each language. By analyzing parts of speech, it was found that these vocabularies can be classified into five-word classes, namely, nouns, pronouns, verb, adjectives, adverbs, and determiners.

Production and processing of time reference in Moroccan Arabic agrammatism: evidence from a semitic language

ABSTRACT Background Several studies on agrammatic aphasia have suggested a selective deficit in the production and processing of temporal reference to the past. To account for this pattern of performance, the PAst DIscourse LIinking Hypothesis was formulated (PADILIH). The PADILIH assumes an impairment of discourse-linking operations in agrammatic aphasia, which manifests in greater difficulty with reference to the past than to the present and future, which do not rely on D-linking. Aims The first goal of the present study was to examine the validity of the PADILIH, drawing evidence from a morphologically rich Semitic language; Moroccan Arabic (MA). The second goal was to examine whether different experimental manipulations will yield different patterns of performance; hence, suggesting an interaction between task demands and accuracy. Methods & Procedures Five MA agrammatic participants and five non-brain-damaged participants (NBDs) took part in the present study. Production, processing, and comprehension of temporal reference were tested using a number of experimental tasks. For production, a picture description, and a transformational sentence completion were used. For processing, a grammaticality-judgment task was used. For comprehension, a sentence-picture matching task was used. Outcomes & Results NBDs performed at ceiling across all the tasks used. For agrammatic participants, different tasks revealed different patterns of performance. Both findings of the transformational sentence completion and the grammaticality-judgment tasks support the predictions of the PADILIH, in the sense that, at the group level, past reference was more compromised than present and future reference. Picture description data, however, suggested a tendency to supply more verbs in the past form. Comprehension data suggested asymmetries between the present and the future. Conclusion Sentence completion and grammaticality-judgment data provide cross-linguistic support for the PADILIH. To explain the findings of the picture description task, it was proposed that the high number of verbs supplied in the past reflects an economy-of-effort strategy whereby patients omitted present and future markers to avoid cognitive overload. To account for the findings of the comprehension task, it was suggested that the fact that the action denoted by the verb is not overtly displayed in pictures referring to past and future contexts, but rather inferred from the contextual clues, might have given rise to a future deficit as well. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.

Transforming the urban public space

Abstract This article examines the use of Moroccan Arabic (MA) in the new Linguistic Landscape (LL) in Morocco, and in particular in the city of Meknés, in a new neighbourhood known as (حمرية) Hamriya or La Ville Nouvelle. In particular, the ways in which current socio-economic transformations produce new spaces of communications are explored, highlighting the extent to which MA is used in urban public spaces as new linguistic practices. In turn, the increasing visibility of MA in the LL and its subsequent nourishing of hybrid practices are discussed. The data points to a re-semiotisation of space in a Moroccan linguistic regime historically characterized by a well-established linguistic hierarchy. Ultimately, the use of MA creates new language practices and policies that resist and transform the sociolinguistic regime which is analysed here by a close examination of linguistic variation in Arabic in the public space.

La lengua árabe marroquí de los carteles: análisis desde los estudios del paisaje lingüístico y la política de la lengua

El nuevo contexto social, político y económico de Marruecos está propiciando las condiciones adecuadas para que se generaran nuevas prácticas lingüísticas en árabe marroquí (AM) en el espacio público y privado, produciendo de esta forma una nueva reali- dad sociolingüística. Este artículo aborda el uso del AM en el Paisaje Lingüístico (PL) en Marruecos a partir del enfoque de la sociolingüística urbana y la política lingüística en re- lación con la construcción del espacio. Para ello, en primer lugar, se estudia este nuevo contexto sociopolítico, económico y lingüístico en el que emergió el uso del AM y su mo- dalidad escrita. En segundo lugar, se hace un esbozo del marco teórico y metodológico seguido para el análisis del corpus de datos dentro de lo que se denomina los Estudios del PA. En tercer lugar, se lleva a cabo el análisis de un corpus compuesto por letreros, carte- les, pancartas y otras inscripciones donde se usa el AM a partir de un espacio concreto, el barrio de Hamriya (Meknés), y centrado en la dimensión semiótica, sociolingüística y polí- tica del uso del AM. Entre las conclusiones, se conectan estas prácticas en AM con la re- configuración del régimen sociolingüístico marroquí y también con transformaciones en la construcción de las identidades etnolingüísticas, tanto individuales como colectivas.

Restructuring and control in Arabic

Abstract This paper examines verbal complex constructions in two varieties of Arabic, namely: Moroccan Arabic (MA) and Najdi Arabic (NA). We provide a novel analysis that departs from the two previous studies that discussed this phenomenon in Lebanese Arabic (LA): Hallman (2011), and Ouwaydah & Shlonsky (2016). We argue that verbal complex constructions are derived using a monoclausal restructuring strategy (Wurmbrand 1998, 2001) in which the matrix control verb of nisa/forget-type instantiates a monoclausal structure. This analysis is novel in various aspects. First, it departs from and argues against control-based theories and, consequently, a biclausal structure. Second, it provides an account for various properties, including: agreement facts, Cinque’s restrictions on adverb distribution, tense and aspect absence on subordinate verbs, and the unexpected occurrence of the VVSO word order. Third, it analyzes new data related to the requirement of voice matching.

Does empirical data from bilingual and native Spanish corpora meet linguistic theory? The role of discourse context in variation of subject expression

Abstract The goal of this study is to shed light on how empirical data on the discourse constraints of null and overt third person subject pronouns in L1 and bilingual Spanish meet linguistic theory. A (semi)spontaneous production task was administered to 34 Moroccan Arabic (MA)/Spanish early sequential bilinguals and 30 L1 Spanish controls. All 3rd person subject positions were coded: (1) morphosyntactic form (null pronoun vs. overt pronoun); (2) discourse function ([-Topic Shift] vs. [+Topic Shift]); (3) sentence relation (intrasentential vs. intersentential); (4) clause order within intrasentential contexts (main-subordinate vs. subordinate-main); and (5) access to the antecedent (clear vs. ambiguous antecedent). The results reveal general patterns of use in both L1 and bilingual Spanish: null pronouns express topic maintenance both in inter- and intrasentential contexts (both clause orders) and overt pronouns, especially in intersentential contexts, are generally used for topic change. However, additional analyses provide evidence that null pronouns in L1, but not in bilingual Spanish, are often used in change of reference contexts where the antecedent is not ambiguous. This reveals patterns that have gone unreported by most previous descriptive and theoretical studies. Finally, a higher use of ambiguous null pronouns is attested among bilingual speakers, which suggests a lower control of the mechanisms by which reference is established in discourse and supports, to some extent, the predictions derived from the Interface Hypothesis.

Derivation in Moroccan Teenage Talk

The objective of this paper is to explore one of the most productive linguistic devices Moroccan teenagers employ extensively to create novel lexical items–namely derivation, and uncover some aspects of its innovativeness, which has widely been acknowledged to characterise youngspeak in general. The items analysed are extracted from relaxed group interviews involving six secondary school girls and recorded dyadic and triadic conversations mainly between four of them and two other female school mates. The results corroborate previous research findings that teenagers use derivational processes creatively. More specifically, Moroccan teenagers achieve innovativeness through the violation of some of the well-established derivational norms of their mother tongue, Moroccan Arabic (MA), at times, and their combination with some semantic and rhetorical tools such as unconventional metaphor, semantic shift, and hyperbole, at others. The outcome is thus a distinct language in which old words are reshaped to convey concepts that seem significant in their culture and through which, scholars claim, teenagers in general voice their distance from the world of adults on the one hand and affiliation and loyalty to their peers on the other.

Agrammatism and Other Aphasia-related Disorders in Moroccan Arabic Speaking Aphasics

This paper includes the participation of six Moroccan Arabic-speaking aphasics (four with Broca’s aphasia, one with Wernicke’s aphasia and one with global aphasia). In our work, we turn to a particular under-resourced Arabic Dialect, Moroccan Darija or Moroccan Arabic (MA), which is an agglutinative language; that is, a fairly large number of affixes may be added to the root. Negation, tense, aspect, person, number and gender are all expressed by affixes attached to the verb. The speech corpora were taken from samples collected from patients who have attended speech and language therapy sessions. The patients were presented with picture description, repetition and grammaticality judgement tasks in order to examine the extent of impairment on the phonological, lexical, semantic and morpho-syntactic levels. Although agrammatic production is usually described as impaired in all aspects of grammar and in all types of inflection, it was found out that the use of verbal and nominal bound morphemes was spared in the output of the subjects understudy. All the three groups in this study used appropriate verbal and nominal morphology, which does not support the traditional view of agrammatism as being amorphological.Keywords: Moroccan Arabic, Aphasia, Broca, Wernicke, Agrammatism, Bound morphemes-Substitution, Deletion

Expressing Modality in Moroccan Arabic: From Auxiliation to Overauxiliation

Moroccan Arabic Auxiliaries (M.A. Aux) constitute one of the grammatical categories in which the action of the dynamic synchrony is actively at work, renovating the collocational patterns and lexical stock of Moroccan Arabic (MA). The M.A.Aux Aux are not directly involved in the making of compound tenses as this is the case in English with 'be' and 'have' or French with 'etre' and 'avoir'. Referred to sometimes as Semi- auxiliaries (S-Aux) -and again, unlike English or French in which the number of Auxiliaries is fixed and their syntactic and semantic patterning clearly set, MA candidate forms outnumber their English and French counterparts and are involved actively in expressing modality in MA. In this paper, we will seek to explore how M.A. Aux express a multitude of semantic values, how they are identified; and mostly, how MA tolerate that more than a S-Aux may occur within the same sentence.

Expressing Modality in Moroccan Arabic: From Auxiliation to Overauxiliation

Moroccan Arabic Auxiliaries (M.A. Aux) constitute one of the grammatical categories in which the action of the dynamic synchrony is actively at work, renovating the collocational patterns and lexical stock of Moroccan Arabic (MA). The M.A.Aux Aux are not directly involved in the making of compound tenses as this is the case in English with 'be' and 'have' or French with 'etre' and 'avoir'. Referred to sometimes as Semi- auxiliaries (S-Aux) -and again, unlike English or French in which the number of Auxiliaries is fixed and their syntactic and semantic patterning clearly set, MA candidate forms outnumber their English and French counterparts and are involved actively in expressing modality in MA. In this paper, we will seek to explore how M.A. Aux express a multitude of semantic values, how they are identified; and mostly, how MA tolerate that more than a S-Aux may occur within the same sentence.

D-possessives and the origins of Moroccan Arabic

Despite the general view that Berber was the only important substratum for Maghrebi Arabic, Moroccan Arabic (MA) took shape in the 7th–8th centuries AD in Roman cities in which Late Latin (LL) was spoken. The occupation of Morocco was far more tenuous than in other areas conquered during the Arab expansion. Rapid language shift from LL to a contact Arabic introduced by eastern Berber troops left telltale signs in phonology and in morphological simplification. Archaic MA D-possessives di, d- and dyal- reflect Latin dē and pronominal combinations thereof, and must be dated to the language-shift period. Recognition of this has been delayed by hesitation to recognize the LL/MA relationship and by Arabic-internal explanations of D-possessives that must be rejected in light of what we now know about Maghrebi Arabic dialects.