Speakers: Nabila Louriz (Hassan-II, Casablanca) and Michael Kenstowicz (MIT)
Title: On the adaptation of vowels in French loanwords into Moroccan Arabic
Date/Time: Monday, 30 April 2018, 5:00-6:30pm
Location: 32-D831
Abstract:
Moroccan Arabic has a simple three-vowel phonemic system /i, u, a/ plus epenthetic schwa. The vowels appear as /e, o, ?/ in the context of an emphatic (pharyngealized) consonant. As shown by examples such as boi?te > /bwaT/ tin can (cf. /bwiyT-a/ diminutive), French loanwords with /o, a/ (and sometimes /e/) are regularly borrowed with pharyngeal consonantsa striking example of enhancement dubbed reverse engineering in Kenstowicz & Louriz (2009). In this presentation we briefly review this finding and then focus on the adaptation of French nasal vowels. Three contexts are considered. Word-medial nasal vowels are adapted as oral vowel plus homorganic nasal consonant: conge? [k???e] holiday appears as /ku??i/. Word-final nasal vowels sometimes appear with a nasal consonant and at other times as a simple vowel with no trace of nasality: Fr bouchon [bu???] bottle stopper > MA /bu?un/ but ba?timent [batima?] building > MA /baTima/. Finally, word-initial vowels are often deleted: infirmier nurse > /f?rmli/. Our discussion focuses on some of the factors that may underlie the variation.