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In:Sociolinguistic Approaches to Arabic and Spanish in Contact
Edited by Farah Ali, Carol Ready and Sherez Mohamed
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 44] 2025
► pp. 8–28

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Chapter 2
Moroccan Arabic as a minority language in contact with Spanish in a diasporic context

 | Escuela de Estudios Árabes | Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas
Published online: 17 July 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.44.02fer
Abstract
In a corpus of data regarding the linguistic practices of Moroccan Arabic speakers in Zaragoza, Spain, collected in 2011, there was clear evidence throughout the corpus of interviews of variation resulting from contact among the different Moroccan Arabic varieties spoken within this immigrant community. However, evidence of behaviors resulting from contact between Arabic and Spanish — such as the insertion of loanwords or code-switching — was observed in the speech of only 16 informants. This paper analyzes the linguistic practices of these 16 individuals, exploring in particular whether their contact with an incipient acquisition of the majority language, Spanish, coupled with their still-incomplete acquisition of Moroccan Arabic, has induced any processes of linguistic simplification or complexification in their output.
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Theoretical framework
    • Heritage languages
    • Language contact
  • Simplification and complexification
  • Language contact research related to MA varieties
  • Methodology
  • Analysis and results
  • Discussion
  • Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
References (35)
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