Volume: 4  Number: 1  Page: 38–51  doi:10.2167/ijm046.0

Diglossia and Contact-induced Language Change

Lotfi Sayahi Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, The University at Albany, 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany, NY 12222, USA

The present paper assesses the implications of the existence of two varieties of the same language for contact-induced language change in cases of bilingualism. By analysing the contact between French and Tunisian Arabic, on the one hand, and Spanish and Northern Moroccan Arabic, on the other, the purpose is to illustrate how the coexistence of diglossia and bilingualism within the same speech community facilitates interference from the foreign language into the low variety of the local system. This transfer can be more visible at the lexical level, in coherence with general tendencies of language contact, but also may be reflected at the structural level, in spite of the considerable typological distance between the languages involved. The results will also show that high competence in the source language permits certain borrowed items not to show the required integration in the low variety of the receiving language, and, thus, may expedite the change processes.

Keywords: Arabic, bilingualism, diglossia, language contact, language change, North Africa

© 2007 L. Sayahi

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