Arabic Diglossia

Pubblicato nel 2002 dallo scrittore egiziano ʿAlāʾ al-Aswānī, Palazzo Yacoubian è uno dei romanzi più rappresentativi della società egiziana alla vigilia delle Primavere arabe. Lo studio di Lucia Avallone ne analizza forma e contenuto, mettendo in evidenza le scelte linguistiche operate dall’autore per raffigurare la comunità cairota. Romanzo corale, scritto nel solco della grande narrativa realista, le sue storie esemplificano aspetti contraddittori e conflittuali del vivere egiziano, qui interpretato in relazione all’uso delle varietà linguistiche standard e vernacolari che l’autore adotta nel dare voce a personaggi di diversa estrazione sociale e culturale.

In the past decade, Latinised Arabic (LA), a popular form of writing spoken Arabic online, has made the transition from online applications such as internet chat and text messaging to offline mediums. No longer exclusive to computer mediated communication, the diffusion of LA into everyday life has been reported across the Arab world. Today, LA is a popular form of graffiti and can be found in handwritten notes and advertisements. However, the most interesting development in the career of LA has perhaps been in Egypt, where this form has appeared in a number of edited, printed magazines. Some of these have emerged in the wake of the recent boom in the Egyptian publishing industry; while others had already been on the market for longer. In an attempt to investigate the implications of this trend and the motivation behind it, four magazines were singled out and interviewed on the basis of the quantity and consistency of LA use. All of the magazines used LA alongside English, and identified themselves either as English or mainly English magazines. The applications of LA varied from one magazine to another, as did the importance of LA to the magazine’s market identity. Overall, the findings from the interviews reveal the increasing commercial and symbolic value of LA, and indicate its growing popularity and acceptability.

The full article can be found by following this link:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13629387.2016.1150183
Below are some excerpts:

The start of the 1980s marks Djebar’s return—after a decade-long absence—both to writing in general and to the French language in particular. If the 1970s stand out in her bibliography as a conspicuous gap in productivity, the circumstances of this gap are well-documented. Djebar has written about this period in her work indicating that she thought that she could write in Arabic. Yet, Arabic written by her would never appear in print. In 1980, she published Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement, soon followed by a series of novels, all in French. At first look, it seems as though Assia Djebar eventually forsakes her unfruitful Arabic experiment for a definitive return to publishing in French. However, her Arabic experiment did bear fruit, and her output in that language did see the light of day, only it was on screen, rather than on the page. Those familiar with the Algerian author’s oeuvre know that the 1970s’ gap in her bibliography corresponds to her foray into filmmaking, which yielded two films. These films will also remain her only works that are not in French.
If Djebar did not write in Arabic but made a film instead, then how is filmmaking, in her case, a more suitable medium for Arabic expression than writing?
In order to begin answering this question, I focus on the first of her two films, The Nouba of the Women of Mount Chenoua (1978), and articulate my analysis of both the film and its circumstances around the interrelated notions of aphasia, diglossia, and what I call arabophonie in Algeria. The last of these notions merits qualification straight away. The term arabophone is generally used in the objective sense of speaking Arabic. However, I intend it to convey the same connotation that francophone carries. Just as postcolonial implications of margin and centre result in francophone signifying not quite French, the Maghreb can be arabophone also in the sense of not quite Arabic. As to diglossia, while commonly addressed in the discipline of linguistics, and central to studies of Arabic within that field, it is, in this case, also relevant from a literary perspective. Nevertheless, it is necessary to start by considering the role of Nouba in Djebar’s work, and the role of speaking for the main character, or, as it happens, not speaking, which I designate as aphasia. This choice of word is not innovative by any means. Djebar herself used it as part of a chapter title in L’Amour, la fantasia (1985). By asking how is film a better suited medium than writing for Arabic expression in Djebar’s case, what I submit is that aphasia became essential to Djebar’s work specifically in its ties to Arabic, and the language’s position in Algeria at the intersections of French, Tamazight, and a broader Arabic-speaking region.
APHASIA
Nouba is a traditional form of urban music in the Maghreb, with its roots in Arab Spain, which is why it is sometimes also called Andalusian. The word nouba has entered French in its musical sense to mean a loud, carnivalesque revelry. However, it carries another meaning, still prevalent in the original Arabic, signifying ‘turn’ or ‘opportunity’ (as in take a turn, or get an ‘opportunity’ or a ‘chance’). This double meaning is intentional, and the women’s nouba in the title carries both senses of ‘women’s song’ (implying their song in their own voice), and ‘women’s turn’ (implying their turn to speak). The connection between the sense of ‘turn’ and the musical form is based on the trilateral root ن.و.ب, meaning representing (or acting as representative), it is also etymologically related to substitution and deputation or proxy. 
The titular nouba suggests that it is literally their turn to speak after they were overlooked by history, and their voices silenced, which is consistent with Djebar’s role as a historian. However, it is not enough to get a turn to speak, one needs a voice to speak with. In the other sense, of nouba, Lila substitutes the women of the Cherchell area’s voice for her own. With their turn to speak, they give Lila a voice as much as they are given one, and they represent her as much as the film represents them. Nouba is the facto the porte-parole of these women.
DIGLOSSIA
It is important to stress the difference between the two varieties of language that constitute Diglossia. Because these varieties are situational and socially-governed, they can easily be mistaken for tone or register, and diglossia can be misunderstood when the focus is only on the social factors that regulate the situations in which H or L is used. However, the differences between the two can be very pronounced, resulting in what may seem like two different languages, each with its own grammar, lexicon, and phonology. The implications of likening varieties of a language to separate languages can be highly inflammatory and politically laden. My purpose, however, is merely to indicate the apparent difference between H and L Arabic. Most importantly, however, it is essential to keep in mind that speakers of a diglossic language are not necessarily proficient in both varieties. While the L variety is acquired the way any language is acquired, namely through speaking to children, H is achieved through formal education.
This difference in acquisition is crucial. Using H or L is not necessarily a social choice, but a privilege of the literate. The first implications of this privilege for Nouba should be immediately apparent when taking into account the literacy rates of Algeria in the 1970s. According to UNESCO, and based on a 1971 census, the illiteracy rate in Algeria was 73.6% for segments of the population aged fifteen and over, and illiteracy among rural women specifically for that age group was 94.0% (1978, 42). While the literacy of the women in the film is unverifiable, the illiteracy rates among women in rural Algeria at the time were high by any standard. These women, speaking L Arabic only as a result of illiteracy, literally and very tangibly do not have a say in situations where the use of H is required. Consider, for instance, that parliament and political speeches are examples of some of these situations where H is used.
ARABOPHONIE
When taking into account the perceived superiority of certain varieties of Arabic, arabophonie, in this context, is analogous to what the term francophonie connotes, which is precisely not quite French. Arabophone, then, suggests a perceived inferiority in comparison to other varieties of Arabic. To clarify this analogy, I propose to focus on one crucial feature of francophonie, which is that it always entails the significant existence of at least one other language alongside French. Whether it is Wolof or the many other languages of West Africa, a Créole in the Caribbean, English in North America, Dutch or German in Europe. Naturally, the situation in each of these regions is considerably more complex than I am sketching here. However, the consistent feature that differentiates France from francophone countries or regions, is that in France only French is imagined to exist, regardless of the factual existence of other languages. In contrast, when French-speaking societies are francophone rather than French, the existence—officially acknowledged or not—of some other idiom is essential.
Similarly, arabophonie is demarcated by the apparent presence of one or more other languages in the region or society. It is the appearance of a presence of another language that is the significant feature here, rather than its actual presence. Defining Arabophonie as the fact of speaking Arabic in a bi- or multilingual context acknowledges the alleged inferiority of certain varieties of Arabic based on the belief that the presence of other languages in the region is corruptive, whether this belief and the hierarchy that it implies are adhered to or not. As such, it is different from a rivalry between regions (each claiming their variety of Spoken Arabic being closer to Fussha for example), but acknowledges without necessarily condoning the dynamic between an Arabic centre and a periphery, and the ensuing discrimination against, and/or paternalist attitudes towards, literary and cultural production in certain varieties of Arabic over others. In this sense, when one does not adhere to the language attitude that arabophonie describes, it remains possible to condemn and reject its hierarchical implications, or denounce the marginalization, silencing, or snubbing of the other languages that make it arabophone rather than Arabic.
Algeria is arabophone in that at least one other language is perceived to exist alongside Arabic. This is a fundamental difference between the Maghreb and other Arabic-speaking regions. In the Maghreb, the presence of French is obvious. In fact, often what defines the Maghreb as a region, is precisely that it is the three former French colonies of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. This makes it francophone, but, consequently, arabophone also. However, if The Maghreb is obviously arabophone given the existence of French as a result of colonialism, Tamazight (the Amazigh language also known as Berber) compounds the complexity of the diglossic situation in Algeria, and plays an even more important role in making the region arabophone rather than strictly Arabic. Although the women of the Cherchell area speak in Dardja with Lila, they are also Amazigh, making Dardja presumably their second language, and Tamazight their first.

Modern Standard Arabic, Diglossia and Formal Education
Abstract
Low achievement in formal education in the Arab world has often been regarded as resulting from diglossia and the wide gap between Colloquial Arabic, representing the real mother tongue, and Modern Standard Arabic, implemented in all Arab countries as the only ‘appropriate’ language of instruction and literacy at all levels.     
This paper sets forth the learning difficulties that Algerian children are faced with during the first years of their schooling in MSA. A question arises as to whether the implementation of Colloquial Arabic could play a positive role in the educational system. Recent research has indeed shown that better results are obtained in school when the first stages of the teaching/learning process are undertaken in the mother tongue, an assumption that has led some scholars to suggest a revision of the language-in-education policy in the Arab world in favour of the mother tongue as the initial language of instruction. But such a long-term enterprise would be extremely laborious and divisive.
An alternative we propose here lies in a remedial action: teaching pre-school children a relatively simple standard form of spoken Arabic by means of interactive methods including role play dialogues, games, songs and videos. A personal observation of two- to five-year-old children practicing such a variety in a kindergarten reveals an easy acquisition of fluency in MSA, a better cognitive development and readiness to acquire the school language at later stages.     
Key words: diglossia – low achievement in school – pre-school teaching/learning – Colloquial Arabic – Modern Standard Arabic

The purpose of education is to equip children for life. There for it is important to choose a system of education valuable to society. Education plays an important role in the life of a nation. The character of a nation depends to a large extent on the quality of education provided. Quality has become the concern of educational policy-makers around the world as the heart of education. Lack of quality means basic educational needs go unsatisfied. The purpose of this study was to examine the factors affecting the provision of quality education in primary schools in Kerala.

This paper surveys studies on language ideologies in the Arabic diglossic environment of present-day Egypt. Specifically, it discusses linguistic and cultural implications of language ideologies associated with Classical Arabic (CA), Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), Egyptian Arabic (EA), and English in the Cairo area. The language ideologies of these varieties are a product of both the past and the present: they emerged during British colonialism in the late nineteenth century and are maintained in the postcolonial climate through discourses on the purity of Classical Arabic, on the linguistic corruption of the dialects, and on the increasing use of English as a symbol of Western capitalism and modernity. Aligning with Woolard's (1998) definition of language ideology as a mediating link between linguistic features and social processes, this study demonstrates how language ideologies are communicated in structural aspects of the language varieties in the Arabic diglossia and how Egyptians use language varieties strategically to access the symbolic power of these ideologies. It argues that studies of language ideologies, language features, and discursive interaction are inseparable in uncovering how language is used in the Arabic diglossia in Egypt.

This study aims to offer a fresh look at the relationship between identity, stance-taking and code choice. The study provides three examples of different forms of Egyptian public discourse related directly to identity that took place during the 2011 revolution of Egypt, a time when state TV media stations cast doubt on the identity of the protestors by utilizing linguistic resources. This article argues that during the process of stance-taking speakers employ linguistic resources, discourse resources and structural resources. These linguistic resources include the associations and indexes of different languages and varieties, in this case Standard Arabic (SA), Egyptian Colloquial Arabic (ECA) and English. This stance-taking process depends on code-switching as a mechanism that lays claims to different indexes and thus appeals to different ideologies and different facets of identity. Second, this study also shows how speakers use public discourse in order to construe language as a classification category and an identity builder.

The current study aims at exploring the various social functions associated with employing bidialectal code-switching between Standard Arabic (SA), or the high code, and the Egyptian Colloquial Arabic (ECA), or the low code. In contrast with the domineering notion that both codes bear opposite social statuses, this study on the Egyptian religious discourse has proved that both codes demonstrate different functions within the Egyptian community. Increasingly, a number of Egyptian religious scholars have been implementing ECA variety in order to develop a diglossic religious discourse, which implies teaching people about the principles of Islam, in a more accessible manner that would appeal to Egyptians of diverse social and educational levels.

Fī in Tunisian Arabic is a preposition that describes a containment relationship and is roughly equivalent to the English prepositions ‘in’ and ‘into’. In addition to its use as a marker of spatial relationship, fī has developed an aspectual use in Tunisian Arabic as a marker of the progressive aspect, e.g. nušrub fī al-tāy ‘I’m drinking tea’. This feature has been sparsely attested in other varieties of Arabic, but only in Tunisian has it developed into an integral, obligatory part of the aspectual system. This work describes this aspectual usage of fī and explores its possible origins.

This article discusses public discourse in Egyptian media directly before, during and after the 25th of January revolution of 2011.It argues that during political conflicts, issues of linguistic resources and access to them are disputed. The argument focuses on diglossia, and how its is instrumentalized in processes of inclusion and exclusion.

The research draws on data from TV talk-shows, films, Facebook pages and poetry. It will be shown that during the revolution, Egyptian state media used language to cast doubt on the identity and motivations of the protestors in Tahrir square, and that the Tahrir square protestors counter-attacked the state media in similar fashion. This leads up to an discussion of the concept of 'linguistic unrest', which is introduced and defined in the last section.The article aims to show how the diglossic situation in Egypt is exploited to lay claims to political legitimacy and credibility.

In this paper, I introduce the three coexisting language varieties in Egypt- CA (Classic Arabic), EAV (Egyptian Arabic Variety), and EV (English Variety). Then I argue that Low variety (Egyptian Cairene dialect) of the diglossic situation of Arabic language in Egypt is getting special attention in an intentional attempt to standardize it. Diglossic situation is a problem as some researchers believe. However, in the case of Egypt, the problem is not in the diglossic situation itself, but it is in the existence of the CA that some thinkers believe is the reason for Arabs’ backwardness. In here I show the different plans of thinkers and mass media to standardize the EAV at the expense of CA. The paper concludes that CA is firm enough because it is strongly related to the Muslim religious book (Quran) and that it is extremely hard to replace.

In his Ḫaṣā’iṣ, Ibn Ǧinnī (d. 392/1002) refers, incidentally, to a differentiation between bedouin and sedentary Arabic dialects, the latter being characterized by a partial loss of the case and mood endings (’i‘rāb). In so far as Ibn Ǧinnī refers on this point to an earlier source of nearly two centuries, on the one hand, and indicates that there was hardly any Bedouin at the time to speak “correct” Arabic (faṣīḥ, that is to say, inflected mu‘rab) on the other hand, we can see in his remarks an implicit recognition of a situation of diglossia, the Bedouin dialects being at the origin of the high variety (al-luġa al-‘arabiyya al-faṣīḥa). This situation is also revealed by an anecdote, where we see a speaker of Bedouin origin alternating between what Ibn Ǧinnī calls “the two ways of speaking” (ǧihatā al-kalām), with and without case and mood endings. Despite appearances, it is not about sociolinguistics and history of language. It is about language theory, with the hypothesis of a phenomenon of entropy, linked to the use of the language,in which the speaker gets rid of case and mood endings, a source of difficulty and errors. It is also and above all an epilinguistic discourse, consistent with the linguistic ideology (thesis of the Bedouin faṣāḥa) and with theology (thesis of the “language of Ḥiǧāz” as al-luġa al-fuṣḥā), two theses difficult to reconcile.

Arabists and Arabic speakers seem to agree upon the duality of the Arabic language. Arabists identify as separate and distinct Literary Arabic and Colloquial Arabic, Arabic speakers identify as separate and distinct al-luġa al-fuṣḥā and al-luġa al-ʿāmmiyya. The present article argues that:
1) Arabists have come very gradually to the idea of the duality of Arabic and such a duality has been given a name only very recently (the concept of diglossia, borrowed from Greek linguistics, was introduced in Arabic linguistics in 1930);
2) the distinction introduced by Arabic speakers represents a hybridization between the traditional terminology and the Arabists’ conception: Arabic is thought of in terms of "purity" (faṣāḥa) and "corruption" (fasād), due to "common people" (‘āmma), but such a corruption, with some exceptions (Ibn Ḫaldūn), does not lead to autonomous varieties. Arabic speakers today seem to have rejoined the concept of diglossia, whilst Arabists have abandoned it in favour of that of a continuum.

Abstract:Arabic Language is diglossic by nature. To consider what the best option for teaching  and learning Arabic has  changed through the time and countries. It is essential  understand  the  way  a  diglossic  language  works  and  how  native  speakers
deal with the code-switching in order to communicate will help us to teach it better.
Based  on  the  reference  to  the  bilingual  context  in  Catalunia,  where  Catalan  and Spanish are spoken, as an example, and data from several neurolinguistic research papers, we conclude that we need to teach both languages: Modern Standard Arabic and  the  dialect.  In  Spain,  for  obvious  reasons,  the chosen  dialect  should  be Moroccan. Based on this, the author proposes to teach both codes.

In the seventeenth chapter (or chapter XVII) of the ’Īḍāḥ, al-Zaǧǧāǧī distinguishes between two types of Arabic: inflected and non-inflected. Non-inflected Arabic is that of the majority or “masses” (‘āmma), whereas inflected Arabic is that of the minority or “elite” (ḫāṣṣa). But al-Zaǧǧāǧī limits the use of inflected Arabic to reference texts (Quran, hadith and poetry) and to a role, namely disambiguation, only conceivable with regard to the reading of a text written in scriptio defectiva. Consequently, it is not certain that this chapter offers an image of diglossia as the coexistence of two varieties, high and low. Rather, it may convey an image of diglossia within diglossia, to be understood as the coexistence of two registers, elevated and relaxed, within the high variety. It will be remembered that al-Ǧaḥiẓ does not oppose ‘āmma to ḫāṣṣa as the illiterate masses vs the literate elite, but only as the “ordinary” literate people to the happy few, i.e. those having perfect mastery of grammar. This chapter also arouses interest for its restriction of laḥn to an error against meaning (as opposed to ḫaṭa’, an error against expression) and, in connection with chapter XIV on the origin of grammar, for its enlargement of the concept of ’i‘rāb  from the sense of “desinential inflection” (i.e. case and mood endings) to that of inflection in general.

It is well known that languages are mirrors of a society’s traditions, beliefs and social identity; but
at the same time they can be a way through which boundaries, either from groups or individuals, are
created and established. Some languages, like Swiss German, Haitian Creole, Modern Greek and
Arabic, are beyond remarkable for a specific situation they live in, which is diglossia.
Among them all, the one which stands out the most is Arabic, which is defined to embody perfectly
the Fergusonian prototype of diglossia and its typical features.

This article discusses the diglossic problem of NRKs in the light of the modern linguistics. The Arabic is the Semitic language which speaks more than 400 million people and it spread over 22 Arab countries. And it is one of the most important languages of civilization, culture and diplomacy in the world. In the modern Arab world, there exist two or more varieties of the same language used by different countries. This socio-linguistic situation was termed Diglossia. And it is a phenomenon, which is using two types of the same language for the purpose of the various social situations. The diglossia in Arabic is the most important problem facing the Arab world especially from the social, psychological and educational sides. In fact diglossia in Arabic is one of the most important issues on education, especially for teaching Arabic to non-native speakers and those who wish to improve their communication skills more effectively. There are roughly two million Keralites working in Arab world. Here found that one of the major obstacles facing nonresident Keralites is diglossia. And this article also analyses the diglossic problems of gulf region and NRKs.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of L in the acquisition of two H phonological aspects: the dental/interdental and the emphatic/non-emphatic contrasts. For this purpose, six th th th classes were selected from three fundamental levels: the 4 , the 6  and the 8  levels from Morocco, with two classes from each level. A task was administered to them to measure their proficiency in recognizing which CA/MSA words have a dental phoneme and which have an interdental one, and which have an emphatic phoneme and which have a non-emphatic one. A MANOVA test was run and the effect of grade on the variables was found statistically th significant. A post hoc procedure, however, indicated that none of the differences between the 6  th and the 8  grades was significant. This fact was interpreted as an early fossilization which will necessarily be responsible for some variation in Mixed Arabic. The difference between the public and the private groups was also found to be significant, a fact which points to the crucial role of the teaching environment. On the basis of these results, the psycholinguistic effects of interference from L were stressed; thus, indicating that not all variation in Mixed Arabic is sociolinguistically significant.

Arap romanında fasih olmayan yerel lehçelerin yazın dili olarak kullanılması, edebiyat eleştirmenleri tarafından çok tartışılan bir konu olmuştur. Kimi eleştirmenler, roman içerisinde “bozulmuş” yerel lehçelerin kullanımının eserin kalitesine zarar verdiğini düşünürken kimi eleştirmenler ise bu lehçelerin edebiyatın muhatabı olan “halk”ın duygularına hitap etme, onların gerçeğini yansıtma açısından yararlı buluyordu. Özellikle Mısır’ın Fransa tarafından işgal edilişinden sonra Arap edebiyatçıları arasında büyük yankı uyandıran bu tartışma, günümüze dek devam etmektedir. XX. Yüzyıl Arap romanında toplumcu gerçekçiliğin temsilcilerinden olan Abdurrahman Münif’in konuya yaklaşımı ise “orta dil” kavramında kendini göstermektedir. Onun romanlarda asıl olan fasih Arapça olmakla birlikte çoğu kez diyaloglarda avamcaya yer vermiştir. 

The use of nonstandart local dialects as a language in the Arab novel has been widely debated by literary critics. While some critics thought that the use of local dialects in the novel damaged the quality of the work, some critics found these dialects useful in addressing the feelings of its the people by reflecting their realities. This discussion, which has attracted a great deal of interest among Arab scholars after the occupation of Egypt by France, continues to this day. The approach of Abdurrahman Munif, one of the representatives of socialist realism in the century-old  Arab novel, shows itself in the concept of middle language. Although the main langauge in his novels was standart Arabic, he often gave place to dialects in the dialogues.

تھدف ھذه الدراسة إلى تحلیل الأثر اللھجي على الإنتاج اللغوي لمتعلمي اللغة العربیة من وارثیھا الناطقین باللغة الإنجلیزیة كلغة أم في المدارس العربیة
التكمیلیة 1. كما تتغیاّ تحدید الظواھر اللغویة - الاجتماعیة والسیاسیة - الاجتماعیة وتأثیر ذلك كلھ على اللغة العربیة المتداولة بین أھلھا في بریطانیا. وفي جانب أخیر
یمكن الوقوف على الفروقات اللھجیة الناشئة في المجتمع المتشابك لھجیاً اعتمادا على الحالة البریطانیة.
علاوة على ذلك، تقدم الدراسة نموذجًا تصویریاً جدیدًا یفسر التداخلات والتجاذبات اللغویة التي تعترض وارثي لھجة عربیة في البیئة ثنائیة اللغة. وأخیرا،
تحاول الدراسة الإجابة عن عوائق تدریس اللغة العربیة في بریطانیا وتقترح بعض الخیارات التي تراھا مھمة أمام العاملین في المجال.

Diglossia is an important feature of the Arabic language which creates a variety of tones and colors reflecting a wider spectrum of cultures and history.  However, diglossia brings also a big challenge for adult learners pursuing the Arabic language. This challenge has not been addressed always in an effective way.  The different approaches and programs sometimes have been focused in the Standard Arabic, and neglecting the colloquial Arabic. Technology, Science, and the development of new methods offer many strategies to lessen the gap generated by diglossia. Students of Arabic have now the opportunity to be in contact anytime and anywhere with native speakers, listening to authentic material, and being informed of magazines, news, cultural rapports with the Arab world.

This article analyzes orthographic features used by some contemporary Moroccans when writing in their own dialect. Texts in Moroccan Arabic show a high degree of orthographic divergences and incongruences. The author of the article regards the orthography used by Youssef Fadel (close to that of Classical Arabic) as the more suitable way to write Moroccan Arabic.

Les langues constituent une entrée originale pour comprendre les
changements politiques en cours dans les espaces publics tunisiens. Cette approche reste cependant trop peu empruntée par les sciences sociales. En effet, comme usages et objets de revendication, les langues constituent un véritable indicateur politique en ce qu’elles cristallisent des enjeux, traduisent des rapports de force et renseignent sur les appartenances socioculturelles.
Les transformations affectant le paysage linguistique tunisien
– notamment autour du français et des usages des différentes variantes
de l’arabe – mais aussi l’apparition de revendications linguistiques renseignent sur l’évolution globale de la société. Notre attention portera sur la période post-2011, tout en donnant des repères historiques sur la question linguistique depuis l’indépendance.

Morpho-syntactic features of Modern Standard Arabic mix intricately with those of Egyptian Colloquial
Arabic in spoken discourse. I study the lexical, phonological and syntactic features of imperfective verb
morphemes using a corpus of nearly 1400 verbs collected from a total of three hours of spontaneous
speech in religious, political/economic and sports interviews on four Egyptian satellite TV channels. The
computational analysis of the data shows that morphemes from both varieties of Arabic combine in
principled ways. Syntactic considerations play a critical role with regard to the code-switching between
the negative marker and the verb. Directionality bias from colloquial to standard is evident in constraining
the code-switch between the aspectual prefix, person prefix, and verb stem morphemes.

Based on cognitive approaches to second language learning, the thesis emphasizes the correspondence between MSA and ECA, and argues for simultaneous teaching of the two varieties from basic levels onward. Development in CALL technology can effectively implement cognitive principles and realize the goals of the integrated approach in the field of TAFL. The paper describes a software program designed for teaching beginners MSA and ECA simultaneously using idioms as a unifying conceptual element.