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The Syntax of Arabic and French Code Switching in Morocco Mustapha Aabi

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Page 1: The Syntax of Arabic and French Code Switching in Morocco

The Syntax of Arabicand French CodeSwitching in MoroccoMustapha Aabi

Page 2: The Syntax of Arabic and French Code Switching in Morocco

The Syntax of Arabic and French Code Switching in Morocco

Page 3: The Syntax of Arabic and French Code Switching in Morocco

Mustapha Aabi

The Syntax of Arabic and French Code

Switching in Morocco

Page 4: The Syntax of Arabic and French Code Switching in Morocco

Mustapha AabiDepartment of English StudiesUniversité Ibn ZohrAgadir, Morocco

ISBN 978-3-030-24849-9 ISBN 978-3-030-24850-5 (eBook)https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24850-5

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Cover credit: Maram_shutterstock.com

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

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Preface

Contact between different speech communities represents one breeding ground for change and accommodation which can affect the forms as well as the functions of language. Code switching (CS), as one result of this contact situation, is an important setting in which to display the dominance of one language over another, or to witness the resolve of a speech community to incorporate another language so as to satisfy their needs, be they syntactic, lexical or pragmatic. The aim of this book is to trace the formal manifestations of this type of language negotiation whereby switching occurs between two or more languages. It will be shown that, in a CS situation, collision of languages is highly regular-ized by specific syntactic features. A number of different approaches to CS structural constraints are considered, and a model, the Functional Parameter Constraint (FPC), based on the analysis of selectional prop-erties of the functional heads is advocated. The underlying assumption of the FPC, which owes its theoretical motivation to recent syntac-tic research (e.g., Chomsky 1995; Ouhalla 1991, 1999; Ouhalla and Shlonsky 2002; White 2003; Borsley 2016), is that inter-language parameters, as opposed to language universals, constrain CS. Parameters are restricted to the features of functional categories, given that their

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lexical counterparts are conceptually selected entries which are drawn from an invariant universal vocabulary, and, therefore, are not to be parameterized (Chomsky 1995).

Three selectional properties for which functional categories can be parameterized cross-linguistically are identified, namely c-selection, m-selection and grammatical features. A corpus consisting of naturally occurring data was collected to provide the empirical evidence to test the tenets of the book. The inquiry undertaken has shown that selec-tional requirements for Spec and complement largely account for code switching patterns in the Moroccan situation.

vi Preface

Agadir, Morocco Mustapha Aabi

References

Borsley, R. 2016. Syntactic Theory: A Unified Approach, 2nd ed. London: Routledge.

Chomsky, N. 1995. The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Ouhalla, J. 1991. Functional Categories and Parametric Variation. London:

Routledge.———. 1999. Introducing Transformational Grammar: From Principles and

Parameters to Minimalism. London: Edward Arnold.Ouhalla, J., and U. Shlonsky, eds. 2002. Themes in Arabic and Hebrew Syntax.

Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.White, L. 2003. Second Language Acquisition and Universal Grammar. Oxford:

Oxford University Press.

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Acknowledgements

A special word of gratitude is due to Prof. Joseph Bell for his reading, reviewing and editing which brought this book to its present shape. I would also like to express my thanks to my family and to my friends and colleagues for their unwavering support and encouragement. This journey would not have been possible without the little big inspiration of Rayan.

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Contents

1 Introduction 11.1 Background and Motivation 11.2 Theoretical Framework 21.3 Organization of the Book 4References 5

2 Defining Code Switching 72.1 Introduction 72.2 Interference, Borrowing and Code Switching 82.3 Code Switching: Diglossia or Bilingualism? 162.4 Code Switching: Alternational, Insertional or Fusional? 20

2.4.1 Switching Boundaries 212.4.2 Insertional Code Switching 242.4.3 Alternational Code Switching 272.4.4 Fusional Code Switching 29

2.5 Conclusion 31References 31

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3 The Moroccan Linguistic Profile 373.1 Introduction 373.2 Languages 38

3.2.1 Standard Arabic 383.2.2 Moroccan Arabic 413.2.3 French 423.2.4 Berber 43

3.3 Earlier Work on CS in the Moroccan Context 443.4 Conclusion 55References 56

4 Different Proposals for Constraining Code Switching 594.1 Introduction 594.2 The Equivalence Model 61

4.2.1 The Equivalence Constraint 614.2.2 The Free Morpheme Principle 664.2.3 Nonce Borrowing: A Rescue for the

Equivalence and Free Morpheme Principles 694.3 The Matrix Model 72

4.3.1 System Morphemes in the MLF Model 744.3.2 Content Morphemes in the MLF Model 774.3.3 Word Order in the MLF Model 80

4.4 The Syntactic-Theory Model 834.5 Conclusion 90References 91

5 Syntactic Theory and Code Switching: The Functional Parameter Constraint 955.1 Introduction 955.2 Theoretical Framework of the FPC 96

5.2.1 Parameterization Theory 975.2.2 Functional Categories and Code Switching 1045.2.3 Functional Categories vs. Lexical Categories 108

5.3 Setting the Parameters 1135.3.1 The Syntax of Arabic and French 113

5.3.1.1 VSO/SVO Word Orders 113

x Contents

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5.3.1.2 Noun-Adjective Phrases 1215.3.1.3 Adverbs 1245.3.1.4 Prepositions 126

5.3.2 Code Switching Constraints 1285.4 Conclusion 136References 137

6 Introducing the Data and the Participants 1416.1 Introduction 1416.2 Looking for Fluent Bilinguals 1426.3 Bilingual Groups in Morocco 1436.4 Procedures of Data Collection 1446.5 Data Sets of the Present Study 147

6.5.1 Data Set One 1476.5.2 Data Set Two 1486.5.3 Data Set Three 149

6.6 Data Selection and Transcription 1506.7 Data Analysis 1516.8 Conclusion 153References 154

7 Code Switching Between Moroccan Arabic and French 1577.1 Introduction 1577.2 The Role of Functional Categories in Constraining

Moroccan Arabic/French Code Switching 1587.2.1 Code Switching of DP 1587.2.2 Code Switching of IP 1737.2.3 Code Switching of CP 179

7.3 The Role of Lexical Categories in Constraining Moroccan Arabic/French Code Switching 1827.3.1 Code Switching of Prepositions 1837.3.2 Code Switching of Adjectives 1907.3.3 Code Switching of Nouns 1947.3.4 Code Switching of Adverbials 197

7.4 Conclusion 199References 200

Contents xi

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8 Code Switching Between Moroccan and Standard Arabic 2038.1 Introduction 2038.2 The Role of Functional Categories in Constraining

Moroccan/Standard Arabic Code Switching 2048.2.1 Code Switching of DP 2048.2.2 Code Switching of IP 2098.2.3 Code Switching of CP 217

8.3 The Role of Lexical Categories in Constraining Moroccan/Standard Arabic Code Switching 2198.3.1 Code Switching of Prepositions 2208.3.2 Code Switching of Adjectives 2228.3.3 Code Switching of Nouns 2268.3.4 Code Switching of Adverbs 228

8.4 From Code Switching to Code Mixing: The Case of Middle Moroccan Arabic 2308.4.1 A New Phono-Templatic Structure 2318.4.2 A New Morphosyntactic Structure 2338.4.3 A New Lexicostylistic Structure 239

8.5 Conclusion 241References 242

9 Code Switching: The FPC and Beyond 2459.1 Introduction 2459.2 Accounting for Asymmetries 2469.3 The FPC: A Way Forward 2499.4 Summary 2529.5 Implications for Further Research 254References 256

Index 259

xii Contents

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Symbols and Abbreviations

[ ] One-to-one translation{ } Idiomatic translation/ / Phonemic transcription/ Switchable syntactic position// Prohibitive syntactic position* Ungrammatical or unacceptableacc AccusativeAdj AdjectiveAdv AdverbAGR AgreementAGRg Gender agreementAGRn Number agreementAGRP Agreement phraseAGPp Person agreementAGRs Agreement subject (structural subject)ASP AspectComp ComplementizerCOP CopulaCP Complementizer phraseCS Code switchingdat Dative

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Det DeterminerDP Determiner phraseDS Data setEL Embedded languageFC Functional categoryfem FeminineFH Functional headFPC Functional parameter constraintFr FrenchGB Government and bindinggen GenitiveHP Head parameterI/INFL InflectionIND Indefinite articleINE InessiveIP Inflection phraseLC Lexical categoryLq Language indexMA Moroccan Arabicmasc MasculineML Matrix languageMLF Matrix language frame (model)MMA Middle Moroccan ArabicN NounNEG Negationneg Negation specifier elementNEGP Negation phrasenom NominativeNP Noun phraseobl ObliquePP Prepositional phrasep PersonP PrepositionPART Partitiveperf Perfectiveplr Pluralpre Present

xiv Symbols and Abbreviations

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REF ReflexiveS SentenceSA Standard Arabicsing SingularSpec SpecifierSS Style shiftingsubj SubjunctiveTNS TenseUG Universal grammar

In each switching example, one language and its corresponding symbol in the citation (e.g., SA or Fr) will be italicized. Bold print will indicate corefer-entiality between two elements or refer to parts of words or sentences that are uttered identically in two languages, and a decision as to which language they belong to cannot be reached.

Symbols and Abbreviations xv

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xvii

Notations

a; ā Lower and more centralized in the presence of pharyngeal sounds, front and half open with plain consonants

b Labial, plosiveḅ Pharyngealized bd Dental, plosiveḍ Pharyngealized dḏ Dental, fricativeḏ̣ Pharyngealized ḏ, Arabic ظe Mid-close front vowelə Schwaf Labiodentalg Velar, plosiveġ Velar, fricativeh Glottal, fricativeḥ Pharyngealized hḫ Velar, fricativei; ī Generally, front lip-spread, but exhibit a range of allophonic variation

which depends on consonantal environmentj Palatal, fricativek Velar, plosivel Dental, liquid

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ḷ Pharyngealized lm Labial, nasalṃ Pharyngealized mn Alveolar, nasalq Uvular, plosiver Alveolar, liquids Dental, fricativeṣ Pharyngealized sš Alveolar, fricativet Dental, plosiveṭ Pharyngealized tṯ Dental, fricativeu; ū Generally back, lip-rounded, but may vary depending on its sound

environmentw Lip-rounded, fricativey Palatal, approximantz Dental, fricativeʿ Pharyngeal consonantʾ Glottal plosive

In rendering the languages with which we are primarily concerned, Moroccan Arabic, Standard Arabic and French, the following practice will be observed. French, whether in stock and invented examples or in transcriptions from my corpora, will be presented in accordance with the standard orthog-raphy of the French of France. Standard Arabic, in stock or invented exam-ples, will be represented by the system given above in accordance with the normative rules of Modern Standard Arabic. Thus, a distinction will be made between hamzat al-waṣl for helping vowels (by omitting the sign /ʾ/ before the vowel) and hamzat al-qaṭʿ, the glottal plosive otherwise considered to be pres-ent before initial vowels (by displaying /ʾ/). Likewise, the distinction between all short and long vowels will be shown. In transcribing Standard Arabic from the corpora, on the other hand, glottal plosives will be represented wher-ever they are realized by my informants, and long vowels and gemination of /w/ and /y/ will be marked only where they are clearly audible on the tapes. Moroccan Arabic will be represented in accordance with the above system as it is heard on the tapes, or, in invented examples, in a way typical of the speech of the informants. For the sake of uniformity, transcriptions of Arabic in cita-tions from other authors will be made to conform to these principles. Other languages will be represented as in the sources from which they are quoted.

xviii Notations

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xix

List of Tables

Table 3.1 Attitudes toward practicality (based on Bentahila 1983, 32) 40Table 3.2 Attitudes toward identity (based on Bentahila 1983, 32) 40Table 4.1 Inhibiting points for CS 61Table 5.1 Two-argument thematic grid 104Table 5.2 One-argument thematic grid 104Table 7.1 MA/Fr CS within DP 158Table 7.2 MA/Fr CS within CP 180Table 7.3 MA/Fr CS of PP 184Table 7.4 MA/Fr CS of adjectives 191Table 7.5 MA/Fr CS of nouns 195Table 7.6 MA/Fr CS of adverbs 198Table 8.1 MA/SA CS within DP 205Table 8.2 MA/SA CS within CP 217Table 8.3 MA/SA CS of PP 221Table 8.4 MA/Fr CS of adjectives 223Table 8.5 MA/SA CS of nouns 226Table 8.6 MA/SA CS of adverbs 228Table 8.7 Arabic templatic structures 233

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1

1.1 Background and Motivation

The words of Labov (1972, 457) illustrate the issue of how grammati-cal rules govern switching from language to another: ‘no one has been able to show that such rapid alternation is governed by any systematic rules or constraints and we must therefore describe it as the irregular mixture of two distinct systems’. An issue which has involved research over several decades, and has become known as code switching (CS). Indeed, CS is no longer considered as an idiosyncratic linguistic behav-ior. Rather, it is full of apparent and hidden patterns. Code switching is not simply a set of sounds, words and structures. It emanates from the larger domain of society and culture, and at the same time reaches into of human interaction. CS is not simply a structural property of the col-lectivity—a lect used exclusively by members of particular group. It is manipulated by the individual producer of multiple discourses through intentional ideology (Aabi and Karama 2019).

Every use of language reflects its speaker’s social and linguistic experiences characteristic of his/her own sociolinguistic background. Therefore, CS instances must draw their structure and function upon

1Introduction

© The Author(s) 2020 M. Aabi, The Syntax of Arabic and French Code Switching in Morocco, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24850-5_1

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the discourse types and linguistic mosaic, which are realized in them. Every discourse, social and linguistic, consists of a set of schemes that plan a systematic structuring of two or more languages following the particular social, pragmatic and cognitive organization of, what Muysken (2013, 716) calls, the ‘intention to switch’ expressed in the code switching instance.

As to what underlines or regulates these patterns, it has not been set-tled by researchers. A great deal of CS research to identify or explain these patterns has roots in syntactic, sociolinguistic and psycholinguis-tic approaches. While each approach rather complements the other, any attempt to describe CS naturally calls on distinctively different per-spectives. Thus, the main aim of this book is to carry out a syntactic study of code switching in the Moroccan situation. It intends to exam-ine the grammatical constraints governing Moroccan Arabic/French and Moroccan/Standard Arabic bilingual conversations and to integrate and develop a framework for the study of code switching.

Although work on code switching in the Moroccan situation has been ongoing for over four decades, none has researched the subject of syn-tactic constraints in the Moroccan/Standard Arabic situation. As to the Moroccan Arabic/French situation, several studies have been carried out, but only few of them have dealt with the subject of syntactic constraints, and these will be discussed in the course of this book as a contribu-tion to the ongoing research on the study of code switching in general and code switching in the Moroccan context in particular. The book reviews syntactic constraints that regulate the code switching occur-rences between different language sets and expands the discussion to the Moroccan context. It provides another brick to build on in understand-ing the grammatical constraints of code switching, specifically between Moroccan Arabic/French and Moroccan Arabic/Standard Arabic.

1.2 Theoretical Framework

The theoretical framework of the analysis to be undertaken in the pres-ent book is the assertion guiding much work on language contact that equivalence between the grammars of two languages facilitates code

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1 Introduction 3

switching. Underlying this assertion is the assumption that in language contact situations, code switching is constrained in the same way, and only by cross-linguistic variation. Proposals to define cross-linguistic variation or equivalence in the case of code switching have generated different views establishing both language specific constraints and uni-versal constraints (Yi Du 2016, 49). Along this divide, researchers either posited constraints which tend to be specific to code switching or advo-cated rules that follow from the general principles which govern lan-guage as a whole.

The view adopted in this regard is uniform in its conception of con-straints for both monolingual and bilingual constructions. It follows from syntactic theory that language is a set of principles and parameters. It also builds on the assumption that code switching is governed by the equivalence paradigm, which requires some kind of congruity between the two languages involved in the switch. Given these two assumptions, principles will not, therefore, constrain code switching, in view of the fact that they are universals innately and identically endowed in all speakers of any natural language. Parameters, on the other hand, repre-sent the cross-linguistically variant (i.e., non-equivalent) areas between two or more languages, and must therefore be constraining in nature to code switching (Aabi 2004). Parameters are associated with specific properties of functional categories, such as determiners and inflections, as opposed to lexical categories, which are conceptually selected entries existing invariantly in all human languages and which therefore belong to the set of universals rather than parameters (Ouhalla 1991; Roberts and Roussou 2003; Morapedi 2018).

Naturally occurring data from conversations of Moroccan Arabic/French and Moroccan/Standard Arabic bilinguals has been col-lected in order to examine these issues within this book. The choice of the two language sets is motivated by the fact that the author is a speaker of three languages, which allows him to have a sense of language and code switching, a sense which often translates into accurate intui-tions about the way languages work in contact situations.

The approach adopted for the analysis of the corpus is largely inter-pretive in nature. Quantitative data is presented to support the qual-itative results and illustrate statistically the switching frequency of

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4 M. Aabi

specific categories in order to discard what some researchers (Goldrick et al. 2016) refer to as atypical instances. Although frequencies are pre-sented, the approach remains primarily qualitative as the data is ana-lyzed against the pre-posed hypothesis, and in comparison with what has been advanced in previous studies of code switching. In this regard, as Grewswell (2009) posits, a qualitative approach or design must demonstrate that the context of data collection is natural. In the context of the present corpus, criteria to ensure favorable conditions for natu-rally occurring bilingual conversations are set and rigorously observed. When identifying the language of a category is not straightforward in the process of data description, the criterion of monolingual accessibil-ity is used by relying on judges who are native speakers of Moroccan Arabic with no formal education whatsoever and rarely exposed to other languages.

1.3 Organization of the Book

The book consists of nine chapters including the present introduc-tion. In Chapter 2, I will take the controversial issue of the distinction between (i) code switching and the other language contact phenomena of interference, borrowing and dialect switching, and (ii) between dif-ferent types of code switching, namely insertional, alternational and fusional, with the aim to unify some of the earlier views on the subject. Chapter 3 will sketch briefly the background against which the book is set by introducing the linguistic situation in Morocco and a review of earlier studies on code switching in the Moroccan context. Chapter 4 will present a critical review of different approaches to code switching in the light of the Moroccan corpus as well as language sets from other studies. Chapter 5 will provide the theoretical foundations for the anal-ysis to be carried out later in Chapters 7 and 8. It will set out the main theoretical tenets of the study as the Functional Parameter Constraint: The FPC, arguing that code switching, like monolingual construc-tions, is constrained by parametric values of functional categories. Chapter 6 will report on the nature of the participants and reflect on the findings from practice. Chapter 7 will be devoted to the analysis of

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1 Introduction 5

Moroccan Arabic/French switching found in the corpus using the the-oretical framework laid out in Chapter 5. A similar analysis will be car-ried out on Moroccan/Standard Arabic switching in Chapter 8, which will also explore the applicability of the concept of code mixing in the Moroccan/Standard Arabic contact situation. The findings obtained from the analysis will lead to the final chapter, which will provide a restatement of the strengths as well as the challenges of the FPC.

References

Aabi, M. 2004. On Parametrization and the Syntax of Code Switching. Languages and Linguistics 13: 67–83.

Aabi, M., and L.A. Karama. 2019. On Shifting Languages and Moving Ideologies in Migrant Code Switching: The Case of Greeting Speech Acts. In Trans-Linguistica—Multilingualism and Plurilingualism in Europe, ed. R. Pletl and G. Kovács. Cluj–Napoca, Romania: EME-Scientia Publishing House.

Creswell, J.W. 2009. Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches. Los Angeles: Sage.

Goldrick, M., M. Putnam, and L. Schwarz. 2016. Coactivation in Bilingual Grammars: A Computational Account of Code Mixing. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 19 (5): 857–876.

Labov, W. 1972. Sociolinguistic Patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Morapedi, S. 2018. Journal for Studies in Humanities & Social Sciences 7 (2): 106–120.

Muysken, P. 2013. Language Contact Outcomes as the Result of Bilingual Optimization Strategies. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 16 (4): 709–730.

Ouhalla, J. 1991. Functional Categories and Parametric Variation. London: Routledge.

Roberts, I., and A. Roussou. 2003. Syntactic Change: A Minimalist Approach to Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Yi, Du. 2016. The Use of First and Second Language in Chinese University EFL Classrooms. Singapore: Springer.

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7

2.1 Introduction

Although code switching has been an increasingly attractive area of research, it remains one of the least defined manifestations of language contact. This is because the study of the phenomenon of CS borrows heavily from a variety of linguistic disciplines, each of which has con-tributed to it from a different perspective. Nonetheless, it is generally agreed that CS involves the alternation of two or more languages. The level of alternation can occur at intra-sentential as well as inter-sen-tential boundaries. The distinction between intra- and inter-sentential CS will be discussed in Chapter 4, which will also review the common assumption that CS grammaticality does not go beyond the sentence/clause boundaries.

For now, the definition of CS as the alternation of two languages will have to be examined in relation to other language contact phenomena such as interference and borrowing which are often thought to be moti-vated by different needs and undergo different linguistic processes (Clyne 1967; Romaine 1995; Southern 2005). It follows that only by singling out CS from other phenomena, can we successfully determine its specific

2Defining Code Switching

© The Author(s) 2020 M. Aabi, The Syntax of Arabic and French Code Switching in Morocco, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24850-5_2

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characteristics. In the section that follows, I will review the already existing accounts that have been suggested for this purpose. I will then argue that, in the process of determining CS grammatical constraints, interference needs to be distinguished from CS, while borrowing does not.

2.2 Interference, Borrowing and Code Switching

Within the scope of language contact, the distinction between inter-ference and CS has often drawn less attention than that between CS and borrowing. Interference reflects ‘deviations from the language being spoken (or written) stemming from the influence of the deactivated lan-guage’ (Grosjean 2010, 68). This view presupposes a strictly monolin-gual context in which only one language must be operational. If traces from the other language which are supposed to be deactivated appear, interference will take place. CS, on the other hand, involves a bilingual context which assumes the activation of two languages although they may have different levels of operationality in the sense that one language is less activated than the other but never completely deactivated (cf. Myers-Scotton 2006; Grosjean 2010, 2013).

Interference also differs from borrowing mainly in that the former is individual and contingent while the latter is collective and systematic (Mackey 1968, 569). That is, interference is an idiosyncratic feature of the individual which cannot be predicted systematically despite the fact that the various factors contributing to its production may be traced back. By contrast, borrowing is a property of the speech community rather than the individual. It is not sporadic and is highly regularized. While interference can touch all levels of language, phonological, syn-tactic, lexical, semantic and/or pragmatic, borrowing is often restricted to the lexical level1 wherein a word or short expression is taken from another language and adapted morphosyntactically (Grosjean 2001, 5).

1According to Muysken (2000, 75), lexical borrowing is equally constrained in terms of government.

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2 Defining Code Switching 9

The phenomenon of interference has been more widely investigated in the field of inter-language studies (e.g., Loutfy 2015). More neutral terms such as transfer and cross-linguistic influence have been adopted to refer to the same phenomenon. Although no consensus definition of interference has emerged, there is general agreement that it can be divided into two types: positive and negative transfer. Positive transfer refers to cases where the knowledge of one language (usually L1) facil-itates the learning of another (L2). Negative transfer relates to cases where previous learning hinders the learning of new skills.

Grosjean (1995, 262) postulates a different typology for interference: static and dynamic. Static interference is a reflection of permanent traces from one language onto the other such as permanent accent and the meaning extensions of particular words. Dynamic interference is associ-ated with ephemeral influence from the other language not being spoken such as accidental slips on the stress pattern of a word and momentary use of a syntactic structure. In either case, Grosjean notes that it is easier to study interference within a monolingual rather than a bilingual mode.

(1) šefti l-qamar yak Il est beau?[you-saw the-moonmasc ya? Itmasc is beautifulmasc?]{Did you see how beautiful the moon is?} (MA/Fr, Lahlou 1998)

The clause il est beau in (1) above, if produced in a monolingual con-text, would clearly count as a case of interference from Moroccan Arabic into French. The French pronoun il should bear the property [+fem-inine] of its language anaphoric reference la lune (moon: +feminine). Instead, it has negatively transferred the gender property [+masculine] from the Moroccan Arabic l-qamar (the anaphoric noun in example (1)). The same goes for the predicative adjective beau which should be feminine as in belle according to the French syntax.

In a bilingual context, such as (1), it would be difficult to argue that it is a case of ‘sporadic’ occurrence of interference. That the pronoun il takes the property [+masculine] follows from the fact that the syntac-tic rules of anaphora are observed. Instances like (1) are also reported in other language sets, not to reflect a lack of competence in either

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language but rather are assumed (cf. Franceschini 1998; Auer 1999, 2005b) to indicate a case of ‘code mixing’ or ‘fusion’, thus, supporting the hypothesis that CS may become a stable variety used as a consistent code in its own right referred to by different names including ‘code mix-ing’2 (e.g. Muysken 2000), ‘fused lect’ (Auer 1999), ‘language alloying’ (Alvarez-Càccamo 1998; Auckle 2015), or a specific language-set mix-ing such as Spanglish (Casielles-Suárez 2017).

Permanent accents, when they are characteristic of a speech commu-nity rather than the individual, may also indicate the existence of an independent code or dialect. For instance, Gumperz (1982) reports some prosodic features that are common only to Pakistani and Indian minorities in Britain (in Romaine 1995, 54). Accounting for these fea-tures as a type of interference will raise the question as to whether non-standard dialects of English should be considered as types of interfer-ence too. Alternatively, these features can simply be said to refer to a dif-ferent ethnolect (Blommaert and Backus 2013), such as Indian English, which might lead to a controversy over the existence of a multitude of Englishes: French English, German English, Finnish English and so on.

At one end of the continuum, cases of permanent accent are clearly distinguished from CS forms on the basis that the former is usually a recurring phonological or prosodic feature. On the other end, they are so intertwined that they come to indicate almost the same language contact phenomenon. Elias et al. (2017), using a controlled narration test, reported that the quality and duration of Spanish vowels among the same bilingual participants vary depending on whether the text read is monolingual (in Spanish only) or ‘code-switched’ (i.e., involving both Spanish and English). The change in the quality and duration of the Spanish vowels could well be a case of interference, a manifestation of the emergence of new mixed code or both as an instance of interfer-ence which has become a mixed language through a diachronic process of language change.

2Muysken (2013, 718) classified code mixing into four categories assuming that different mixed languages have different properties. The problem with Muysken’s typological model is that the line between his taxonomies is not a neat one, and must take into account the continuum along and within all types of what he calls ‘new linguistic forms arising out of contact ’.

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2 Defining Code Switching 11

Clearly, language-contact products—whether conscious or uncon-scious, individual or collective—tend to be interdependent with no clear demarcations between them. The borderline between CS and borrowing can be even more blurred. In attempting to distinguish between CS and borrowing, reference is generally made to phonological and/or morpho-syntactic integration (Poplack, 1980, 2012, 2018). Thus, ‘borrowings are paradigmatically incorporated and follow the syntagmatic relations of the R[eceptive] L[anguage]’ (Onysko 2007, 36). CS is said to consist of alter-nations of two languages à usage momentané (Nait M’Barek and Sankoff 1988, 144) whereby elements from one language will be used to cater for immediate communicative rather than lexical needs without being assimi-lated into the other language. By contrast, borrowing is thought to involve the integration of elements or structures from one lexicon into another such as bwaṭa, s-salūn and shmendifir which are integrated forms of the French boite, le salon and chemin de fer, respectively (Nait M’Barek and Sankoff, 1988, 143). Phonological assimilation is considered as the chief, if not the only determining feature of borrowing (Halmari 1997, 173).

(2) oli putter klöntti [was butter lump] {That was a lump of butter} (Finnish/English, Halmari 1997, 47)

A prominent feature of the borrowed form putter in (2) is its com-plete assimilation into the phonological system of Finnish. In fact, a large number of borrowed forms reported in other languages follow the same type of integration, which is also characteristic of French and Standard Arabic forms borrowed into Moroccan Arabic. Nonetheless, defining borrowing in terms of phonological adaptation per se is not without limitations, because, as Myers-Scotton (1992, 31) explains, ‘while most established forms may be well phonologically integrated to the ML,3 by no means do all B[orrowed] forms show such integration’. For example, Romaine (1995, 601) reports that the word chips, without

3ML refers to the Matrix Language. Suffice it to define it at this stage as the host language. More discussion of the notion of ML will follow in Sect. 4.3.

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12 M. Aabi

undergoing any structural assimilation whatsoever, has become a bor-rowing in the speech of many Punjabi/English bilinguals.

The total phonological assimilation of borrowing implies the com-plete non-assimilation of CS. Yet, the criterion of ‘phonological purity’ for CS, as conceded by Halmari (1997, 173), can be blurred by bilingual permanent accents. For instance, Pickles (1999) reports a cross-linguistic influence in the pronunciation of the sound /r/ by Maghrebi pupils in France which clearly is not a case of borrowing; oth-erwise, every French category, be it functional or lexical, containing the sound /r/ would be considered a borrowing. The fact that switches can equally have traces of phonological influence from another language has been noted in other language sets. For example, Sobin (1976, 42) men-tions cases from Spanish/English data where phonologically assimilated items are CS forms rather than borrowings.

Despite the fact that borrowed forms tend to be phonologically inte-grated to their host language, their distinction from CS on the basis of this principle alone does not provide a clear-cut boundary between the two, hence the need for new criteria. Morphosyntactic features have therefore been postulated (e.g., Poplack and Meechan 1995) as a complementary criterion in an attempt to account for CS as a separate language contact phenomenon. In accordance with similar studies by Bentahila and Davies (1983, 1991) and Heath’s (1989) characterizing the relevance of morphosyntactic features to borrowings in Moroccan Arabic, my data shows supportive evidence for the correlation between morphosyntactic integration and borrowings. One example of this is:

(3) šrīt waḥed l-aṇaṇaṣa[I-bought one the-pineapplefem]{I bought a pineapple} (MA/Fr, Heath 1989)

The EL lexeme4 aṇaṇaṣa has undergone full integration at the phono-logical, morphological and syntactic levels. At the phonological level,

4EL is another case of Myers-Scotton’s terminology, standing for Embedded Language. It refers to elements from the guest language that are inserted into the ML. More discussion of EL and Myers-Scotton’s Matrix Language Frame model will follow in Sect. 4.3.