Moroccan Berber languages affixes in Moroccan Arabic

Summary

Affix function number of borrowed affixes

Description

Information and examples are from Zellou (2011).

1 derivational circumfix/pattern

  • ta-...-t ‘abstract noun’, e.g. takotbiyət ‘profession/art of bookseller’ (from kotbi ‘bookseller’), takəddabət ‘habitual liar’ (from kəddab ‘liar’), tabənnayət ‘profession of masonry’ (from bənnay ‘mason’)

Zellou (2011) argues that “［t］he pattern that can be inferred for the MA circumfix is one where MA lexical items are diffused into Berber, the most common language contact scenario, then these stems are inflected to match the inflectional patterns of Berber, including noun state /a-/ and feminine gender /t-...-t/. Finally, these nouns with Berber inflectional morphology are incorporated back into MA with the inflectional morphology components reanalyzed as a single derivational morpheme.”