Dialectal Change in a Northwestern Algerian City The Case of Sidi Bel-Abbes Nadjouia RAOUD1 University of Algiers 2 [email protected] ملخص نظرا للتلمس بين اللهجات الناجم عن الزحف الريفي من قرى و مدن مجاورة لمدينة سيدي بلعباس، شمال غرب الجزائر،ف إن لهجة مدينة سيدي بلعب اس تش هد تغيي را معت برا.لقد اقترحت دراسات عدي دة لتفسير التغيي ر في اللهجات ف ي البل دان العربية أو الناطقة بالعربية ، إنما الغلبية كانت إما متمثلة في عدد محدود من الصوات أو محصورة على نموذج نظري واحد. يق ترح ه ذا المقال مستويات لسانية أخرى،مثل المستوى المرفلوجي،النحوي، والمعجمي، بالضافة إلى ذالك ،فإن هذا العمل يع رض مزيجا من العوامل المتعلقة بالمتكلمين من حيث شبكاتهم الجتماعية ،مواقفهم، تمثيلتهم وهوياتهم ال تي تساهم في ش رح تغيي ر اللهجة البلعباسية Abstract Due to the dialectal contact resulting from a massive migration from different parts of the country, the Arabic variety of Sidi Bel-Abbes, a city in northwestern Algeria, is undergoing change. Countless studies have been suggested to account for dialectal change in Arab and/or Arabic speaking countries; however, most of them have either relied solely on phonological changes such as interdentals to dentals and the status of q/g/;, or suggested a single model to account for dialectal change. In addition to phonological changes, this work examines other linguistic level features, for example, lexical and morphosyntactic markers. Furthermore, it proposes a complex analysis whereby a combination of factors pertaining to the speakers' social relations, attitudes, representations, and identity are considered. Keywords: Algerian Arabic; dialectal change; morphosyntax; Sidi Bel-Abbes. 1 I would like to express my thanks to the anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of my manuscript and their insightful comments and suggestions, in particular those pertaining to the description of the methodology and procedure as well as to some inconsistencies in the phonetic transcription. Any errors remain my entire responsibility. © The International Journal of Arabic Linguistics (IJAL) Vol. V Issue 2 (pp. 151-187) 1. Introduction The questions of dialectal diversity, contact, and change in Arabic-speaking communities have attracted the interest of many dialectologists and sociolinguists. There are countless studies on contemporary sociolinguistics in the MENA (Middle-East and North Africa) region. The Maghreb dialects are known through the works of Caubet on Morocco and the Maghreb (e.g., 2002); Aguadé (2003); Aguadé, Cressier and Vincente on Morocco (1998); Messaoudi (2002) on Rabat; Hachimi (2007, 2011) on Fessis in Casablanca; Miller et al. on Arabic urban vernaculars (2007); and Miller and Caubet on Arabic sociolinguistics in the MENA region (2010). Studies in Arabic sociolinguistics and in the Mashreq include Mitchell (1976), El-Hassan (1979) and Sallam (1980) on speakers in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt (cf. Owens 2001: 427); Holes 1987 on Bahrain; Owens (2001) and Bassiouney (2009) on Arabic sociolinguistics; Haeri (1997, 2003) on Cairo and the q variant, in particular; Al-Wer (2002, 2007) on Jordan; Germanos (2009) on Beyrouth. Among the linguists having described the linguistic situation in Algeria are Grand' Henry (1976); Boucherit (2004) on Algiers; Morsly (1996, 2012); Taleb-Ibrahimi (1997, 2004); and Dourari (2003, 2011) on the linguistic situation(s) of Algeria. Studies on northwestern Algeria include Siagh (1976) on the northwestern dialects of Ghazaouet, Oran (now the economic and second important city of Algeria), and Tlemcen; Dekkak (1979) on Tlemcen; Benrabah on Algeria, Oran and Ghazaouet (1994, 1999); Bouhadiba (1993, 1998, 2002), Labed (2014) and Guerrero (2015) on Oran; Dendane (1993, 2002, 2007) on Tlemcen; and Madouni (1996) on one Arabic variety of Sidi Bel-Abbes. In Sidi Bel-Abbes, a city in northwestern Algeria, two significantly different dialectal varieties of Arabic coexist: the bedouin dialect of Sidi Bel-Abbes and the old city centre sedentary dialect of Tlemcen. The bedouin/sedentary distinction, epistomized in 14th century Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddimah, between the so-called sedentary (‘Haɖɑri’) dialects and the bedouin (‘badawi’) dialects, was used by the European dialectologists as early as the late 19th century until the middle of the 20thcentury (for an overview of the developments and approaches in Arabic dialects, see Miller 2004, 2007; Caubet and Miller 2010). The bedouin/sedentary distinction was also used to explain the socio-historical division in Algeria between the so-called bedouin (or nomadic) dialects and the sedentary dialects, due to the two distinct periods of the Arabisation of North Africa (cf. W. Marçais 1961). This classification has survived until now, though, as Miller notes, “[c]ategorizing a dialect X as a bedouin-bedouinized dialect does not mean that the speakers 152 pursue a nomadic bedouin way of life but that they display in their speech a number of features associated with bedouin dialects” (Miller 2007: 5-6). The sedentary dialects share phonetic, morpho-syntactic, and lexical characteristics between themselves; they are distinct from the bedouin dialects, which, in their turn, share many common features with one another. A further division, within the sedentary dialects, was set for the first time between old city dialects (“parlers citadins”) and village dialects (“parlers villageois”) in 1925 by William Marçais and Abderrahmân Guida. This article attempts to answer two major questions: the first one relates to what linguistic features are most involved in the dialectal change in Sidi Bel-Abbes and the direction of this change; the second one is whether change in progress is the result of social variation, koineisation, or other factors. Furthermore, it examines not only phonetic/phonological changes but also morpho-syntactic and lexical differences. All throughout this work, the terms 'bedouin' and 'rural' will be used interchangeably to refer to the old dialect of Sidi Bel-Abbes. 2. Setting the Stage for a Dialectal Study Ech-Charfi (forthcoming) states that “[f]or most of the Arab countries, urban growth started only in the second half of the 20th century, which means that many generations of migrants are still living side by side with those born and raised in the city”. The city of Sidi Bel-Abbes (sometimes referred to here as SBA) has known an important migratory flux not only from the neighbouring rural areas but also from various towns and cities, namely, Oran (now the economic capital and second largest city of Algeria) in the North, Mascara in the East, Saida in the Southeast and Tlemcen in the West. Being formerly a rural place, SBA has come to shelter various populations with their respective life modes: in the outskirts of the city, we find people of different origins, overwhelmingly rural, while people of higher economic standards have lived for generations in the city centre and, in particular, in wealthy neighbourhoods. 153 Figure 1: Sidi Bel-Abbes and adjacent cities [Source: mapnall.com] The old dialect of Sidi Bel-Abbes belongs to the bedouin (nomadic) group (W. Marçais 1938; Ph. Marçais 1940), itself divided into the A dialects of the Sahara Nomads, the B dialects and the D dialects of the Tell Nomads of Algeria (Cantineau 1940, 1960a, 1960b; for the D dialects, see W. Marçais (1908)2. The bedouin (or rural) dialects are distinguished from the sedentary dialects of the old city centres of Algiers, Constantine and Tlemcen. This study focuses on the impact each of the sedentary Tlemcen and rural Sidi Bel-Abbes has on the new dialectal variety emerging in this city; furthermore, the influence of the capital city Algiers sedentary dialect through the media and the fast growing mobility necessarily makes the description (though partial) of the latter an integral part of this work. 2.1 Methodology of research There is no atlas of the regional dialects of Algeria, for example, in the vein of Trudgill and Hughes (1979) English Accents and Dialects, but descriptions of the Bedouin dialect of the “département” (county) of Oran (cf. Cantineau 1940, 1960) and data collected among old Belabbesi speakers show that it shares more features with the speech of Oran than with any other dialect. To trace older features of SBA speech and discover what features have changed, appeared (or disappeared), I appealed to three modes of investigation. The first one is represented by Norms, an acronym for non-mobile, rural, old male speakers (Chambers and Trudgill 1988); the second involves one of the modes of real time observation: to “compare earlier findings with current 2 C dialects are transition zone dialects of a nomadic type now having disappeared (Cantineau 1938). 154 ones: this is the normal procedure of historical linguistics” (Labov 1994: 73-4); and the third is based on apparent time observation (i.e., variation across age categories). The present work is based on fieldwork which I carried out in Sidi Bel-Abbes between December 2007 and September 2013 among over 300 participants. The youngest speaker is 8 and the oldest is 86. For ethical reasons, the names of the consultants have been changed. The data are constituted of 1) notes and diaries based mainly on participant observation, 2) recorded face-to- face and/or telephone conversations with speakers by means of semi-directive and directive interviews, and 3) directive surveys. The first elder speakers were interviewed in the winter of 2007 and investigations on the speech of younger speakers started at about the same time, involving both macro surveys and short interviews of individuals and micro interviews. The total number of the people exceeds 300, but because I was unable to gather sufficient information on some of the SBA dwellers whom I interviewed on the street, for the quantitative analyses, I decided to limit the number to 125 speakers, 52 males and 73 females. Among the 125 people interviewed, 91 of them live in Sidi Lahcen, a suburb about 10 kilometres away from the city centre, and 34 in the city centre.