PEOPLE’S DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF ALGERIA MINISTRY OF HIGHER EDUCATION AND SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH UNIVERSITY OF ABOU BEKR BELKAID-TLEMCEN FACULTY OF LETTERS AND LANGUAGES DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH A SOCIOLINGUISTIC STUDY OF DIALECT CONTACT AND ACCOMMODATION IN BENI SNOUS Thesis submitted to the department of English in candidacy for the degree of Doctorate in Sociolinguistics Presented by: Supervised by: Mrs. Fatma KHERBACHE Prof. Smail BENMOUSSAT Board of Examiners Prof. Zoubir DENDANE Prof. President University of Tlemcen Prof. Smail BENMOUSSAT Prof. Supervisor University of Tlemcen Prof. Samira ABID Prof. External Examiner University of Sidi Bellabes Prof. Belabbas OUERRAD Prof. External Examiner University of Sidi Bellabes Dr. Louafia BOUKRERIS MCA External Examiner University of Oran Dr. Nawel BENMOSTEFA MCA Internal Examiner University of Tlemcen 2017 DECLARATION OF ORIGINALITY I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and that, it contains no material previously published or written by another person nor material which has been accepted for the qualification of any other degree or diploma of a university or other institution. I also certify that the present work contains no plagiarism and is the result of my own investigation, except where otherwise stated. Name of the candidate Mrs: KHERBACHE Fatma Date: Signature: ii Dedications To the memory of my mother and my sister To the memory of Mr Benzian Abderrezak May they rest in peace To the people I love most: My husband, son, father, sisters, and brothers iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Without support and help of many, this thesis would not have reached the finish line. I wish to thank, first and foremost, my supervisor, Prof. Smail Benmoussat who has never run out of patience with me. I would like to thank him for his comments and suggestions that helped me better shape this work. I would like to thank the members of the jury, Prof. Samira Abid, Prof. Belabbas Ouerrad, Dr. Louafia Boukreris, Prof. Zoubir Dendane, and Dr. Nawel Benmostefa for accepting to be members of the reading committee. I would like to extend my thanks to Prof. Zoubir Dendane to whom I owe my sincere respect for his invaluable assistance, suggestions, and guidance. I am also grateful to Prof. Catherine Miller (the University of Aix in France) for her helpful comments. I am deeply indebted to some specialists in the field of sociolinguistics who did not hesitate and provided me with their invaluable works that were a source of inspiration to me: to Prof. James Wilson (University of Leeds, England), prof. Bachir Bouhania, Prof. Mahmoud A. Al-Khatib (University of Science and Technology, Jordan), Prof. Abdel-Rahmane Abu Melhim (Al-Balqa‘ Applied University, Jordan), and Dr Lameen Souag (LACITO, France). To all of you, I am forever indebted. I am particularly indebted to my colleagues who believed in me and supported me along the way: Dr Wassila Morou, Dr Hadia Benkhnafou, Mrs Amina Benguedda, Dr Abdellatif Semmoud, and Dr Boumediene Berrabah. I am thankful particularly to my son and brother who helped me so much in administering the questionnaires, to my relatives, friends, and acquaintances in Beni Hammou village who provided me with the informants I needed. Finally, I would like to thank all the informants who participated in the completion of this study. iv ABSTRACT Within a dialect contact framework, this study investigates the linguistic consequences of long-term dialect contact of three rural in-migrant groups in Beni Hammou village (in Beni Snous valley in the south-west of Tlemcen). It accounts for linguistic accommodation in two settings: rural inside Beni Hammou as the minority three in-migrant groups have long been in contact with the majority group of natives: and urban as some in-migrant speakers are highly mobile and move frequently to the neighbouring cities. The selected linguistic variables are: (q), (9), (5), (3), the pronoun suffix (-hu) and gender marker (i: na). By means of quantitative and qualitative methods, data analysis has revealed that some social factors dictate the linguistic behaviour of the inmigrant groups to the host village speech and to urban speech. Except for one group, women inside and outside the village are likely to maintain their native speech while men adopt some features but not of the host village local variety. Those speakers of contact outside are prone to accommodate to urban speech. Accommodation is reinforced by social-psychological factors: negative attitudes of in- migrants towards the local variety of Beni Hammou as well as its inhabitants lead to non-accommodation of its features. However, their positive attitudes towards urban speech and its speakers lead to accommodation. Eagerness to grasp a significant social position and gain social approval of urban people, in addition to the stigma associated with some particular local forms, has led to the reduction of some salient features. Change in progress is manifested in: mixing of some native and non-native variants, levelling of some variants, and simplification where Beni Bahdel in-migrant group speech is revealed to take the direction of a simplified form of gender marker [-i] which is being adopted instead of the complex form: diphthongisation of gender marker. The study brings the result that geographical diffusion is taking place in Beni Hammou rather than levelling as speakers of internal contact in the host village have adopted new features not from the majority local variety but from urban cities speech. Thus, the trend of change in progress in this rural area is towards a regional koine. v TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION OF ORIGINALITY ................................................................... ii DEDICATIONS ...................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. .................................................................................. iv ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ....................................................................................... vi LIST OF TABLES .................................................................................................. xi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ............................................................................... xiii LIST OF PHONETIC SYMBOLS ...................................................................... xvi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS ......................................... xviii GENERAL INTRODUCTION. ............................................................................... 1 CHAPTER ONE: HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS AND SOCIOLINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVES .......................................................... 12 1.1 Introduction ..................................................................................................... 13 1.2 Contact Linguistics and Contact Dialectology ............................................. 13 1.3 Mobility and Dialect Contact ......................................................................... 16 1.4 Dialect Contact and Accommodation ............................................................. 18 1.4.1 Short-term Accommodation ...................................................................... 22 1.4.2 Long-term Accommodation ...................................................................... 24 1.5 Koineisation: A Contact-Induced Process .................................................... 27 1.5.1 Mixing ....................................................................................................... 29 1.5.2 Levelling .................................................................................................... 30 1.5.3 Simplification ............................................................................................ 30 1.5.4 Reallocation ............................................................................................... 31 1.6 On Arabic and its Dialects ............................................................................. 31 1.6.1 Eastern vs. Western Dialects ..................................................................... 36 1.6.2 Sedentary vs. Bedouin Dialects ................................................................. 38 1.7 Arabic Koine .................................................................................................... 40 1.8 Arabic Dialect Contact Studies ...................................................................... 44 vi 1.9 Historical and sociolinguistic Profile of Algeria ........................................... 46 1.9.1 Historical Sketch ..................................................................................... 47 1.9.2 Linguistic Repertoire in Algeria ............................................................. 49 1.9.3 Algerian Dialect Classification ............................................................... 52 1.10 Conclusion ...................................................................................................... 58 CHAPTER TWO: THEORETICAL AND CONTEXTUAL BACKGROUND .................................................................................................. 60 2.1 Introduction ..................................................................................................... 61 2.2 The Valley of Beni Snous and its Tribes ....................................................... 61 2.2.1 Geographical and Historical Background .........................................................