Moroccan Arabic Consonant Harmony:A Multiple Causation Hypothesis

Abstract

Contemporary Moroccan Arabic has an innovative long-distance consonant harmony process. There are several possibilities of how this feature arose in Moroccan Arabic. First, the same consonant harmony process can be seen in the neighboring Berber languages, which have been in intense contact with this dialectal variety of Arabic for hundreds of years. Thus, Moroccan Arabic consonant harmony can be analyzed as a product of language contact. On the other hand, this type of regressive assimilation of palatal consonants is the most common type of consonant harmony to arise independently cross-linguistically. Thus, the Moroccan Arabic consonant harmony can be analyzed as arising language-internally. This investigation provides an analysis of the consonant harmony process in Moroccan Arabic as arising through a combination of language internal and language contact origins.