Berber-Arabic code-switching in Imouzzar du Kandar (Morocco)

Abstract In this article, Berber-Arabic code-switching is studied in a corpus of informal conversations recorded between 1990 and 2010 in Imouzzar in the Middle Atlas (Morocco). Among native speakers of Berber, Moroccan Arabic is the language used in the public domain, while Berber is used at home. It is shown that Berber-Moroccan Arabic code-switching is relatively rare in these conversations. Intersentential code-switching can mostly be explained from specific events in the conversation. Intrasentential insertion of Berber materials into Arabic discourse is extremely rare. The inverse is much more common, but here Standard Arabic seems to play a more important role than Moroccan Arabic, with the exception of adverbs and adverbial expressions.