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Maarten Kossmann - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Zenaga reflexes of Berber final weak verbs
2020Co-Authors: Maarten KossmannAbstract:Berber languages outside Mauritania have a number of different morphological classes of vowel-final and semivowel-final verbs ("final weak verbs"). The situation in Zenaga of Mauritania looks very different. In this article, the Zenaga reflexes of the non- Mauritanian weak verbs are compared by studying all relevant cognates. As a result, it proves possible to establish to what extent the main weak verb classes of non- Mauritanian Berber are reflected in Zenaga, and to what extent certain irregularities can be understood from Zenaga-internal developments.
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Berber-Arabic code-switching in Imouzzar du Kandar (Morocco)
STUF - Language Typology and Universals, 2020Co-Authors: Maarten KossmannAbstract:AbstractIn 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.
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Berber-Arabic Language Contact
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics, 2017Co-Authors: Maarten KossmannAbstract:Since the start of the Islamic conquest of the Maghreb in the 7th century ce, Berber and Arabic have been in continual contact. This has led to large-scale mutual influence. The sociolinguistic setting of this influence is not the same, though; Arabic influence on Berber is found in a situation of language maintenance with widespread bilingualism, while Berber influence on Arabic is no doubt to a large degree due to language shift by Berber speakers to Arabic. Linguistic influence is found on all levels: phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon. In those cases where only innovative patterns are shared between the two language groups, it is often difficult to make out where the innovation started; thus the great similarities in syllable structure between Maghrebian Arabic and northern Berber are the result of innovations within both language families, and it is difficult to tell where it started. Morphological influence seems to be mediated exclusively by lexical borrowing. Especially in Berber, this has led to parallel systems in the morphology, where native words always have native morphology, while loans either have nativized morphology or retain Arabic-like patterns. In the lexicon, it is especially Berber that takes over scores of loanwords from Arabic, amounting in one case to over one-third of the basic lexicon as defined by 100-word lists.
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the arabic influence on northern Berber
2013Co-Authors: Maarten KossmannAbstract:The Arabic Influence on Northern Berber provides an overview of the linguistic influence on a wide array of Berber varieties, the result of over a thousand years of Arabic influence.
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The Arabic Influence on Northern Berber - The Arabic Influence on Northern Berber
2013Co-Authors: Maarten KossmannAbstract:The Arabic Influence on Northern Berber provides an overview of the linguistic influence on a wide array of Berber varieties, the result of over a thousand years of Arabic influence.
Lounes Chikhi - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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str based genetic structure of the Berber population of bejaia northern algeria and its relationships to various ethnic groups
Gene, 2015Co-Authors: Nadir Amir, Mohamed Sahnoune, Lounes Chikhi, Djebbar AtmaniAbstract:Abstract Patterns of genetic variation in human populations have been described for decades. However, North Africa has received little attention and Algeria, in particular, is poorly studied, Here we genotyped a Berber-speaking population from Algeria using 15 short tandem repeat (STR) loci D8S1179, D21S11, D7S820, CSF1PO, D3S1358, TH01, D13S317, D16S539, D2S1338, D19S433, vWA, TPOX, D18S51, D5S818 and FGA from the commercially available AmpF/STR Identifiler kit. Altogether 150 unrelated North Algerian individuals were sampled across 10 administrative regions or towns from the Bejaia Wilaya (administrative district). We found that all of the STR loci met Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium expectations, after Bonferroni correction and that the Berber-speaking population of Bejaia presented a high level of observed heterozygosity for the 15 STR system (> 0.7). Genetic parameters of forensic interest such as combined power of discrimination (PD) and combined probability of exclusion (PE) showed values higher than 0.999, suggesting that this set of STRs can be used for forensic studies. Our results were also compared to those published for 42 other human populations analyzed with the same set. We found that the Bejaia sample clustered with several North African populations but that some geographically close populations, including the Berber-speaking Mozabite from Algeria were closer to Near-Eastern populations. While we were able to detect some genetic structure among samples, we found that it was not correlated to language (Berber-speaking versus Arab-speaking) or to geography (east versus west). In other words, no significant genetic differences were found between the Berber-speaking and the Arab-speaking populations of North Africa. The genetic closeness of European, North African and Near-Eastern populations suggest that North Africa should be integrated in models aiming at reconstructing the demographic history of Europe. Similarly, the genetic proximity with sub-Saharan Africa is a reminder of the links that connect all African regions.
Lameen Souag - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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The Western Berber Stratum in Kwarandzyey
2020Co-Authors: Lameen SouagAbstract:By examining regular correspondences and vocabulary distribution, this article demonstrates that many of the Berber loans in Kwarandzyey (Korandje) derive neither from the Berber varieties currently spoken near the oasis nor from Tuareg, but rather from the highly divergent Western subfamily of Berber to which Zenaga and Tetserret belong. These loans are particularly conspicuous in the domains of herding, marriage, and religion. Their presence implies that Western Berber must once have been far more widely spoken, including areas near at least one of Tabelbala or the Niger bend. The principal sound changes that have affected Kwarandzyey are also examined.
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Berber and Arabic in Siwa (Egypt)
2020Co-Authors: Lameen SouagAbstract:Siwi is the easternmost Berber language, one of the few surviving representatives of the languages spoken in the eastern Sahara before the arrival of Bedouin Arab groups in the 11th century – although this apparent continuity conceals a history of migration, as this book argues based on loanwords and intra-Berber relationships. The effects of contact upon the grammar are far more far-reaching than in better documented westerly Berber languages, extending to non-concatenative templatic morphology and some pronominal endings, as well as prominent calquing. Siwi itself is inadequately documented and under threat; this book, based on in situ fieldwork, describes Siwi grammar in greater detail than any previous publication, reporting many hitherto unattested constructions. The appendix includes a selection of Siwi texts spanning multiple genres – public speech, description, storytelling, poetry – and produced by speakers of different ages.
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Language Contact in Berber
The Oxford Handbook of Language Contact, 2020Co-Authors: Lameen SouagAbstract:The Berber languages are indigenous to North Africa, in which their first written attestations date back more than two millennia, and extend south from the Mediterranean across the Sahara well into the Sahel. At present, most Berber speakers live in Morocco and Algeria, but smaller communities of speakers continue to be scattered throughout this range, between the Atlantic and western Egypt. Major Berber languages include Shilha, Tamazight, and Rif in Morocco; Kabyle and Shawi in northern Algeria; Tuareg throughout the south-central Sahara, particularly in Mali and Niger; and, at a smaller scale, Nafusi in northeastern Libya. Like any other language family, Berber has been in contact with a variety of languages, and the relatively good early documentation of Mediterranean languages allows this contact to be traced back almost three millennia. However, its contact with Arabic is remarkable for the unusually wide range of examples of intense language-contact phenomena that it provides, enabled by widespread fluent bilingualism, especially among men. Such phenomena are especially pervasive in smaller varieties surrounded by Arabic speakers, many of which are in danger of disappearance. Berber itself has significantly impacted Maghrebi Arabic and languages of the Sahel region, but this chapter discusses only the impacts of other languages on Berber.
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Berber Etymologies in Maltese
2018Co-Authors: Lameen SouagAbstract:The extent of Berber lexical influence on Maltese remains unclear, and many of the published etymological proposals are problematic. This article evaluates the reliability of existing proposed Maltese etymologies involving Berber, excluding 50 but accepting 20, and proposes new Berber etymologies for another six Maltese words (bazina “overcooked, sticky food”, ċkejken “small”, daqquqa “cuckoo”, dis “dis-grass, sparto”, tmilla “female cuttlefish used as bait”), as well as a diminutive formation strategy using -a. Based on the results, it examines the distribution of the loans found, in the hope of casting light on the context of Arabic-Berber contact in Ifrīqiyah before the arrival of the Banū Hilāl.
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syntactically conditioned code switching the syntax of numerals in beni snous Berber
International Journal of Bilingualism, 2016Co-Authors: Lameen Souag, Fatma KherbacheAbstract:Aims and objectives:Grammatical rules in one language that induce the speaker to switch to another language (Matras’ ‘bilingual suppletion’) are reported for two languages: Beni-Snous Berber (as described in Destaing’s 1907 work Etude sur le dialecte Berbere des Beni-Snous), and Jerusalem Domari (as described in Matras’s 2012 work A grammar of Domari). Few details are available, yet the two cases show greater similarities than expected if any grammatical rule could specify switching. This paper seeks to describe the phenomenon more precisely and to provide a principled explanation for the similarities.Methodology:Destaing claims that numerals greater than 10 obligatorily select for Arabic nouns, but provides few examples and no frequency indications. The description was made more precise by examining all numeral+noun phrases in published texts, supplemented by elicitation. Contact effects were distinguished from retentions through comparison with nearby Berber and Arabic varieties.Data and analysis:Destai...
Antonio Torroni - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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The Berber and the Berbers
2009Co-Authors: Jean-michel Dugoujon, Clotilde Coudray, Antonio Torroni, Fulvio Cruciani, Rosaria Scozzari, Pedro Moral, Naima Louali, Maarten KossmannAbstract:In Northern Africa, two main blocks of languages are spoken: the vernacular Arabic varieties and the Berber languages. Our objective is to correlate linguistic characters to genetic data. The precise language affiliation of the samples is controlled. Relationships with Arabic speakers are examined. Four informative genetic markers have been studied: two are autosomal (Gm allotypes and Alu sequences) and the other two are of maternal (mitochondrial DNA) and paternal (Y chromosome) lineages. Four populations were studied (514 samples): three are from Morocco (Asni, Bouhria and Figuig oasis) and the fourth from Egypt (the Siwa oasis). The results were compared with previously published analyses. The genetic differentiation between North-Western and North-Eastern African Berbers (Siwan) seems to be correlated with linguistic studies.
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the complex and diversified mitochondrial gene pool of Berber populations
Annals of Human Genetics, 2009Co-Authors: Clotilde Coudray, Maarten Kossmann, Anna Olivieri, Alessandro Achilli, Maria Pala, Mohamed Melhaoui, Mohamed Cherkaoui, Farha Elchennawi, Antonio TorroniAbstract:Summary The mitochondrial DNA variation of 295 Berber-speakers from Morocco (Asni, Bouhria and Figuig) and the Egyptian oasis of Siwa was evaluated by sequencing a portion of the control region (including HVS-I and part of HVS-II) and surveying haplogroup-specific coding region markers. Our findings show that the Berber mitochondrial pool is characterized by an overall high frequency of Western Eurasian haplogroups, a somehow lower frequency of sub-Saharan L lineages, and a significant (but differential) presence of North African haplogroups U6 and M1, thus occupying an intermediate position between European and sub-Saharan populations in PCA analysis. A clear and significant genetic differentiation between the Berbers from Maghreb and Egyptian Berbers was also observed. The first are related to European populations as shown by haplogroup H1 and V frequencies, whereas the latter share more affinities with East African and Nile Valley populations as indicated by the high frequency of M1 and the presence of L0a1, L3i, L4*, and L4b2 lineages. Moreover, haplogroup U6 was not observed in Siwa. We conclude that the origins and maternal diversity of Berber populations are old and complex, and these communities bear genetic characteristics resulting from various events of gene flow with surrounding and migrating populations.
Djebbar Atmani - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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str based genetic structure of the Berber population of bejaia northern algeria and its relationships to various ethnic groups
Gene, 2015Co-Authors: Nadir Amir, Mohamed Sahnoune, Lounes Chikhi, Djebbar AtmaniAbstract:Abstract Patterns of genetic variation in human populations have been described for decades. However, North Africa has received little attention and Algeria, in particular, is poorly studied, Here we genotyped a Berber-speaking population from Algeria using 15 short tandem repeat (STR) loci D8S1179, D21S11, D7S820, CSF1PO, D3S1358, TH01, D13S317, D16S539, D2S1338, D19S433, vWA, TPOX, D18S51, D5S818 and FGA from the commercially available AmpF/STR Identifiler kit. Altogether 150 unrelated North Algerian individuals were sampled across 10 administrative regions or towns from the Bejaia Wilaya (administrative district). We found that all of the STR loci met Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium expectations, after Bonferroni correction and that the Berber-speaking population of Bejaia presented a high level of observed heterozygosity for the 15 STR system (> 0.7). Genetic parameters of forensic interest such as combined power of discrimination (PD) and combined probability of exclusion (PE) showed values higher than 0.999, suggesting that this set of STRs can be used for forensic studies. Our results were also compared to those published for 42 other human populations analyzed with the same set. We found that the Bejaia sample clustered with several North African populations but that some geographically close populations, including the Berber-speaking Mozabite from Algeria were closer to Near-Eastern populations. While we were able to detect some genetic structure among samples, we found that it was not correlated to language (Berber-speaking versus Arab-speaking) or to geography (east versus west). In other words, no significant genetic differences were found between the Berber-speaking and the Arab-speaking populations of North Africa. The genetic closeness of European, North African and Near-Eastern populations suggest that North Africa should be integrated in models aiming at reconstructing the demographic history of Europe. Similarly, the genetic proximity with sub-Saharan Africa is a reminder of the links that connect all African regions.