Language Variation and Change in an Algerian Berber-Speaking Community: The Chaoui Variety as a Case Study

Abstract

The present study has the goal of investigating lexical language change in the Chaoui, a Berber variety. The study seeks to address questions related to the linguistic features that constraint language change and the social implications of that change. In order to attend to this objective, a mixed-methods approach is developed where a list of words is translated to Chaoui to examine traces of Arabic and French influence. The translated list includes 1500 meaning items that are adopted from the Loanword Typology meaning list where each item is presented to ten native speakers of the Chaoui dialect. The obtained translations are compared and non-fitting ones are ruled out. The findings of the present study show that Arabic is the main donor language for borrowing. Moreover, the study shows that the grammatical category of the word and the semantic field to which it pertains are the main linguistic factors that trigger change.