This dissertation investigates the mental representation of the root in the Moroccan dialect of spoken Arabic. While morphemes like roots have traditionally been defined as the smallest unit of sound-meaning correspondence, this definition has been long known to be problematic (Hockett, 1954). Other theories suggest that roots may be abstract units devoid of phonological or semantic content (Pfau, 2009; Harley, 2012) or that words are the basic unit of the mental lexicon (Aronoff, 1994, 2007; Blevins, 2006). The root of Moroccan words is examined with auditory priming experiments, using auditory lexical decision tasks, including the subliminal speech priming technique (Kouider and Dupoux, 2005). Chapter 2 shows that the subliminal speech priming technique should be modified with primes compressed uniformly to 240ms for Moroccan Arabic (the compression rate varies to achieve the uniform 240ms prime duration).Chapters 3 and 4 apply supraliminal and subliminal speech priming technique to Moroccan Arabic. The priming effect of words that share a root are found to be robust and distinct from words which simply share semantic or phonological content. Furthermore, roots which are instantiated as novel coinages produce priming effects, which further suggests that the root is a structural unit. Each related word in a morphological family, however, does not prime all of its relatives, contradicting the idea of a root as a structural unit. These subliminal effects also differ from supraliminal effects, where overlap in phonological form between the prime and target results in facilitation when identifying the target. The results of these experiments suggest that the word is the basic unit of speech perception, rather than the root. The root is is not an mental unit but a property of words or relationship among a morphological family. Competition from phonological neighbors is a late effect, since shared phonology facilitates only with the supraliminal technique but not the subliminal technique. Finally, realizational theories of morphology are supported, since take the word as the basic unit of the lexicon. While the root may not have phonological content per se, root phonology is important for deriving morphological families. Chapter 4 uses weak roots (which do not consistently show three root consonants in each derived form) to show that semi-vowels are encoded as root consonants.

The aim of the present study is to cast new light on the nature of definiteness marking in Moroccan Arabic (MA). Previous work on the dialect group has described its definiteness system as similar to that of other Arabic varieties, where indefinite entities are unmarked and a "definite article" /l-/ modifies nouns to convey a definite meaning. Such descriptions, however, do not fully account for the behavior of MA nouns in spontaneous natural speech, as found in the small self-collected corpus that informs the study: on one hand, /l-/ can and regularly does co-occur with indefinite meanings; on the other, a number of nouns can exhibit definiteness even in the absence of /l-/. In response to these challenges, the study puts forth an alternate synchronic description the system, arguing that the historical definite article */l-/ has in fact lost its association with definiteness and has instead become lexicalized into an unmarked form of the noun that can appear in any number of semantic contexts. Relatedly, the study argues that the historically indefinite form *Ø has come under heavy syntactic constraints and can best be described as derived from the new unmarked form via a process of phonologically conditioned disfixation, represented {- /l/}. At the same time, MA has also apparently retained an older particle ši and developed an article waħəd, both of which can be used to express different types of indefinite meanings. To support the plausibility of this new description, the study turns to the linguistic history of definiteness in MA, describing how a combination of internal and external impetuses for change likely pushed the dialect toward article loss, a development upon which semantic reanalysis and syntactic restructuring of other forms then followed. If the claim that MA no longer overtly marks definiteness is indeed correct, the study could have a significant impact on work that used previous MA descriptions to make grammaticality judgments, as well as be of value to future work on processes of grammaticalization and language contact. / text

In this thesis, the three hypotheses on the nature of early L2 acquisition (the Full Transfer/Full Access view of Schwartz and Sprouse (e.g., 1996), the Minimal Trees view of Vainikka and Young-Scholten (e.g., 1996), and the Valueless Features view of Eubank (e.g., 1996)), are discussed. Analysis of the early French production by two native speakers of Moroccan Arabic is done to determine if the L1 grammar is transferred onto the L2 grammar. In particular, the phenomena of verb-raising (as determined by the verb's position vis-a-vis negation) and finiteness are examined. The results of this study indicate that the relevant structures of Moroccan Arabic do not transfer onto the emerging French grammar.

Code-switching (CS) between French and Arabic is common across North Africa and in parts of the Middle East. Many researchers have examined this phenomenon in Tunisia (Belazi 1991, Lawson & Sachdev 2000, Belazi et. al 1994) and Morocco (Abbassi 1977, Bentahila 1983, Bentahila & Davies 1983, Lahlou 1991, Redouane 2005.) Corpus and elicited data from these two countries has helped form the basis of proposed universal constraints on code-switching, specifically the Functional Head Constraint (FHC) (Belazi et al 1994) and the Complement Adjunct Distinction (CAD) (Mahootian and Santorini 1996). However, CS between French and Moroccan and Tunsian dialects has not been directly investigated within a single study. This study is a step in filling that gap. Using a web-based survey, the present study examines native dialect speakers’ ratings of authenticity of sentences that contain both French and Arabic with a switch occurring in the Determiner Phrase (DP). The syntactic structure of the DP in the dialects examined is the same, (DP = D (D) N (A)). This is similar to the DP in French (DP = D (A) N (A)) with a few key differences that make it possible to test the FHC and CAD within the DP alone. An example of one of the eight possible switch types, between an Arabic Demonstrative Determiner and a French Definite Determiner, is seen here between Moroccan Arabic and French: Men dima had l’homme n’aime pas les chiens. (Since always this the man doesn’t like dogs.) A mixed-model ANOVA performed on the participants’ ratings reveals main effects for dialect, sex and switch type. Significant interactions also exist, including an interaction between switch type, sex and dialect. While further research is needed, the results indicate that syntactic constraints may not be the only way to understand the practice of CS. Instead, a typological approach, as suggested by Muysken (2000), may lead to a more complete understanding of why and how communities use multiple languages. / text

Suite aux travaux en psycholinguistique et en psychologie interculturelle liés aux cadres de référence spatiale, nous avons choisi d’investiguer ce domaine en nous focalisant sur la zone géographique de Guelmime, dans le sud-ouest marocain. Dans cette étude, nous nous proposons de répondre à deux questions principales : Comment les enfants marocains âgés de 6 à 9 ans, locuteurs de l’arabe dialectal marocain, du tachelhit et du français désignent l’orientation dans l’espace dans chacune de ces trois langues ? Quels sont les facteurs qui influencent ces désignations ? Pour répondre à ces questions, nous avons réalisé une analyse du vocabulaire spatial en arabe dialectal marocain, en tachelhit et en français à partir de collectes de corpus. Deux études ont été réalisées. La première, une tâche d’orientation, a été effectuée par des élèves âgés de 6-7 ans et 8-9 ans. Si les résultats liés à toutes les langues du recueil montrent que le mode d’orientation qu’utilisent les élèves est soumis à un effet de la scolarisation lié à l’âge et à la durée de l’enseignement, les résultats liés à chaque langue montrent qu’il y a un effet de l’école fréquentée dans le mode d’orientation utilisé. Quant à la deuxième étude, il s’agit d’une tâche de positionnement d’objets, réalisée avec des enseignants de l’école primaire au Maroc, dans les trois langues. Les résultats montrent que dans toutes les langues du recueil, la même tendance est visible. Cette étude nous a permis d’entrevoir les difficultés à évaluer selon un protocole expérimental contrôlé les préférences linguistiques en lien avec telle ou telle langue dans un contexte plurilinguistique naturel et scolaire. En outre, ces recherches s’ouvrent sur l’importance de prendre en compte des contraintes liées au développement cognitif et au mode d’acquisition des langues par des enfants scolarisés. / The main purpose of this thesis is to answer these questions: Why are there different ways to talk about space? How Moroccans, speakers of Moroccan Arabic, Tachelhit and French orient themselves in space? What are the factors that influence the orientation mode? The interest of this thesis is to conduct an analysis of spatial vocabulary in Moroccan Arabic, in Tachelhit and in French. This analysis is particularly interested in defining the type of spatial orientation related to spatial frame of reference used preferentially by Moroccan students as well as teachers. To do this, two studies were conducted. The first, the orientation task, is made with school children aged 6-7 years and 8-9 years. If the results related to all languages show that the orientation mode used by students is subject to an effect of schooling related to age and standing of education, the results related to each language show that there is an effect of school attended in the orientation mode used. For the second study, it is a task of positioning objects, made with teachers in primary school in Morocco. The results show that in all languages, the same trend is visible. Teachers use the same orientation mode in the three languages of the collection. This study has allowed us to see the difficulties in spatial concepts teaching and learning. These studies opens of the importance of taking into account the constraints of cognitive development, language acquisition mode, but also the constraints of language systems in research involving an intercultural context. / تروم هذه الأطروحة، التي تأسست مقتضيات تحقيق بحثها الميداني على اختيار مقصود لمدينة "كلميم" المتموقعة جغرافيا بالجنوب الشرقي للمغرب، الإجابة عن الأسئلة التالية:- لماذا نجد أكثر من طريقة للتعبير عن المكان؟- كيف يعين الأطفال المغاربة الذين يتراوح سنهم بين: ست (6) و تسع (9) سنوات، ممن يتكلمون الدراجة المغربية، والأمازيغية (تشلحيت)، والفرنسية، توجههم المكاني ارتباطا بهذه اللغات الثلاث؟- وما هي العوامل التي تؤثر على هذا التوجيه؟ تكمن أهمية هذه الأطروحة في إنجاز تحليل للمفردات الخاصة بالمكان في هذه اللغات الثلاث. وحيث ينزع التحليل المقرر فيها لتحديد نوع التوجيه المكاني المقترن بالإطار الخاص بالمرجع المكاني الذي يفضل التلاميذ والأساتذة المغاربة استعماله على حد سواء. لأجل ذلك، تم اعتماد دراستين ميدانيتين اثنتين؛ ارتكزت الأولى على مهمة "التوجيه"، وتم تطبيقها على عينة من التلاميذ الذين تتراوح أعمارهم بين ست(6) وسبع (7)سنوات، وثمان (8)وتسع (9) سنوات. وإذا كانت النتائج المتوصل إليها في هذه الدراسة، ارتباطا بكل اللغات المعتمدة في البحث، تؤكد أن نمط التوجيه الذي يستعمله التلاميذ قد تعرض لتأثير التمدرس المرتبط بالسن وبمدة التمدرس؛ فإن النتائج، المرتبطة بكل لغة على حدة، توضح أن هناك تأثيرا خاصا على نمط التوجيه المكاني المُسْتَعْمَل سببه نوع المؤسسة التربوية نفسها. َأما الدراسة الثانية التي ارتكزت على مهمة "موضعة الأجسام" وتشكلت عينتها من أساتذة التعليم الابتدائي، فقد أظهرت نتائجها ارتباطا بكل اللغات المعتمدة في البحث، أن الأساتذة ينزعون نحو اعتماد نفس النمط من التوجيه. وهو ما مكننا من رصد المشاكل المرتبطة بتعليم المفاهيم المكانية، وتعلمها.تنفتح أبحاث من هذا النوع على إقرار أهمية الأخذ بعين الاعتبار القيود المتصلة بالتطور المعرفي، وأنماط اكتساب اللغات وتعلمها، وبالقيود المتصلة بالأنساق اللسانية، على وجه مخصوص، ارتباطا بدراسات تجعل من القيمة الثقافية، وبين الثقافية سياقا لها، ومتغيرا دالا فيها أيضا.