NWAV48

Profiling nominal genitive variability in Moroccan Arabic

Most modern spoken varieties of Arabic make use of two syntactic configurations to express genitive/possessive relations between nouns: a synthetic form and an analytic form. This variable has received sparse study in a variationist framework. The present study fills a part of this gap by analyzing nominal genitive usage patterns in the speech of 12 Moroccan Arabic speakers in Casablanca, with a focus on linguistic factors. Using multivariate analysis, I show that there is a sharp difference between contexts with noun possessors versus those with pronoun possessors. In both contexts, however, the synthetic is strongly favoured by contexts of inalienable possession – supporting previous claims – as well as by noun complements – a new finding. By contrast, the analytic genitive appears to accommodate a wider range of linguistic situations, including code-switching environments. The results offer a clear benchmark for comparison with future studies of this variable in other varieties of Arabic.