Lahrouchi & Ridouane (2015) – On diminutives and plurals in Moroccan Arabic

On diminutives and plurals in Moroccan Arabic
Mohamed Lahrouchi, Rachid Ridouane
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004419
January 2015
In Moroccan Arabic, like in many other Afroasiatic languages, a single noun may have more than one plural form. For instance, t??s?wera ‘photo’ has plurals t?s?aw?r and
t??s?werat. Morphologically speaking, these are genuine plurals referring to what Semitists commonly call broken and sound plurals or internal and external plurals. From
a semantic perspective, however, sound plurals indicate a definite number usually occurring with numerals, whereas the corresponding broken plurals have collective read
ings. This study presents an interface approach which aims to determine the structural location of number and capture the empirical contrast between broken and sound plu
rals. It is argued that the sound plurals are associated with the standard Num projection, whereas the broken plurals are associated lower in the structure with the n pr
ojection. External evidence for this analysis is drawn from the phenomenon of emphasis spread. The nP is presented as the maximal domain of emphasis spread in nouns.

Format: [ pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/004419
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in: Morphology 26(3)</td >
keywords: moroccan arabic, plurals, diminutives, emphasis spread, morphology, syntax, phonology