Dialect Mixing and Borrowing among

Abstract

During the past few years, the Touati speech community has been witnessing a tremendous regional mobility from other Algerian cities. As a result of this regional mobility, the Touati speech community has become a multi-dialectal speech community. In this multi-dialectal community, the researcher has noticed that during a conversation between an Adrarian youth and an individual who is originally from another city, dialect mixture occurs. The Adrarian youths tend to utilize lexemes from the Adrarian dialect as well as from the other dialects. They switch from the Adrarian dialect to the other dialect, or they only use certain loanwords from other dialects. This dissertation sheds light on dialect mixture and inter-borrowing in Adrar as a multidialectal speech community; additionally investigates whether dialect mixture among the Adrarian youths will lead to the formation of a new dialect. Also it investigates the different linguistic patterns that emerge from dialect mixing. This dissertation investigates the reliability of the following hypotheses: Hypothesis 1: There is no gender difference in terms of dialect mixing and inter-borrowing among Adrar university students. Hypothesis2: Dialect mixture occurs as a part of informal conversations to realize a prestigious style. The researcher relied on the quantitative approach. The techniques used are: direct observation (participant observation), questionnaires, and individual interviews.