Adaptation of nominal borrowings to French in Moroccan Arabic The Case of Diminutives

Résumé

Moroccan Arabic is one of the languages that is full of lexical borrowings from
multiple idioms. French tops the list of languages that have borrowed the most from
Moroccan Arabic for historical and political reasons. Given the huge difference between the
two linguistic systems, adaptations on more than one level become indispensable for these
new lexemes. In addition to phonetic changes, lexemes undergo other changes of a
morphosyntactic nature imposed by the host language system. In this paper, we have studied
some morphosyntactic aspects of the adaptation of French borrowings into Moroccan Arabic,
in particular the different mechanisms of integration of diminutives. The study showed that
these borrowings, with the exception of a few particular cases, were able to integrate the rules
of formation of diminutives in Moroccan Arabic.