The Morphological Integration of English Loanwords in Mosuli Arabic

Abstract

       The present study comprehensively tackles English loanwords of monolingual speakers, i.e. established loanwords, or bilingual speakers, i.e. spontaneous loanwords. English loanwords have become more widely used in speech as well as writings of Mosuli Arabic (henceforth MA). Therefore, it is important to know to what extent English loanwords are morphologically affected by Arabic paradigm. The problem of the study indeed is what the morphological changes English loanwords have undergone. This is considered as challengeable since English and MA are more typologically different. Thus, integration of many words from English into MA are said to be more complex. The study aims at investigating and analysing these lexemes from the morphological perspective. Data collection has been based on two genres: naturally occurring conversations of Mosuli Arabic participants and contemporary social medias. Qualitative method has been used to invigorate the descriptive analysis of 100 English loanwords as a representative sample, following Salem’s model (2015). The findings have shown that these loanwords have undergone significant morphological changes. Key patterns of integration have included assigning English loan lexemes to derivational and inflectional word-formation patterns. Again, English loan lexemes have been treated as roots for creating new other words. The light verb with indirect insertion processes has been used for generally merging many loan verbs. Additional strategies like compounding and clipping have been observed as well. English loan nouns have also been adapted to grammatical features like gender, number and possessive. Finally, it has been concluded that English loanwords have extensively been integrated, whether partially or fully, into morphological system of MA.