ABSTRACT
This volume seeks to describe the basic phonological, grammatical, and lexical features that characterize the dialects of Moroccan Arabic (MA), with a particular focus on the Jewish and Muslim dialect networks. While a patient scholar could laboriously piece together a rough overview of MA dialectology by collating the many published reports on specific dialects, there is a need for a basic reference work. Moreover, there are major gaps (important dialects that have not previously been described), available dialect descriptions are often incomplete, and each scholar seems to have a different transcriptional system and a different idea of what data are worth reporting. The present study is based mainly on fresh field data collected using a fairly stable elicitation list, assuring a reasonable degree of uniformity. It is designed in part to be a useful one-stop source for general Arabists seeking basic information on MA. It is also designed to be a research tool for Moroccanists, e.g. as a starting point for the study of various lexical sets and phonological and morphological issues. I particularly hope that this work, along with the various atlas projects now underway, will provide the dialectological foundation for close studies of ongoing koine-ization in the main urban centers, since koine-ization is essentially a process of selecting features from an array of traditional dialects. This work will also hopefully help to stimulate work on leveling processes in Moroccan communities in Israel.
