ABSTRACT
This chapter aims at analysing the results of language contact involving Arabic in the light of Van Coetsem's psycholinguistic principle of language dominance. It shows the outcomes of language contact involving Arabic as both dominant and non-dominant, in different geographical and historical contexts. The chapter discusses the linguistic features of number of Arabic-based contact varieties so as to classify them according to the language dominance principle. It explores the centrality of language contact for Arabic historical linguistics as well as to reveal the significance of the Arabic language for a typological understanding of contact-induced change. Different from borrowing that can also be enacted by monolingual speakers, the process of imposition is typical of second-language acquisition. In imposition, the source language (SL) is the dominant language of the speaker, from which materials are transferred into a recipient language (RL) in which the speaker is less proficient.
