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Part of
Arabic in Contact
Edited by Stefano Manfredi and Mauro Tosco
[Studies in Arabic Linguistics 6] 2018
► pp. 161–170

Loan verbs in Egyptian Arabic

Perspectives and evidence from social media

| University of Bayreuth, University of Naples “L’Orientale”

This paper will explain the strategies of loan verbs integration in Egyptian Arabic (EA). As a recipient language, EA adopts two strategies: (a) insertion with ‘Light Verb Strategy’; and (b) Direct Insertion either with or without ‘Reduction to Root.’

While direct insertion strategy without ‘reduction to root’ is used almost exclusively for imperative loan verbs, the same strategy with ‘reduction to root’ is open to any ‘input form’. To each loan verb EA assigns a root and the loan verb assumes one of the EA verbal forms.

An investigation of new loan verbs passed to EA through Social Media, while they are being integrated, gives us further insight, and therefore a better understanding, into the integration process of loan verbs in general.

Keywords: Social Media, Egyptian Arabic, lexical borrowing, loan verbs, integration
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical background
  • 3.Social media and loan verbs
  • 4.Integration strategies
    • 4.1Light Verb Strategy (LVS)
    • 4.2Direct insertion without ‘Reduction to root’ (DI)
    • 4.3Direct insertion with ‘Reduction to Root’ (DIRR)
  • 5.Conclusive remarks
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 10 July 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sal.6.08has
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