LACNAD research areas

The LACNAD pursues its work in the fields of linguistics, sociolinguistics, literature and culture (cultural anthropology, history, cultural sociology, arts). This work is carried out according to a series of cross-disciplinary themes and issues defined when LACNAD was set up in 2006. These have been regularly updated in line with recommendations made by AERES experts.

The project for 2019-2023 remains articulated around three transversal axes: Linguistics/Language Sciences; Literature/Arts; Human and Social Sciences/Cultural Practices, common to the three linguistic and cultural components, but also includes axes specific to each of the components.

Transversal research axes

Axis 1. Linguistics / Language sciences

A1.1. Dialectology

Variations and linguistic boundaries in Berber-speaking or Arabic-speaking areas and in situations of Arabic/Berber contact; dialectometry; description of undocumented or poorly documented speakers. Evolution of Arabic and Berber languages (in urban areas, in immigration); typology.

All components of LACNAD are concerned with:

• the description of undocumented or poorly documented Maghrebian and Berber Arabic languages (several theses in progress: North Moroccan language, Chaoui); Judeo-Arabic and Judeo-Berber;
• the continuation of work on linguistic boundaries (Arabic/Berberian) and contact phenomena, as well as in dialectology and dialectometry (a thesis in progress in Berber; dialectology and dialectometry work already well underway for Kabylia, is being extended to the Chaouïa, Rifain domains....);
• the continuation of research into the articulation between Syntax and Intonation in different varieties of Berber and Maghrebian Arabic.

A1.2. Sociolinguistics: here and there

Sociolinguistics, which developed rapidly during the previous contract, remains a priority field of investment for LACNAD, which will continue and strengthen its participation in the various networks of which it is a member:

• Le Réseau de Sociolinguistique Urbaine;
• Le réseau RFS, Réseau Francophone de Sociolinguistique;
• La Fédération de Typologie (TUL, FR2959), through its operation (20010-2013): "Conversational analysis in contact situations. Les marqueurs énonciatifs".

And, internationally:

• ESF (European Science Foundation) through its "Exploratory Workshops";
• AIDA (Association internationale de Dialectologie Arabe).

The team's research will focus on three main themes:

• Urban sociolinguistics (in the Maghreb and France);
• The practices and transmission process of Maghrebian Arabic and Berber in France, and their place in diaspora, and particularly in French society;
• Language contacts and code switching;
• Gender construction and linguistic practices: an innovative, transdisciplinary theme ;
• Evolution of language practices as a function of age.

A1.3. Applied linguistics and didactics: language planning, didactics, development of didactic reference tools

The demand for didactic tools is particularly strong in the field with regard to Berber, due to recent developments concerning the status of these languages in Algeria and Morocco, but also in France and Europe (in different teaching contexts).

• Pursuit du programme relatif à l'aménagement du berbère (codification graphique, codification grammaticale et néologie) ;
• Puite du programme de production d'outils didactiques : spelling dictionaries, mobilizing IT media and tools with a view to making them available to a wider audience;
• Langues de France / DGLFLF => remains an area of interest for the team / current research;
• Spelling checker and electronic dictionary for Berber: pursuit of this project to produce a spelling checker coupled with an electronic dictionary. Such a tool has become indispensable with the expansion of the written word in recent years (novels, translations, etc.). We'll be focusing on Kabyle, a Berber variety for which a standard notation has been proposed by the former Centre de Recherche Berbère, even if certain points have yet to be clarified. This emerging standard is perfectly adequate for the spellchecker. It is the one used in particular for educational texts produced by the CRB (baccalauréat annals, grammatical memento, literary anthology, etc.).);
• The elaboration of linguistic (morphological) rules as exhaustively and systematically as possible; the management of exceptions, irregular forms, compound words; etc;
• The creation of an electronic Berber dictionary: this project continues in collaboration with the University of Tizi-Ouzou, Algeria (signature of a specific rider to the agreement linking the two establishments) around the Nooj software. This work was the subject of Hamid ANOUZ's thesis, defended in 2019. The results will soon be published. Work on the computerization of Berber continues in partnership with the University of Tizi-Ouzou

A1.4. Contacts between Judeo-Arabic Maghrebian Arabic and Hebrew

• The Hebrew component in Maghrebian Jewish parlances

Responsible: Joseph Tedghi

The interference of lexemes and locutions in Judeo-Arabic parlances gives the latter a very specific discursive character that distinguishes them from Arabic dialects. This linguistic discriminant is closely linked to the socio-economic condition of the Jews, as well as to the particular aspects of their religious culture - centered on the study of Hebrew texts - as their speech remains constantly subject to the influence of Hebrew and Aramaic. Over the centuries, this continuous interference has led to interaction between the two languages, in terms of lexical, morphological and syntactic structures.

The Judeo-Arabic languages of the Maghreb, spoken by some 500,000 speakers just half a century ago, seem destined to disappear as a result of the mass emigration and dispersal of Jewish populations from Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. The arrival of many of these populations in France will enable researchers and linguists to work in situ on their Judeo-Arabic languages, as well as on their socio-cultural specificities. Taking into account the slow reduction in the number of speakers and the truncated transmission of this language to the new generation, it is becoming urgent to proceed with recordings of the last Judeo-Arabic speakers in order to expand the corpus already built up, and to document as far as possible this linguistic, socio-historical and literary heritage.

• The Arabic language of the Jews of the Mzab [southern Algeria]

Responsible: Joseph Tedghi

Several historical, sociological and ethnographic studies have been devoted to the Jews of the Mzab, but their language has not been the subject of any research. While they were slow to adopt French, they persisted in expressing themselves essentially in Judeo-Arabic, a language that presents a number of lexical and grammatical specificities compared with other Judeo-Arabic languages used in the past in the Maghreb. For several years now, Joseph Tedghi has been recording speakers from southern Algeria living in the Paris region. The initial material collected has enabled us to identify the specific features of the Arabic language spoken by Jews from the Mzab region, highlighting the particularities of male and female sociolects. During various missions to Israel, further interviews were also conducted with elderly nationals, established in the country since the 1950s.

The investigation is particularly interested in the phenomenon of linguistic hybridization, which is part of the socio-pragmatic research into the uses of Judeo-Arabic speakers in the Maghreb, its conditions of formation and mutation. As is perceptible in all Judeo-Arabic languages, the Mzab language is also sprinkled with Hebrew vocables. However, this linguistic component, which gives these languages their specificity, seems to be much more consistent in the speech of the Jews of southern Algeria, probably due to the proven conservatism of this isolated community on the Saharan border. The distribution of the lexicon already collected, or in the process of being recorded, will be the subject of a typological analysis, and each semantic field will be illustrated by significant examples. Finally, it will be shown that many Hebrew terms or expressions had undergone an interesting semantic evolution, some of them having been forged within this very community from existing roots.

Beyond the census of Arabic and Hebrew vocabulary, the survey will focus more particularly on the phenomenon of linguistic hybridization. A second component will involve collecting poetic texts in Judeo-Arabic, as well as sayings and proverbs common in the Jewish communities of the Mzab.

• Traces of dialectal Arabic in North African Hebrew texts

Responsible: Joseph Tedghi

In the same field of investigation into languages in contact in the Maghreb, a new and as yet unexplored line of research has been developed, namely the influence of dialectal Arabic in literary production written in Hebrew. For over a century, various works have been devoted to the Arabic dialects of the Jews of these regions and their phonological, lexical, morphological and syntactic particularities. Few authors, however, have taken an interest in Hebrew, the language of culture used by the literati in their writings, even though their Hebrew production is considerable and survives in many literary fields. However, as the Hebrew language has not been spoken since the 2nd century, authors have had to create neologisms to signify certain new notions. The use of syntactic calques from Arabic - the authors' mother tongue - has made up for the lexical deficit, developing and keeping the Hebrew language alive through the centuries. Given that this vocabulary is rarely, or not at all, listed in Hebrew dictionaries, future research will consist in flushing out these lexical, morphological or syntactic "Arabisms" in the written production of Maghrebi literati and analyzing them.

Axis 2. Literature: Literary system(s), genres and contemporary developments (cinema, internet...)

Responsible: Daniela Merolla

Continuation of the program begun in the previous quadrennium and acceleration of the integration of issues and interdisciplinarity up to transdisciplinarity[1] of research within LACNAD around the themes:

• "Continuities and renewals of literary genres, actors and places" - Theme "Poetics of Exile" on popular song, theater, cinema, the novel and the short story in the three linguistic fields;
• "New oralities and new literacies" - Interdisciplinary approach:
  New developments in mediatized orality and writing call for plural disciplinary approaches and multiple methods. Questions common to LACNAD's three linguistic and literary fields seek to determine a) whether, and how, non-institutionalization and partial (or incomplete) institutionalization have an effect on the spelling of creative writing on social networks; b) what are the divergences and convergences in the way mediated orality and new writing develop on the Web, both in Darija and Berber ; c) whether there are exchanges and/or interferences / influences between the different languages (Darija, Berber, standard Arabic, Judeo-Arabic, French and also Spanish, Dutch and the other languages of the Berber diaspora) and at what levels; what has been the journalistic and academic critical reception of these new literacies in Darija and Berber.
• Research approaches to literature (oral and written):
  This theme focuses on theoretical and methodological issues as well as pedagogical tools in the three linguistic fields.
  • "Literary field and space" notions under discussion (shared investigations into theoretical definitions and their impact on approaches to oral and written literatures in dialectal Arabic, Berber and Judeo-Arabic in the multilingual contexts of the Maghreb and Diaspora)
  • "Reference tools" (anthologies and textbooks)
• Cinema in the Maghreb (Daniela Merolla). This theme focuses on reflecting on the continuity and specificity of Maghreb films vis-à-vis African and world cinema.
• "The Museum in the Maghreb and Diaspora: visual arts, material and immaterial culture" on the three components: dialectal Arabic, Berber and Judeo-Maghrebin.
• "Manuscripts in the Maghreb and Diasporas". The "Manuscripts" theme is interdisciplinary and is also dealt with in Axis 3.
• Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic literature of North Africa (Joseph Tedghi)
  • Hebrew poetry. (Joseph Tedghi). In the Maghreb, as in other diaspora countries, the Hebrew language was used by Jewish literati as a language of culture. However, many works remained in manuscript form, due to the absence of Hebrew printing works in these countries. The inventory of manuscripts from the Maghreb deposited in university or private libraries reveals a considerable number of poetic pieces composed in Hebrew, the majority of which have not yet been investigated. It therefore seems essential to us to consider the publication of an anthology aimed at bringing certain poets out of the shadows and rehabilitating their works. At the same time, the diversity of genres, prosodic structures, literary and linguistic characteristics of this poetry and their evolution over the centuries will be examined.
  • Translation, literary and linguistic analysis of a work by Jacob Soffer (1856-1930) (Nicole Serfaty)
    This small 33-sheet work, written in Judeo-Arabic, is entitled The Peregrinations of Al-Fandari [originally] from Spain; it was printed in 1902 in Jerusalem on the initiative of an atypical rabbi-calligrapher, born in Odessa and living in Oran, the so-called Jacob Soffer. The title of his pamphlet, in which Hebrew and Arabic are juxtaposed, immediately indicates the strong linguistic interweaving that marks this text. The reader, captivated by his lively, energetic, rhythmic style and rich, varied vocabulary, is bound to associate this tale with the cloak-and-dagger novels of Alexandre Dumas. The French translation, completed by Nicole Serfaty, will be supplemented by a literary and linguistic analysis, a glossary and a biography of the presumed author (Yiddish-speaking and Judeo-Arabic-speaking) based, among other things, on his epistolary exchanges and archives handed down by his great-granddaughter. Research is still underway to date and establish the exact origin of this text recounting the peregrinations of a Marrano exiled to Fez and then Safed, courageously fleeing the horrors inflicted by the Spanish Inquisition on his family and all Jews simulating conversion to Christianity, two centuries after the Expulsion of 1492.

Note. [1] Interdisciplinarity is usually seen as a first stage of cooperation, when questions and methods from one discipline are used to investigate diverse fields (for example, linguistic or anthropological approaches to analyze literary products, or tools of literary analysis to investigate extraliterary corpora). Transdisciplinarity is the next stage in the integration of approaches, when concepts, methods, paradigms and questions from the various disciplines are progressively integrated.

Axis 3. Axe SHS-Cultural practices

Material heritage: Judeo-Arabic funerary inscriptions from Tunisia

Sonia Fellous, Nicole Serfaty and Joseph Tedghi

During her inventory of Tunisia's Jewish heritage (1998-2016), Sonia Fellous (IRHT-CNRS /LaCNAD) was able to identify an unusual corpus of epigraphy, engraved in Judeo-Arabic on tombs located, notably, in the Borgel cemetery in Tunis but also, in other regional cemeteries. Alongside Hebrew epitaphs, hundreds of inscriptions were written exclusively in Judeo-Arabic, constituting a unique and rare literary corpus to be included in the cultural heritage of Jews whose roots were planted in Islamic lands. These compositions, of a sustained linguistic and stylistic level, took the place of funeral elegies written in rhymed prose or poems inspired by biblical qinot or those elaborated in the Middle Ages. In the mode of a lamento, they recount the shattered lives of young people who had passed away, swept away by devastating illnesses, victims of accidents or murdered.

Faced with the degradation and abandonment of these cemeteries, it became urgent to safeguard and record this literary corpus, a precious witness to the language as well as to the vagaries of history and the adventures experienced in past centuries by Tunisian Jews. Three members of LaCNAD, specialists in the Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic languages, as well as in the civilizations of North Africa [Sonia Fellous, (IRHT-CNRS), Joseph Tedghi and Nicole Serfaty (LaCNAD/INALCO)] have therefore taken the initiative of combining their skills to form a team dedicated to translating, analyzing, commenting on and making an inventory of several dozen of these epitaphs. After a systematic description, material aspects (epigraphic, artistic, aesthetic, iconographic...) as well as literary, linguistic, translational, onomastic and socio-historical aspects are addressed.

Achievements of current research:

The transcription of a selection of several dozen epitaphs in Hebrew, Arabic and Latin characters has already been completed, as have their translations. The team is now working on the analytical description, with each epitaph to be subjected to an epigraphic study, a linguistic and literary analysis and comments on the translatology, including details on the choice of translations adopted. The development of this method of investigation and the initial results of the work carried out were presented by the entire team on March 17, 2016 in Paris, at a study day organized jointly by IRHT-CNRS and LaCNAD-INALCO, at the Institut de recherche et d'histoire des textes (IRHT). [See a first publication on the Hypotheses website].

The Jews of the Rif - Tribal Life and Mutations

Nicole Serfaty

In this northern part of Morocco, Jews have lived for centuries in the mountains, within tribal confederations (Beni-Sidel, Beni Bu-Jaafar, etc..At the end of the 19th century, fleeing the unrest and intrigues of the colonial powers in the Rif, these poor, illiterate, non-Spanish-speaking Jews sought refuge with the Sephardim from Tetouan, Oran or Gibraltar, who had recently settled in the Spanish enclave of Melilla. The rift between the two constituent elements of the community will be obvious, but will not hinder the adaptation of these former mountain dwellers to modernity and the improvement of their living conditions.

The history of these Rifa Jewish minorities, their secular roots in the Berber environment and their migration, always approached in a piecemeal fashion, needs to be completed.
This project was conceived by Nicole Serfaty following a lecture given in Nador in November 2019 on "Des origines de la présence juive dans l'enclave espagnole de Melilla (1863-1912)". (The text of the lecture is published in the Proceedings entitled Miradas cruzadas, Diversidad y Cultura del Rif, Eds. Ahmed Tahiri and Fatima-Zahra Aitoutouhen Temsamani, Seville, 2019, pp. 69-81).

"Manuscripts in the Maghreb and Diasporas"

Specific research axes

'Berber references'

The program will be organized around two structural work axes, each comprising several scientific operations:

1. Berber Encyclopedia Axis

Production of reference works and websites based on a capital already partly constituted (= 4 operations):

• Reference work on Kabylie
• "Berber Biographies" website
• Reference work in Berber linguistics
• Linguistic development of Maltese
• "Dictionary of Berber poetics"

2. Berber Archives"

Exploitation and valorization of unpublished archives (literary, linguistic and photographic) from Aix (= 2 operations).

• Arsène Roux Berber literary and linguistic fund: exploitation and valorization
• Marceau Gast photographic fund: inventory, digitization, exploitation and valorization (exploratory phase).

3. Berber cinema axis

Daniela Merolla

Research project looking at the continuity and specificity of Amazigh films across the different languages of Algeria and Morocco. At the same time, we try to "situate" them in relation to Maghreb, African and world cinema.

See the colloquia "Les cinémas berbères: de la méconnaissance aux festivals nationaux. African comparisons" http://www.inalco.fr/evenement/cinemas-berberes-meconnaissance-festival… and http://www.inalco.fr/en/node/26813 ; "Le cinéma berbère (amazigh) : seconde journée d'études" http://www.inalco.fr/appel-communication/cinema-berbere-amazigh-seconde… ;

and the publication of the book Les cinémas berbères. De la méconnaissance aux festivals internationaux (ed. by Daniela Merolla, Kamal Naït Zerad and Amar Ameziane)

The "Verba Africana" electronic series

www.verbafricana.org
The central idea of the project that led to the constitution of the Verba Africana series is that textual content and performance are essential to the classification, description and interpretation of oral literatures as well as to the understanding of their aesthetic quality and reception Intonation and gestuality, musical accompaniment, interactions between the poet/storyteller and the audience, clothing and set design, and the context of the performance are essential to the learning of (North)African languages and literatures, and can now be presented at least in part by audiovisual recording, enriching textual and contextual analysis. This is what the Verba Africana series attempts to do through a presentation of both textual and audiovisual performances and research in oral literature.

Finalized projects

PICS 'The mountain and its knowledge'

Variations and linguistic boundaries in Berber-speaking areas and in situations of Arabic/Berber contact; description of undocumented or poorly documented speech. Evolution of Arabic and Berber languages (in urban areas, in immigration). The PICS will focus on Jbala (Western Rif, Morocco).