When French is nosy, Moroccan Arabic is faithful

This article investigates the adaptation of French nasal vowels in Moroccan Arabic. It departs from the traditional analysis, which adopts nasal vowel unpacking and, hence, default VN adaptation. I argue that borrowers do not unpack nasal vowels; instead, they employ their L1 phonology to perceive the L2 acoustic cues of such vowels as VN or V. I assume that adjustments occur during perception; the latter is, however, conditioned by the borrowers’ exposure to various forms of L2 word forms and exploitation of all grammatical information (e.g. acoustic, morphological). Adopting the Bi-Phon model of Optimality Theory (Boersma & Hamann 2009), I show how the ranking of cue and structural constraints generate all the seemingly irregular adaptations. The findings will contribute in the understanding of the literature on perception, loanword adaptation, Moroccan Arabic phonology as well as French phonetics.