The Morphological Analysis of Borrowed Words in Najdi Arabic

Abstract

Arabic language borrows words from other languages such as English, Greek, and Persian. This paper investigates the common words that Najdi dialect has borrowed from English. The paper also aims to investigate and analyze the borrowed words from English to show if the borrowed words in Najdi Arabic are treated as native words or not. The data were collected through observing people around Najd region. Then the data were analyzed in light of the morphological analysis. The results showed that the criteria of relevance to syntax and obligatoriness are crucial criteria to distinguish between inflection and derivation. Moreover, Najdi dialect deals with the borrowed words the same way they treated their Arabic words by using the morphemes ta, ya, ma, i:, aat, and e/i:. They modified the borrowed word until it confirms the phonetic constraints of their dialect.