Abstract

Peripheral varieties of Arabic are vernaculars spoken within large traditional communities, outside the current borders of the Arab world, in non-Arabic macro-contexts, in several countries such as Turkey, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon and Cyprus. Having evolved differently from one another, as shown by the changes at all levels (phonetics, morphology, syntax and semantics) that occurred because of the enormous pressure exercised upon them by the dominant languages in the areas in which they are spoken, these varieties of Arabic can be grouped together only sociolinguistically, based on several common features which are investigated in this work.