Données sur la langue berbère à travers les textes anciens

Abstract

The Berber language having no continuous written tradition, direct evidence about the history of this language and its ancient forms are extremely rare. A systematic study of external documents (Greek-Latin and Arab) appears to be one of the few means at one's disposal for the reconstitution of the Berber diachrony. From this point of view La description de l'Afrique Septentrionale by El-Bekri appears to be a most fruitful work by the number as well as by the quality of the informations it contains about the Berber language (whole sentences, numerous translations of toponyms). The study of this text furnishes : 1) very precise and very interesting grammatical information for the history of this language; 2) plenty of lexical information (scores of identified items); 3) data about the linguistic situation in the area considered (maximal extension of the Berber language, remainders of other languages).

Key issues in the field of macro‐sociolinguistics of the Maghreb: Societal debates and contentious discourse

“…Neither Romans nor Arabs made any mention of oral Punic practice in North Africa upon their arrival. Louis Jean‐Calvet (2016) objects by pointing out that 10 centuries passed between the fall of Carthage and the arrival of the Arabs, so for there to be a substitution of one language by another, there must have been a period of coexistence, but Arab authors made no mention of the practice of Punic, except for the geographer El Bekri (who evokes a dialect spoken in the region of Sirte which was neither Berber nor Arabic; Chaker, 1981).…”

“…Even if the language described by Saint Augustine, spoken in the region of Hippo (present‐day Annaba, near Carthage), was a variety of Punic, this only shows that the dissemination of Punic was restricted. In the rest of the Maghreb, languages like Coptic continued to be spoken after the arrival of the Arabs (Chaker, 1981), and Berber remained the majority language.…”