Passing the Test of Split: Israbic-A New Mixed Language

Abstract

Israbic is a language variety that is spoken by a majority of the Druze community in Israel and is characterised by a mixture of Israeli Hebrew and Palestinian Arabic. Longitudinal data of Palestinian Arabic/Israeli Hebrew code-switching from the Israeli Druze community collected in 2000, 2017 and 2018 indicate that Israbic went through a gradual process of language mixing. The process started with code-switching, was followed by a composite matrix language formation and ultimately resulted in a mixed language. Some linguists (see Backus, 2003; Bakker, 2003) claim that mixed languages cannot arise out of code-switching. Conversely, others (see Auer, 1999; Myers-Scotton, 2003) have proposed theoretical models to mixed languages as outcomes of code-switching, and some (see McConvell, 2008; McConvel and Meakins, 2005; Meakins, 2012; O’Shannessy, 2012) have provided empirical evidence under which mixed languages arise out of code-switching. This research sought to gather further empirical evidence showing that Israbic is another mixed language that arose out of code-switching. This study also wished to emphasise the uniqueness of Israbic, which is a mixture of closely related languages. Such mixtures are scarce in the literature (Auer, 2014). An examination of Israbic in relation to Auer’s and Myers-Scotton’s models and general definitions in the literature and comparisons of Israbic with other widely accepted mixed languages reveals that Israbic is an excellent example of a mixed language. However, such models and definitions are based on existing languages that have been subject to discussion in the literature. Of these languages, the majority arose from contact between languages from different language families, whereas this study is concerned with investigating a mixed language from the same language family. Thus, this raises the question as to whether such concepts have the same validity for closely related languages.