Where Have All the Endings Gone?

Compared to Classical Arabic the contemporary Arabic dialects are marked by the absence of a number of morphological features, including nominal declension and verbal moods. Any explanation of this difference has to deal with two issues: the linguistic input during the Islamic conquests, and the nature of the process of language acquisition in the conquered territories. In this paper, both issues are discussed within the framework of a model for language contact that distinguishes between linguistic changes in first- and second-language learning.