SYLLABLES IN TASHLHIYT BERBER AND IN MOROCCAN ARABIC Syllables in Tashlhiyt Berber and in Moroccan Arabic by FRANÇOIS DELL MOHAMED ELMEDLAOUI KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS BOSTON / DORDRECHT / LONDON Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data ISBN Published by Kluwer Academic Publishers, P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands. Kluwer Academic Publishers incorporates the publishing programmes of D. Reidel, Martinus Nijhoff, Dr W. Junk and MTP Press Sold and distributed in North, Central and South America by Kluwer Academic Publishers, 101 Philip Drive, Norwell, MA 02061, U.S.A. In all other countries, sold and distributed by Kluwer Academic Publishers Group, P.O. Box 322, 3300 AH Dordrecht, The Netherlands. Printed on acid-free paper All Rights Reserved @ 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner. Printed in the Netherlands. TO MORRIS HALLE TABLE OF CONTENTS Symbols and abbreviations xi–xiii Preface xv–xvi Chapter 1. Introduction 1–11 1.1. Goals and general outlook 1 1.2. The Berber languages 5 1.3. Berber in Morocco 6 1.4. Tashlhiyt 7 1.5. Tashlyiyt and Moroccan Arabic in contact 8 1.6. Imdlawn Tashlhiyt 10 Chapter 2. Syntax and morphology, an overview 13–37 2.1. Sound system 13 2.2. Notational conventions 14 2.3. Syntax 17 2.3.1. Basic sentence structure 17 2.3.2. Verbal clitics 18 2.3.3. Relative clauses 21 2.4. Verbal morphology 23 2.5. Nominal morphology 26 2.5.1. Vowel-initial nouns, the basic facts 28 2.5.2. Alternations involving the augment 31 2.5.3. Consonant-initial nouns 34 2.5.3.1. 1C-initial nouns 34 2.5.3.2. Other consonant-initial nouns 37 Chapter 3. Phonological backdrop 39–69 3.1. Preliminaries on gemination 39 3.2. The long segment as a sequence of two prosodic positions 41 3.2.1. Heteromorphemic geminates 42 3.2.1.1. Fusion of adjacent short consonants into a long one 42 3.2.1.2. The genitive preposition 46 3.2.1.3. (R)AD’s final consonant 48 3.2.2. Syllable structure 49 3.2.3. Templatic morphology I 50 vii viii TABLE OF CONTENTS 3.3. The long segment as a single melodic unit 53 3.3.1. Templatic morphology II 53 3.3.2. Feature changes in long consonants 55 3.4. “Tension” 56 3.5. Conclusion on the geminates 58 3.6. Dorsopharyngealization 58 3.6.1. Auditory properties 59 3.6.2. The distribution of emphasis 61 3.6.2.1. In the lexicon 61 3.6.2.2. At the phonetic level 63 3.7. The voiced pharyngeal consonant 65 3.8. /u/ fronting 68 Chapter 4. Tashlhiyt syllables I 71–114 4.1. Syllabic consonants 71 4.2. Tashlhiyt verse and singing 79 4.3. Singing words to a tune 81 4.4. Parsing Tashlhiyt verse: preliminaries 84 4.5. Pattern satisfaction 85 4.6. Generalizations on orthometric syllables 89 4.7. The role of sonority 97 4.8. Geminates in complex codas 103 4.9. Alternative parses meeting all the constraints 108 4.9.1. Sonority plateaux in complex obstruent rimes 109 4.9.2. Sequences of high vowels 112 4.9.3. Alternative licit parses not due to DETACH 113 4.10. Summary 114 Chapter 5. Tashlhiyt syllables II 115–134 5.1. The syllabification of word sequences outside of poetry 115 5.2. Imperfective gemination: the basic generalization 117 5.3. Imperfective gemination and the weight of hollow syllables 122 5.4. Length alternations in the causative prefix 124 5.4.1. Monosyllabic bases beginning with an onset 125 5.4.2. Other bases 127 5.5. Conclusion 134 Chapter 6. Vowelless syllables 135–187 6.1. Vowels vs. transitional vocoids 135 6.2. VTVs are releases with voicing 137 6.3. The distribution of VTVs 139 6.3.1. Two generalizations 140 6.3.2. Release in heterorganic clusters 142 TABLE OF CONTENTS ix 6.3.3. Release before a sibling consonant 146 6.3.3.1. SIBLING-RELEASE 146 6.3.3.2. The Fusion rule 149 6.3.3.3. Restrictions on fusion 154 6.4. The only surface vowels are a, i and u, two phonolog- ical arguments 157 6.4.1. Morphemes with adjacent identical consonants 158 6.4.2. Regressive devoicing 160 6.5. Epenthetic vowels in Rifian Berber 163 6.5.1. The basic pattern for vowel epenthesis 164 6.5.2. e devoicing and e absorption 166 6.5.3. Final CC clusters 170 6.5.4. An outstanding issue: syllabification in kernels 173 6.6. Short vocoids in other works on Tashlhiyt 175 Chapter 7. The syllabification of vocoids 189–226 7.1. Vocoid sequences not containing underlying glides 189 7.1.1. Sequences a+H 190 7.1.2. Sequences H+a 191 7.1.3. Sequences of potential hvs 192 7.1.4. Sequences a+a 193 7.1.5. Sequences involving aa 195 7.2. The need for underlying glides 196 7.3. Glides which are sonority peaks in the underlying representations 202 7.3.1. Surface glides (onsets) which are sonority peaks 202 7.3.2. Glide gemination 204 7.3.2.1. Feminine bound state forms 205 7.3.2.2. Verbs and masculine bound state forms 208 7.3.2.3. Other stem-initial glides 212 7.3.3. Surface glides (codas) which are sonority peaks 215 7.4. Geminate glides 218 7.5. Conclusion 224 Chapter 8. Syllable structure in Moroccan Arabic 227–290 8.1. Introduction 227 8.2. Standard transcriptions 230 8.2.1. The distribution of ‘e’ in standard transcriptions 230 8.2.2. Uncontroversial schwas vs. putative ones 235 8.3. The structure of syllables in MA 241 8.3.1. Hinge syllables; syllable-final schwas 242 8.3.2. Inventory of syllable types 249 8.3.3. Complex nuclei; evidence from syllable weight 257 8.4. Violations of SonPeak in MA 261 x TABLE OF CONTENTS 8.5. The syllable structure of words 267 8.5.1. A constraint-based analogue of right-to-left scan 269 8.5.2. Kernels ending in eCC; FinH 273 8.5.3. Sonority in rimes; NoRR 276 8.5.4. Favoring sonority peaks as nuclei; SonPeak 282 8.5.5. Kernels ending in eC; FinL 284 8.5.6. Free variants in which SonPeak overrides FinL 288 8.6. Summary 290 Chapter 9. Vowelless syllables in Moroccan Arabic 291–334 9.1. The new analysis is simpler 292 9.2. Expanded hollow syllables 296 9.3. Comparing Tashlhiyt and MA 303 9.3.1. Well-formed sequences of syllables in MA and in Tashlhiyt 303 9.3.2. Strings pronounced alike in MA and in Tashlhiyt 306 9.3.3. Glides which are sonority peaks 308 9.3.3.1. Vocalized glides 309 9.3.3.2. @w diphthongs; NoRR violations 313 9.4. Releases in sequences of sibling consonants 317 9.4.1. Fusion and NO-TREBLE 318 9.4.2. Earlier views on releases in sibling sequences 320 9.4.3. Releases between short sibling stops 324 9.5. Stable schwas 328 9.6. Summary of Chapter 9 and issues for further research 332 Appendix I. Preliminaries to Appendices II and III 335–341 Appendix II. Song 343–347 Appendix III. Oratorical encounter 349–357 Appendix IV. Five Ashlhiy tunes 359–361 Appendix V. List of verbs with imperfective gemination 363–366 References 367–377 Index 379–385 SYMBOLS AND ABBREVIATIONS y IPA [j] IPA [ʃ] IPA [] xIPA [χ] γ IPA [ʁ] hIPA [] A 1. syllable nucleus; 2. (only in §3.6) dorsoparyngealized (‘emphatic’) <A> 1. extrametric (Rifian); 2. example in Chap 8 2 stop release || pause » ranked higher than (constraints) + cover symbol ranging over –, =, # – word-internal morpheme boundary = boundary between clitic and host # word boundary other than = . (period) syllable boundary ~ (tilde) the preceding symbol represents the first half of a geminate ÷ occurs between two identical letters to indicate that they do not represent an underlying geminate * (asterisk) precedes an ill-formed item AD /ad/ (complementizer) aor aorist AR /ar/ (imperfective preverb) aug augmentative aux auxiliary b bound state C any segment which is not a V C: geminated C CA Classical Arabic Dcoda cau causative col collective dat dative DE Dell and Elmedlaoui def definite dem demonstrative xi xii SYMBOLS AND ABBREVIATIONS det determiner dim diminutive dir directional do direct object DT Dell and Tangi f feminine FD François Dell fut future G glide gen genitive H 1. high vocoid; 2. heavy syllable hv (potential) high vowel id idem IFDQ inferred from direct questioning imper imperative impf imperfective indiv individuative int interrogative InV initial vowel IP Intonational Phrase ITB Imdlawn Tashlhiyt Berber IYT clitic iyt ko kind of L light syllable lit literally loc locative m masculine MA Moroccan Arabic ME Mohamed Elmedlaoui n noun N nucleus name proper name O onset OT Optimality Theory p plural PNG person-number-gender affix prep preposition prt participle Pword word+clitics R 1. rime; 2. consonantal sonorant (Resonant) RAD future preverb rcp reciprocal (R)AD AD or RAD RIPI representation which is an input to phonetic implementation SYMBOLS AND ABBREVIATIONS xiii Rt feature-geometric Root node s singular σ syllable SVV short voiced vocoid SWF Syllable Well-Formedness u free state (‘u’ for ‘unbound’) V vowel (syllabic vocoid) ViGi homorganic vowel-glide sequence (iy, uw) VTV voiced transitional vocoid WH wh-word X prosodic position (skeletal slot) PREFACE This book is intended primarily as an original contribution to the investi- gation of the phonology of the two main languages spoken in Morocco.