Author	Dell, Franรงois. author
Title	Syllables in Tashlhiyt Berber and in Moroccan Arabic [electronic resource] / by Franรงois Dell, Mohamed Elmedlaoui
Imprint	Dordrecht : Springer Netherlands : Imprint: Springer, 2002
Connect to	http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0279-0
Descript	XVI, 385 p. online resource

This book is intended primarily as an original contribution to the investiยญ gation of the phonology of the two main languages spoken in Morocco. Its central topic is syllable structure. Our theoretical outlook is that of generative phonology. Most of the book deals with Tashlhiyt Berber. This language has a syllable structure with properties which are highly unusual, as seen from the vantage point of better-studied languages on which most theorizing about syllabification is based. On the one hand, complex consonant sequences are a common occurrence in the surface representations. On the other hand, syllable structure is very simple: only one distinctive feature bundle (phoneme) may occur in the onset, the nucleus or the coda. The way these two conflicting demands are reconciled is by allowing vowelless syllaยญ bies . Any consonant may act as a syllable nucleus. When astring is syllabified, nuclear status is preferentially assigned to the segments with a higher degree of sonority than their neighbours. Consider for instance the expression below, which is a complete sentence meaning 'remove it (m) and eat it (m)': /kks=t t-ss-t=t/ [k. st. s . t:"] . k. k̃t. t. s. . slt. The sentence must be pronounced voiceless throughout, as indicated by the IPA transcription between square brackets ; the syllabic parse given after the IPA transcription indicates that the sentence comprises four syllables (syllable nuclei are underlined). The differences between the dialects of Berber have to do primarily with the phonology and the lexicon

1. Introduction -- 1.1. Goals and general outlook -- 1.2. The Berber languages -- 1.3. Berber in Morocco -- 1.4. Tashlhiyt -- 1.5. Tashlyiyt and Moroccan Arabic in contact -- 1.6. Imdlawn Tashlhiyt -- 2. Syntax and morphology, an overview -- 2.1. Sound system -- 2.2. Notational conventions -- 2.3. Syntax -- 2.4. Verbal morphology -- 2.5. Nominal morphology -- 3. Phonological backdrop -- 3.1. Preliminaries on gemination -- 3.2. The long segment as a sequence of two prosodic positions -- 3.3. The long segment as a single melodic unit -- 3.4. โ{128}{156}Tensionโ{128}{157} -- 3.5. Conclusion on the geminates -- 3.6. Dorsopharyngealization -- 3.7. The voiced pharyngeal consonant -- 3.8. /u/ fronting -- 4. Tashlhiyt syllables I -- 4.1. Syllabic consonants -- 4.2. Tashlhiyt verse and singing -- 4.3. Singing words to a tune -- 4.4. Parsing Tashlhiyt verse: preliminaries -- 4.5. Pattern satisfaction -- 4.6. Generalizations on orthometric syllables -- 4.7. The role of sonority -- 4.8. Geminates in complex codas -- 4.9. Alternative parses meeting all the constraints -- 4.10. Summary -- 5. Tashlhiyt syllables II -- 5.1. The syllabification of word sequences outside of poetry -- 5.2. Imperfective gemination: the basic generalization -- 5.3. Imperfective gemination and the weight of hollow syllables -- 5.4. Length alternations in the causative prefix -- 5.5. Conclusion -- 6. Vowelless syllables -- 6.1. Vowels vs. transitional vocoids -- 6.2. VTVs are releases with voicing -- 6.3. The distribution of VTVs -- 6.4. The only surface vowels are a, i and u, two phonological arguments -- 6.5. Epenthetic vowels in Rifian Berber -- 6.6. Short vocoids in other works on Tashlhiyt -- 7. The syllabification of vocoids -- 7.1. Vocoid sequences not containing underlying glides -- 7.2. The need for underlying glides -- 7.3. Glides which are sonority peaks in the underlying representations -- 7.4. Geminate glides -- 7.5. Conclusion -- 8. Syllable structure in Moroccan Arabic -- 8.1. Introduction -- 8.2. Standard transcriptions -- 8.3. The structure of syllables in MA -- 8.4. Violations of SonPeak in MA -- 8.5. The syllable structure of words -- 8.6. Summary -- 9. Vowelless syllables in Moroccan Arabic -- 9.1. The new analysis is simpler -- 9.2. Expanded hollow syllables -- 9.3. Comparing Tashlhiyt and MA -- 9.4. Releases in sequences of sibling consonants -- 9.5. Stable schwas -- 9.6. Summary of Chapter 9 and issues for further research -- Appendix I. Preliminaries to Appendices II and III -- Appendix II. Song -- Appendix III. Oratorical encounter -- Appendix IV. Five Ashlhiy tunes -- Appendix V. List of verbs with imperfective gemination -- References