Abstract
The last chapter dealt with syllabification in word sequences sung to a tune. In this chapter we discuss two morphologically-governed alternations which are evidence that our analysis of syllable structure in Tashlhiyt is also valid inside stems: imperfective gemination and length alternations in the causative prefix. Before we do this, however, let us consider briefly syllabification in word sequences outside of poetry.
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Notes
See DE (1985: 120). We say that the parses were ‘inferred’, rather than simply recorded, because no questions were asked about the location of syllable boundaries.
See § 4.6.
We have a hunch that only singing allows violations of constraint NoOns-, which forbids the first half of a geminate to be an onset. Such violations are never found in IFDQ parses. Jebbour (1999: 109ff) argues that NoOns∼ is never violated in the syllabic parses which are relevant for the templatic morphology of Tashlhiyt.
See DE (1991: 84-96) for a detailed survey of imperfective stem formation.
See below on the choice of the basic stem.
The ablaut alu in (2)b also occurs in verbs which do not use gemination in the imperfective (see DE (1991). It is not directly relevant in this discussion, which is only concerned with alternations in which syllable structure is involved.
Except for xsi, which means ‘go out (fire)’, the meanings of all the verbs in (3) are given in Appendix V at the end of this book.
See DE (1991: 85).
Appendix V at the end of this book lists all the geminating verbs ending in a consonant which we have found in Imdlawn Tashlhiyt.
They are !yra ‘read’, ³wma ‘coat’, yli ‘go up’ and bzg‘swell’, whose imperfective stems are not !yrra, ³wmma, ylli and bbzg, as predicted by (5), but !aqqra, aqqwma, aqqlay and azzg. Besides being exceptions to (5), the first three forms have an idiosyncratic initial a. The third has a further irregularity: although gemination and vowel insertion are both regularly used to form imperfective stems, as a rule both processes do not cooccur in the same stem if it is triliteral, v. DE (1991: 84ff). Besides bzg, there are a number of other geminating verbs in which an initial labial is replaced by a in the imperfective.
Like a number of other geminable verbs, fsd has a geminating form and a nongeminating one in free variation in the imperfective (ffsd / tt-fsad). tt-CCaC is arguably the unmarked case in the formation of imperfective stems for the CCC verbs. This case is exemplified in (2)i.
On the thesis of Sonority-Driven Syllabification, see § 4.1.
See Kenstowicz (1996), Kiparsky (2000) and references therein.
The verbs in lines a, b and e also appear in (2)a,b,h.
On Ath Sidhar Rifian, see § 6.5.
The cognate forms in Tahshliyt are kwmz (impf kwkwmz) and !mšd (impf !mššd).
According to Basset (1929: 155), among the Berber dialects for which data were available at the time, Tashlhiyt was the only one regularly to geminate the first consonant in the imperfective of certain categories of /CCC/ verbs. Basset’s text also implies that gemination of the first C in the imperfective of /CCC/ verbs also occurs, although less regularly, in the Ntifa dialect, in Central Morocco.
Jebbour’s article restates the central claim of Jebbour (1996).
A questionable aspect of Jebbour’s proposal should be noted in passing, which has to do with the representation of geminates. Formulated within Hayes’s (1989) version of moraic theory, which is the framework he adopts, Jebbour’s basic claim is that syllables which have a consonant in their nucleus are all comprised of a single mora. It is difficult to see how this claim can be reconciled with the existence of tautosyllabic geminates in vowel-less syllables, e.g. !gzz ‘crunch!’ (gzz), dl=tt ‘cover her!’ (dltt). dl=tt and similar cases are especially worrysome. Since the author explicitly prohibits branching codas in vowel-less syllables (note 5 p. 98), sequences such as /dl=tt/ do not have any licit parse in his analysis.
DE (1991: 96-99) present an overview of the causative verbs of Imdlawn Tashlhiyt and show how their conjugation relates to that of the other verbs.
See Elmedlaoui (1995a: 11-42) for a detailed discussion illustrated with abundant examples.
Since we are only taking into consideration base verbs which begin with an onset, the notations.CC. and.CCC. unambiguously refer to bases in which the second consonant is a nucleus. To avoid cluttering, we will often dispense with the underscores indicating nuclear consonants. Anyway, Tashlhiyt has no verb whose perfective stem is an onsetless hollow syllable, i.e. a syllable.CC. or a syllable.CCC. whose final CC is a geminate.
(13)e and (13)f are not to be confused with their free variants s-huwl and s-duwx, which have a short prefix, as is to be expected for reasons discussed later.
As in l-ħdid a y-ss-dus-n l-bni ‘it is the iron which makes the building strong’ (1-iron AD prt-cau-tough-prt 1-building).
NO-TREBLE was introduced in § 3.2.1.1.
On alternations in the causative prefix in various Berber dialects of Morocco, see Saa (1995: 230-259) for a partial survey of the recent literature. This author presents in great detail the alternations in the causative prefix in Zenaga (Figuig), in Eastern Morocco.
Guerssel (1992) compares the realizations of the causative, reciprocal and passive prefixes in two Tamazight dialects and a Taqbaylit dialect. Although the author intends to provide an overall account of the phonology of these prefixes in the Berber dialects of Morocco and Algeria, it is not clear how the general scheme he proposes can accommodate the Imdlawn Tashlhiyt data.
The verbs in (18) have the following meanings: (a) bring closer, (b) bring down (fruit), (c) cause to be heavy, (d) remind, (e) keep awake, (f) cause to stand, up, (g) cause to be delicious, (h) cause to be right, (i) drag, (j) cause to be lukewarm, (k) put last, (1) strain, (m) cause to be red.
Only the aorist stem and the imperfective stem can occur without any affixes (see above in § 5.2). Consequently, CausLength cannot in general be construed as capturing a relation between units which can stand on their own as words.
This verb is derived from !wrry ‘be yellow’, whose imperfective stem is !tt-iwriy.
Ample evidence for the validity of these claims can be found in DE (1991).
Such an analysis was entertained briefly in § 4.1, v. (11) and the surrounding text.
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Dell, F., Elmedlaoui, M. (2002). Tashlhiyt Syllables II. In: Syllables in Tashlhiyt Berber and in Moroccan Arabic. Kluwer International Handbooks of Linguistics, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0279-0_5
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