Do you want to stay informed about this journal? Click the buttons to subscribe to our alerts.
Syllables and Gemination in Imperfective Stems in Tashlhiyt Berber
In: Brill's Journal of Afroasiatic Languages and LinguisticsIn Tahlhiyt Berber certain verbs form their imperfective stem by geminating one consonant. Since Dell and Elmedlaoui 1988, accounts of imperfective gemination have been based on syllable structure. Lahrouchi (2010) proposes an alternative analysis based on a binary-branching head-complement structure that regulates the distribution of consonant types in verbal roots. This paper argues that the syllable-based account is preferable and that it makes the head-complement structures advocated by Lahrouchi redundant.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
-
33
Jebbour (1996, 1999) and Bensoukas (2001) both propose explanations for this fact. On Jebbour 1996, 1999, see DE02:122–132. Bensoukas’s (2001) thoughtful work contains a serious attempt to provide a unified account of imperfective stem formation in Tashlhiyt. This account, which is couched in the framework of Optimality Theory, analyzes consonant gemination and the tt- prefix as two allomorphs of a single imperfective morpheme which consists in a featureless mora that is affixed to the verbal root. A serious problem with this account is that it assumes, following Jebbour, that syllables with consonantal nuclei are unimoraic even if they have a coda. This assumption conflicts with the facts of versification, which show that a coda has the same effect on syllable weight regardless of whether the nucleus is consonantal or not.
-
42
See Boukous 1995, 2000, DE02, Ennaji 2005. On similar situations elsewhere and their linguistic consequences, see Trudgill 1986. The language of the older generations in the Tashlhiyt-speaking countryside is extensively documented in folktales, riddles, proverbs, etc. collected during the 20th century (e.g., Destaing 1920, Podeur 1995, Amard 1997, Stroomer 2001a,b,c, 2002, 2003a,b, 2004) or in the 19th (Afa 2004). As indicated in section 1.2, another source of data is the vast corpus of songs in the ‘old poetry’ style recorded on commercial audio cassettes; see DE08 and the enclosed CD.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 266 | 37 | 2 |
| Full Text Views | 126 | 5 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 19 | 7 | 0 |
Syllables and Gemination in Imperfective Stems in Tashlhiyt Berber
In: Brill's Journal of Afroasiatic Languages and LinguisticsIn Tahlhiyt Berber certain verbs form their imperfective stem by geminating one consonant. Since Dell and Elmedlaoui 1988, accounts of imperfective gemination have been based on syllable structure. Lahrouchi (2010) proposes an alternative analysis based on a binary-branching head-complement structure that regulates the distribution of consonant types in verbal roots. This paper argues that the syllable-based account is preferable and that it makes the head-complement structures advocated by Lahrouchi redundant.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 266 | 37 | 2 |
| Full Text Views | 126 | 5 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 19 | 7 | 0 |