Abstract
Our aim in this chapter is to present an overall view in which to fit the more local facts which will be discussed in the following chapters.
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Notes
See DE (1985) for some observations, especially pp. 119-120 on certain prepausal syllables.
On transitional vocoids, which are not segments, see below.
See e.g. Jackendoff (1997: 29, 113, 120).
The morpheme-by-morpheme glosses of the examples in (3) and their meanings are the following: (a) /f-u-gazelle-fs/ ‘female gazelle’; (b) /Sms-collide/ ‘he collided’; (c) /3ms-wring:neck=do3fs/ ‘he wrung her neck’; (d) /2-surround-2mp/ ‘you surrounded’.
Here and elsewhere, a raised ‘h’ represents an audible explosion burst. In 3(a), the voiceless [ul which occurs between kandt represents the explosion burst of /kw/.
There are seven cliticizable prepositions: i dative, y locative, d ‘and’ or ‘with’ (comitative), f ‘upon’, s ‘toward’ or ‘with’ (instrumental), ssγ ‘from’, and dar ‘at X’s place’ (cf. French c]hez).
Here are the Is clitic prepositional phrases, listed in the order corresponding to that of the prepositions in note 6: iyi, gigi, didi, flli or flla (free variants), sri, ssgigi and dari. With the other prepositions the form of the Is pronoun is iyi, e.g. gr-iyi ‘between-ls’, nnig-iyi ‘beyond-Is’.
The optional t in the plural is allowed by all the prepositions of note 6 except i and dar. It is also allowed by gr ‘between’. All the cliticizable prepositions except dar have a special form when they appear in a clitic prepositional phrase. These forms are (in the order of note 6) a, gi, di, flla, sr and ssgi. They do not seem to be deriveable by any regular phonological processes of Tashlhiyt.
Setting aside the behavior of iyt, on which v. below.
When the rightmost preverb is the negation ur there are additional complications, on which v. DE (1989: 173).
V. DE (1989: 180) for other variants.
V. Basset (1949: 35).
V. Leguil (1981).
DE (1989, 1991).
Due to regressive devoicing, /γ-x/ is realized as xx. On regressive devoicing, see DE (1996a).
/t-tt-/ is realized as tt. This happens only in those sequences in which /t-/ is a PNG and /tt-/ is the impf prefix, v. DE (1989: 193).
V. DE (1989: 78-79) on the various possible combinations of the causative, reciprocal and passive morphemes whithin a single base. V. Guerssel (1992) on similar combinations in Ait Seghrouchen Tamazight.
Jebbour’s work deals with the variety of Tashlhiyt in use in Tiznit, whose morphology resembles very much that of Imdlawn Tashlhiyt.
xixxi, tixixxit ‘person full of shit’.
The t which appears at the end of the stem before the plural suffixes in (34) III-b and (34) IV-b has nothing to do with the fs suffix -t; it occurs in masculine nouns as well. It is an epenthetic consonant which is inserted at the end of vowel-final stems when they precede a plural suffix, e.g. afat-n’ summits’ (s afa), i-sqsit-n ‘questions’ (s a-sqsi).
t-aylal-t is a diminutive.
There are only a handful of exceptions, e.g. immi ‘Mom’, illi ‘daughter’, išša, littu (proper names for women). These are also exceptional in that the prefixation of u-(see below) is only optional in the bound state.
There are a few exceptions, e.g. t-ašš ‘ill-fated, f’, It-a-mubil ‘automobile’. There is no suffix at the end of t-a-rga ‘ditc]h’, for instance, because the feminine gender is primary and the stem ends in a vowel.
This restrictions accounts for the fact that /u/ does not show up before the initial t- in the feminine.
I.e. the bound state form of ul ‘heart’ is w-ul and that of ussan ‘days’ (s ass) is w-ussan.
In isk the initial /i/ changes colour in the plural, but there also exist stems in which it remains unchanged, e.g. ird ‘grain of wheat’ (b y-ird), plural ird-n (b y-ird-n).
On the exceptions to the rule of augment deletion, v. below.
On the bound state forms of nouns whose stems begin with glides, v. Chapter 7.
The free state forms for’ shop’ are t-a-ħanu-t (s) and t-i-ħuna (p).
E.g. those women who have worked two days, to contrast them with others who have worked for another length of time. yumayn ‘two days’.
Words of types (ii) and (iii) do not distinguish between singular and plural forms.
On the other hand the genitive preposition /n/ does assimilate to the initial glide of a w-i … pronoun as it does to the initial vocoid of a bound state noun (on the assimilation of genitive /n/, see § 3.2.1.2). /i-xf n=w-a=nna/ ‘the head of anyone (m)’ can be pronounced ixfnwanna or ixfuwanna.
There are exceptions, e.g. l-ždd ‘ancestor’, l-žnn-t ‘paradise’, l-žamaa ‘Friday’.
In the singular /l-!drf/ yields /!ddrf/, whence !ttrf. As a rule the geminate reflex of !d is !tt.
Nb: this generalization concerns words, not kernels. Noncoronal geminates can be found at the beginning of noun kernels which are not word-initial, as in a-gwgwrdi (p i-gwgwrda-n)‘flea’, !a-ħħram (p !i-ħħram-n) ‘bastard’, a-bbankik (p i-bbankik-n) ‘big stone’.
In the Tiznit dialect, on the other hand, the initial a in those nouns behaves as an augment, v. Dell and Jebbour 1995.
A few IC-initial nouns have plural forms beginning with id-, e.g. rribab (p id-rribab)’ single-stringed violin’, lkwmmiyt (p id-lkwmmiyt) ‘ceremonial dagger’. Some of these are feminine, v. the second example. IC-initial nouns never use istt in the plural.
V. our discussion of the w-/t-constrast at the end of our survey of the vowel-initial nouns.
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Dell, F., Elmedlaoui, M. (2002). Syntax and Morphology, An Overview. 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_2
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