1

To: The Editor of Phonetica , Prof. Dr. Klaus Kohler

Institut fr Phonetik und digitale Sprachverarbeitung
Universitt Kiel
D-24098 Kiel

Title:

Voiceless, vowel-less words in Tashlhiyt Berber:

acoustic and fibroscopic evidence

Authors name:
Rachid Ridouane

Short title:
Voiceless, vowel-less words

Full address:
Laboratoire Phontique et Phonologie (UMR 7018) CNRS/ Sorbonne Nouvelle, ILPGA, 19 rue des
Bernardins, 75005 Paris, France

Telephone number: (00) 33 148 25 21 90

E-mail address: rachid.ridouane@wanadoo.fr

Abstract
Tashlhiyt Berber has been proposed as a language in which any consonant, even a voiceless stop,
can act as a syllable peak (Dell & Elmedlaoui 1985, 1988, 2002, Prince and Smolensky 1993).
The most striking and controversial examples, taken as arguments in favor of this analysis,
involve consonant-only words. This claim is challenged by different authors who argue that the
alleged vowel-less words are actually pronounced with schwa vowels in the context of the
syllabic consonants. The goal of this article is to determine, based on acoustic and fibroscopic
data, whether Tashlhiyt Berber has voiceless words which are deprived of schwa vowels that can
act as syllable peaks. Results show that long voiceless, vowel-less words exist in this language,
and that shwa is not a segment at the level of phonetic representations.

Introduction
In Tashlhiyt Berber, roots and affixes may consist of consonants only. When combined they can
give rise to long sequences of consonants, without intervening vowels (e.g. /t-sbG-t/ you
painted, /t-ss-gllb-t=tnt/ you reversed them)1 . These vowel-less words may even consist of
only voiceless consonants (e.g. /t-kks-t/ you took off, /t-fk-t=stt/ you gave it (fem)). A whole
sentence may also be voiceless (e.g. /t-ss-kSf-t=stt t-SS-t-stt/ you dried it and you ate it). The
goal of the present study is to determine, based on acoustic and fibroscopic experiments, whether
so called voiceless words are genuinely voiceless and deprived of schwa vowels which can act as
syllable nuclei.
1

In this paper, forms enclosed between slanted lines are underlying forms (morphemic transcriptions). Those not enclosed
between slanted lines are intended to represent phonetic representations given in a broad transcription. Hyphens mark
morphological boundaries inside words, while equal signs mark boundaries between clitics and their hosts. Nuclei consonants are
underlined and periods are used to mark syllable edges.

3
Previous studies
Two aspects have been previously investigated concerning the status of the schwa vowels and its
implications for the syllable structure of Tashlhiyt: (i) what is their distribution? (ii) When schwa
occurs, is it a segment in the phonetic representations, or is it merely a transition between
adjacent consonants? Only if the answer to question (ii) is Yes can schwa play the role of a
syllable nucleus.
According to Dell & Elmedlaoui (1985, 1988, 2002), the variety of Tashlhiyt spoken in Imdlawn
valley has only three surface vowels, which are realizations of /i/, /a/ and /u/. If the nucleus in a
syllable is not one of these full vowels, then it is a consonant. Other vowel-like sounds occur in
the phonetic record, but the authors regard them as transitional sounds which do not play any role
in syllable structure. These vocoids, according to them, occur only adjacent to voiced consonants
and no voiced vocoid, however short, can be heard in sequences of voiceless obstruents.
Judgments on the distribution of such voiced vocoids reflect the perceptions of one of the authors
(Dell) who does not speak the language. The other author (Elmedlaoui), who is a native speaker,
is in most cases unaware of the presence of such vocoids in his speech. No experimental phonetic
data is provided to back up these impressionistic judgments.
Dell & Elmedlaouis claim has been challenged in a series of publications by Coleman (1996,
1999, 2001). On the basis of his belief that all words have syllables and all syllables have vowels
in all languages, Coleman argues that the alleged vowel-less syllables are actually pronounced
with schwa vowels. Those vowels are overtly realized in the signal, or else they are phonetically
overlapped by neighboring consonants. Among the various arguments presented by Coleman
(2001) in support of this analysis, the most important for our purposes in this paper are his
acoustic measurements. His acoustic data consisted of the Tashlhiyt forms in Dell & Elmedlaoui
(1985), produced by only one subject (Prof. Elmedlaoui). Coleman used signal detection theory

4
to compare the goodness-of-fit between the observed distribution of epenthetic vowels and their
expected occurrence according to his model and according to Dell & Elmedlaouis model. In
Colemans model, epenthetic vowels are expected to occur (i) according to the phonology, in a
syllable nucleus that is not filled by a lexical vowel and (ii) purely in the phonetics, after /r/.
Results showed that epenthetic vowels occurred in 40 % of Elmedlaouis realizations. The overall
goodness-of-fit as indicated by the d statistics showed that Colemans model is only slightly
better in predicting the occurrence of schwa vowels (a d of 4.74 compared to a d of 4.34).
According to Coleman, however, his model should be preferred. In particular, he observed that
pronunciations by Elmedlaoui of some words are highly problematic for Dell & Elmedlaouis
model, but completely consistent with his. This is the case for the form /t -mz/ she jested
spoken with a final schwa vowel after the voiceless fricative //. According to Coleman, this is
consistent with the analysis of stem final // as a syllable onset followed by a nucleus whose
vowel quality derives from the preceding consonant (i.e. [tmz. ]).
Louali & Puech (1999, 2000) have also presented acoustic data in support of the claim that a
voiced vocoid is always present in the realization of a Tashlhiyt word, even in words composed
only of unvoiced obstruents. These two authors claim that in Tashlhiyt, consonant-only words
always contain at least one voiced schwa, though the reader is left to guess in which syllable this
schwa occurs. As a word composed only of voiceless consonants may have more than one
syllable, this claim does not preclude the possibility of voiceless syllables. The relation between
Coleman's and Louali & Puechs data and the data presented here will be addressed in the
acoustic section 2.

See also Dell and Elmedlaoui (2002 : 178-187) for their reply to Coleman (2001).

5
The goal of the experiments
The goal of the acoustic and fibroscopic experiments is to determine whether Tashlhiyt has
voiceless words that are deprived of schwa vowels which can not be interpreted as mere
transitions between segments. If, as Dell & Elmedlaoui claim, schwa is only an aspect of the
realization of a voiced consonant and not a segment, then one should not find voiced schwa
vowels in words whose underlying representations consist only of voiceless obstruents. We do
not know about any purely phonetic mechanism that would introduce voicing into a sequence
deprived of [+ voiced] segments. On the other hand, if these words contain schwas, as Coleman
and Louali & Puech claim, it would mean that the phonetic representation of Tashlhiyt contains a
fourth vowel, in addition to the realizations of /a, i, u/, that could act as a syllable peak. A priori,
the phonetic realization of a word consisting at the underlying level of only voiceless obstruents
may be excepted to fall into one of the following categories, depending on whether it contains:

Voiced schwa vowels (through schwa epenthesis), or

Devoiced schwa vowels (schwa epenthesis + contextual devoicing), or

Hidden schwa vowels (epenthesis + phonetic overlapping by a neighboring consonant),

or

No schwa vowel at all (i.e. vowel-less both at the underlying as well as at the surface
levels).

These possibilities are examined through acoustic and fibroscopic analyses. The aim of the
acoustic analysis is to detect visually in the acoustic waveforms and spectrograms of the
speakers realizations cues of the presence or absence of voiced schwa vowels. The fibroscopic
experiment aims at showing whether the glottis remains open or not throughout the underlyingly

6
voiceless sequences. A phonological/psycholinguistic argumentation, based on versification, is
also presented as supporting evidence of the phonetic data.

Tashlhiyt Berber
Berber is an Afro-Asiatic language spoken in North Africa, mainly in Morocco and Algeria.
Galand (1988: 209) gives a conservative estimate of 15 million for the total number of Berber
speakers in 1983. The three main Berber languages spoken in Morocco are: Tarifit (spoken in
northern Morocco), Tamazight (spoken in the Middle-Atlas), and Tashlhiyt (spoken in southern
Morocco). Tashlhiyt, the language investigated here, is sufficiently homogeneous for all native
speakers, who number an estimated 3 millions, to communicate without difficulties. There is
nonetheless a measure of dialectal variation. Tashlhiyt may be subdivided into three main dialects
(following the work of Boukous 1994), each named according to one of its salient
phonetic/phonological properties 3 :

The occlusive dialect spoken in Agadir and its suburbs.

The fricative dialect spoken mainly in the High-Atlas area which spirantizes in some
contexts nonc oronal obstruents /b, k, g/.

The sibilant dialect spoken in the Anti-Atlas area where /t/ and /d/ are realized in some
contexts as [s] and [z] respectively.

These three dialects will be examined in this study. They all share the same phonemic system,
founded upon the same correlations, as is shown in Table 1.

For references to work on this language, see Chaker (1994) and Dell and Elmedlaoui (2002: 5-8). For references on ancient
Tashlhiyt literary tradition, see Stroomer (2000) and Boogert (2000). For references on the historical phonology of this language,
see Elmedlaoui (2000) and the references therein. For references on some phonetic aspects of this language, see Ouakrim (1993),
Ridouane (2003), Ridouane, Fuchs, and Hoole (in press), and Ridouane (submitted)).

Acoustic argument
The aim of the acoustic analysis is to look for cues to the presence of voiced schwa vowels (i.e. a
stretch of time displaying voicing and some formant structure) in underlyingly voiceless words,
by visual inspection of the acoustic waveforms and of spectrograms.

Data speech material

Twenty-four voiceless words, listed in Table 2, were produced by 7 adult male native speakers.
These forms are all verbs, consisting of 2 to 10 consonant sequences. Syllabification of these
forms, based on my intuitions as a native speaker, are also given. A question which comes up
naturally in view of these items concerns their frequency. This question is not easy to answer,
because only few written texts in this language are available and no lexical database exists. To
provide an estimate of the frequency of vowel-less words, I made use of a collection of texts
published in Podeur (1995). This book, edited by N. van den Boogert, M. Scheltus, and H.
Stroomer (from Leiden University), contains riddles, proverbs, songs, tales and 20 texts orally
collected from Tashlhiyt native speakers and translated to French by Podeur in the 1940s.
Estimation of the vowel-less and voiceless word frequency was made on these 20 texts. For this,
two types of word-counting were used. The first one counts the syntactic words and the second
one the phonological words. A syntactic word is defined as the smallest possible constituent
which can be moved, replaced or deleted by syntactic operations. A phonological word is defined
as the smallest possible utterance which can be bounded by pauses and intonation breaks. To
illustrate the difference between these two types of words, consider the following sentence from
Podeur (1995: 114).

8
(1)

wnna ur inkrn s lKrkt ifk i tqbilt linsaf iggutn 4

that negation join:participale dative assembling 3ms-give:perfective to tribe fine great
That who does not join the assembling (of warriors) will pay a big fine to the tribe

This sentence contains 10 syntactic words and 7 phonological words. The three non-phonological
words, which are bolded, are a negation preverb [ur], and two cliticizable prepositions [s] and [i].
Each one of these three syntactic words is attached to the word following it to form a
phonological word (i.e. [ur inkr], [s lKrkt], and [i tgbilt]).
Frequency of occurrence of vowel-less words and, among them, of voiceless words were assessed
manually. Results show that the 20 texts examined contain 5700 syntactic words, 1271 of whic h
are composed of consonants only, and 451 of which are composed of voiceless obstruents only.
In other words, voiceless syntactic words occur 8 times every 100 words. The productivity of this
phenomenon is, for example, higher than that of the two largely studied phenomena of liaison
and enchanement in French, which have a productivity of 6 % according to Fougeron and
Delais-Roussarie (2004). The same texts contain 3906 phonological words, 291 of which are
consonant-only words (7.45 %). Out of these 291 consonant-only words, 8 forms contain only
voiceless obstruents (2.74 %). Details on the frequency of vowel-less and voiceless words in each
text are spelled out in Table 3. An important observation ought to be pointed out concerning the
frequency of these words. The 20 texts examined were mainly written in the third person singular
(i.e. verbal roots were prefixed by the vowel /i/). Were they written in the second person singular
(i.e. verbal roots prefixed and suffixed by the voiceless stop /t/), as is probably more common in
everyday communication contexts, the frequency of the voiceless words could be much higher.
Consider, for instance, the same sentence given in (1) above when written to the 2nd p.s. : i ur
4

The transcription method used in Podeur (1995) is maintained in transcribing the sentence in (1), except for /K/

9
tnkrt s lKrkt tfkt i tqbilt linsaf iggutn (If you dont join the assembly (of warriors), you will
pay a big fine to the tribe). In this case, the sentence contains a sequence of 16 consonants, 6 of
which are adjacent voiceless obstruents. The 20 texts examined contain 78 voiceless verbal roots
prefixed by a non-voiceless clitic.

Subjects and methods

Native speakers of Tashlhiyt live in great numbers outside of Morocco. A large Diaspora exists in
Europe, especially in France, Belgium, Netherlands and Germany. Most of grocery stores in Paris
or in the suburbs, for instance, are run by Tashlhiyt speakers from the Anti-Atlas area. Various
Tashlhiyt regions were taken into consideration and the subjects were selected so as to include
speakers from the three dialects presented above (see Table 4). The goal is to assess the crossdialectal validity of the observations, and to determine whether voiceless, vowel-less words are
attested in the three dialects or rather confined to small areas as the one analyzed by Dell and
Elmedlaoui (The Tashlhiyt variety spoken in Imdlawn valley5).
Among the 7 language consultants, all except 5H have learned Standard Arabic and French at
school in Morocco. They all also speak Moroccan Arabic, a non taught national language.
Speakers 2A, 3AA, 4AA and 5H have a stronger Berber accent when they speak Moroccan
Arabic. The other subjects (1A, 6H, and 7H (the author)) speak Moroccan Arabic to the full
satisfaction of the native speakers of this language. All the 7 subjects speak French more or less
fluently. 5H, as is the case of many working-class immigrants who came from remote Berber
villages in the early 70s, speaks very little French. To collect data from the 7 subjects, two
elicitation methods were used.

which stands for the aryepiglottal voiceless fricative.

5
This variety of Tashlhiyt belongs to the fricative dialect.

10
Elicitation method 1
Tashlhiyt language is basically oral and does not have any widely used alphabetic transcription.
To elicit the words in Table 3, I pronounced them in Tashlhiyt and asked each subject to repeat
them. Test items were mixed with distracters not containing voiceless words. Each consultant
was instructe d to use his own pronunciation norm, to ensure that the investigators pronunciation
was not imitated. Subsequent verification of the recordings was done to test whether my own
pronunciation influenced the speakers. The realization of the consonants shows that my own
spirantized pronunciation did not lead speakers of other dialects to adopt the spirantisation of
nondental stops. Each speaker repeated the forms in Table 2 three times in isolation. 21
repetitions were excluded from analysis because the speakers pointed out that they were
misproduced.
Elicitation Method 2
Following the recommendation of two anonymous reviewers, and in order to ensure that the
repetition procedure used in method 1 did not introduce a bias towards an imitation effect of the
authors pronunciation, additional data were obtained using a different method of elicitation:
words in Table 2 were elicited by asking the subjects to give Tashlhiyt equivalemnts of Standard
Arabic prompts. For instance, the form [tfktstt] you gave it was obtained by asking the subject
to give the equivalent of the Standrad Arabic form [?a tajtaha:] you gave it. Each form,
embedded in the frame sentence inna jas jat twaltt (he told him once), was repeated 3
times, each time in a different random or der. Test items were mixed with distracters not
containing voiceless words. This second method was used for 4 of the 7 subjects who participated
to the first experiment (2AA, 3A, 4A, and 6H). In addition to the author (7H), two other subjects
did not participate to this second data collection (Subject 1AA no longer lived in Paris at the time

11
of this second experiment and 5H does not understand Standard Arabic). The translation of
Moroccan Arabic prompts was not used. This would be awkward in practice because some words
in Table 2 are borrowed precisely from this language, where they are produced with a voiced
schwa vowel (see below). Presenting the subjects with transcriptions of consonant-only forms
would also be awkward. In addition to the fact that one of the speakers (5H) is illiterate, reading
such Tashlhiyt words written in Arabic or Latin letters could influence the realizations of the
speakers who have never experienced reading their mother tongue. In the acoustic investigation
of Coleman (2001), the language consultant read Tashlhiyt items written in the International
Phonetic Alphabet. This method was used because the language consultant he recorded Prof.
Elmedlaoui was very familiar with this transcription.
The total data analyzed in the acoustic experiment contained 483 forms obtained through
elicitation method 1, plus 288 forms obtained through elicitation method 2. The breakdown of the
first total is as follows: 483 = 24 forms * 3 repetitions * 7 subjects 21 exclusions. The
breakdown of the second total is as follows: 288 = 24 forms * 3 repetitions * 4 subjects. Broadband spectrograms of all the data were created and analyzed using the Praat software package
(Boersma 2001).

Results
Table 5 gives the number of realizations with a voiced vocoid for each speaker and each form.
The presence or absence of schwa vowels are indicated for each elicitation method. As shown by
Table 5, the use of one or the other method of elicitation does not significantly affect the
realizations of the language consultants, as long as the presence or absence of voiced vocoids are
concerned. 91% of the 771 utterances were produced with no voiced schwa vowel. The three
subjects from the High-Atlas area (5H, 6H, 7H) never pronounced voiced schwas within

12
sequences of voiceless obstruents. Examples of such productions, drawn from the two elicitation
methods, are given in Figures 1-46 . Only two repetitions contained schwas in the pronunciation of
Anti-Atlas subsystem subjects (3AA and 4 AA). These voiced schwas were attested in the final
position for items [tkSf@] and [sfqqst@]. By contrast, vocoids were widely attested in the
realizations of Agadir speakers, especially in 1As realizations. Indeed 68 out of the 70 forms
produced with a schwa vowel were produced by the Agadir speakers.
How should this regional variation be explained? Do these differences reflect a difference in the
syllabic structure between the different subsystems or do they reflect individual variation? One
way to help answer these questions is to consider the distribution of these vocoids in the
realizations of speakers 1A and 2A. Table 5 shows the location of the schwa vocoids. These were
mainly attested at the end of the utterances. Most of 2A and of 1A schwa productions were
produced at this position. The presence of this vowel in this peripheral position was also reported
by Louali and Puech (2000) and, as already noted, by Coleman (2001). Contra to their view that
the schwa epenthesis is a cue of the syllabicity of the precedent consonant, it appears that it is
rather conditioned by the utterance final position. Indeed, in a form like [fk], it occurs after the
syllabic /k/ but in [tkkst] it occurs after the final coda /t/ and in [tStft] it also appears after the final
consonant but not adjacent to /S/ and /f/ which are the syllabic consonants.
The presence of such vocoids word finally is a common phonetic phenomenon also attested in
other unrelated languages. This is the case for instance of some French words (e.g. sec, cap, bec
etc.). The presence of this vocoid helps the hearer identify the final consonant, which is otherwise
very weak due to its position: adding a schwa amounts to placing the consonant in a prevocalic
position, so that cues to its place of articulation are conveyed by the burst, the noise transient, and
6

Audio files of some selected items obtained from the two elicitation methods are available at: http://ed268.univ-

13
(last but not least) by formant transitions into the schwa. This epenthesis may also be considered
as a demarcative cue: recall that all forms in Table 2 were produced in isolation in elicitation
method 1, so that the end of a word is also the end of the utterance. No such final schwa insertion
was observed in data collected from elicitation method 2 where each form was embedded in a
frame sentence, and thus no longer occurs in utterance final position. Insertion of a schwa in
phrase (utterance) final position is in fact a well-attested characteristic of the pronunciations of
some Agadir subsystem areas. The variety of Tarrast, a small town about five kilometers far from
Agadir city, is a case in point: sentence-final schwa insertion is such a telltale sign of this dialect
that speakers of other dialects humorously mimic Tarrast speakers by producing schwas in final
position (Speakers of the Tarrast variety typically insert sentence-final schwas when they speak
Moroccan Arabic as well.) At the level of phonological interpretation, Coleman (2001) argues
that any schwa found in the phonetic realization of a form is the reflection of a syllabic nucleus;
the only exception to this claim are the schwas that occur next to /r/. Unless considering that a
form like [tftktstt@] you sprained it, as is realized by 1A, has one syllable with the vocoid being
the nucleus and all the precedent consonants occupying the onset, this vocoid cannot be
considered as a realization of a phonological nucleus that may contribute to the syllable count.
As is shown in Table 5, five forms were produced with internal schwas by 1A and 2A. These
vocoids cannot be interpreted as mere transitions between segments, because if a vocoid is
transitional, there is no obvious reason for it to be voiced when it appears in-between voiceless
segments. Neither can this schwa be interpreted as a cue for the hearer to identify consonants
occurring in a weak position, for then the distribution of these vowels would be quite puzzling.
My own judgement as a native speaker of the High-Atlas dialect, having lived for a long time in

paris3.fr/lpp/?page=equipe/rachid_ridouane

14
Agadir, prompts me to consider these realizations to be mainly due to the influence of Moroccan
Arabic, which, as a national language, stands in a relation of prestige to Berber. It seems a
compelling argument that all of the five forms at issue are recent Moroccan Arabic loanwords.
This language has three full vowels /a/, /i/, and /u/, like Tashlhiyt. Unlike Tashlhiyt, it has in
addition a schwa, the location of which can, in some instances, be the only distinguishing feature
between words (compare [K@bs] prison, noun and [Kb@s] imprison, verb). In Tashlhiyt, these
loan words are normally completely oblivious of this vocoid (a characteristic which native
speakers indeed tend to project onto Moroccan Arabic itself, entirely overlooking schwa when
speaking this language: see Boukous 2000). This is not the case for all native speakers, however.
It is a known fact (thoroughly unsurprising from a sociolinguistic point of view) that those who
grow up in Agadir or in other Arabic-speaking cities tend to mimic the Moroccan Arabic
pronunciation, which is considered more prestigious. Boukous (2000) illustrated this
phenomenon through a sociolinguistic investigation of the degree of linguistic competence of 50
young Tashlhiyt native speakers, divided into two groups (20 country people and 30 belonging to
the city). His results, illustrated by the way consonant-only words were produced, showed that,
unlike country people, those belonging to the city inserted internal schwa vowels in these forms.
According to Boukous (2000: 46): This articulatory habit is probably acquired through the use
of Arabic dialect where schwa insertion seems to correspond to a phonotactic
necessity (translation mine). Subject 1A may insert schwas to break up consonant clusters, but
this is not the case for 5H, for example, who lived in a remote Berber village for more than thirty
years before coming to France. This mimicking phenomenon is illustrated by the way the
Moroccan Arabic loan word [sX@f] fade away is realized by 1A and by a native Moroccan
Arabic subject (a male adult speaker from Oujda (a city in the North of Morocco) who was asked

15
to produce three times this form among others). As illustrated in Figures 5a, b, both forms are
virtually identical.
Another argument showing that these vocoids cannot be interpreted as realizations of
phonological nuclei is provided by their distribution within one and the same form. Consider, for
instance, the two realizations of the word [sfqqst] irritate him as produced by 1A. These two
repetitions were produced with an interval of less than three seconds in between. As is shown in
Figure 6, a voiced vocoid is realized between /f/ and /q/ in the first utterance (6a) but word finally
in the second (6b). The same observation also holds for the form [tXtft] as realized by the same
subject (see Table 5).
A last observation is that not all the forms realized by 1A contain schwas. He may realize long
voiceless sequences with no voiced vocoid at all. Such is the case of items [fqqs], [tfktstt] and
[tftXtstt]. Figure 2 above presents the waveform and the spectrogram of [tftXtstt], a sequence of 8
voiceless obstruents realized by 1A with no voiced schwa vowel.
To sum up, the acoustic analysis shows that the data produced by subjects belonging to different
Tashlhiyt dialects do not contain voiced schwa vowels which could be interpreted as realizations
of syllabic nuclei. The schwas recorded in some of the speakers productions fall into two classes.
The first (and by far the largest) concerns word-final vocoids. Their presence in the periphery is
considered to be a phonetic cue for the listener to help identify the utterance-final consonant by
placing it in a prevocalic position. The fact that no such final schwas were observed in data
collected from elicitation method 2, where each form was embedded in a frame sentence, is an
argument in favor of this interpretation. The second class consists of a few internal schwas whose
presence is believed to be due to the influence of Moroccan Arabic pronunciation.

16

Fibroscopic argument
Fibroscopic analysis is conducted to determine if the glottis remains open or not during the
production of items in Table 2. Glottal adduction during the production of underlyingly voiceless
sequences would be an indication of the presence of an intervening voiced vowel. Glottal
abduction throughout the whole sequence, on the other hand, would imply the absence of such
vocoids.

Subjects and metho d

Two native speakers served as subjects for this experiment: 30-year-old (RR, the author) and 26year-old (AK) males. The video-endoscopic experiment was performed by means of a flexible
nasofibroptic laryngoscope (Olympus ENF P3) with video recording ( at 25 frames/s). A
fiberscope was inserted through the nostril of the subjects. A camera Sony (XC999 P) was fixed
on the external side of the fiberscope which permits to record a video film on a Umatic Sony tape
recorder (VO-5800 PS). The internal side was stabilized a bit over the larynx which provided an
immediate visualization of the dynamic behavior of the laryngeal region. The laryngeal
evaluation included the abduction and adduction movements of the vocal folds as well as inward
and forward movements of the arytenoid cartilages. A synchronization signal was recorded on
one channel of the tape recorder for frame identification. The film was visualized for analysis on
Adobe Premiere (for video sequences) and Adobe Photoshop (for picture analysis). The analysis
consisted mainly in determining the state of the glottis (opening and closing) and of the arytenoid
cartilages (abduction and adduction). The corpus consisted of the same forms as for the acoustic
analysis (see Table 2 above). Other forms (composed of vowels and voiced consonants) were also
included in the experiment. Each item was produced in isolation 12 times by RR, and 5 times by

17
AK. The rest interval between consecutive items was approximately 2-3 seconds. Total data
consisted of 408 utterances.

Results
The occurrence of a voiced vocoid within a sequence of voiceless obstruents is easily observable
on video-fibroscopic data. The two Figures (7a, b) give an immediate visualization of one state of
the glottis during the production of a voiceless obstruent sequence (Figure 7a) and one state of
the glottis during the production of [fs@X] cancel, a Moroccan Arabic item having a schwa
vowel before the final consonant (Figure 7b). When looking at the abduction/adduction states of
the vocal folds and the distance between the arytenoid cartilages, one observes clear differences
between a voiced segment (with adducted vocal folds and arytenoid cartilages) and a voiceless
segment (with an open glottis and separated arytenoid cartilages).
Observation of the production of the two speakers shows that only 1 repetition of the form [tft]
she had an operation out of 408 utterances was produced with a complete glottal adduction.
This closing gesture was observed word finally. In this position, subject AK produced a schwa
comparable to the ones observed in the Agadir subjects realizations in the acoustic experiment
(i.e. [tft@]). All the remaining 407 forms show an uninterrupted opened glottis through the
sequences with clear abducted vocal folds. The vocal folds during the production of these words
are never set into vibration. I present below some figures illustrating the abduction state of the
glottis during some selected voiceless words.
In Figure 8, for the form [tsskSft] you dried as realized by RR, the first frame corresponding to
the acoustic onset of /t/ (approximated as one frame before the image corresponding to the
acoustic oral release) shows that the glottis is wide open: the vocal folds are adducted as well as

18
the arytenoids cartilages. The glottis maintains this clear opening throughout the whole word. In
Figure 9, for the item [tfss] she is quiet as produced by KA, one also observes that vocal folds
are large apart from the beginning till the end of the utterance. This configuration of the glottis is
virtually the same for all the productions of the 24 sequences of voiceless obstruents analyzed,
regardless of the number of consonants they have 7 . Figure 10 shows the states of the glottis for a
sequence of 8 voiceless obstruents in [tftXtstt] you rolled it.
As was indicated previously, some Tashlhiyt items are Moroccan Arabic loan words. [sX@f] fade
away is one such item. In Moroccan Arabic , an epenthetic schwa must be inserted before the last
consonant. Such schwa epenthesis does not exis t in Tashlhiyt. Figure 11 below shows a clear
adduction gesture necessary for the production of the vowel after the uvular fricative /X/ in the
Moroccan Arabic [sX@f] as realized by RR. In Tashlhiyt (Figure 12), no such voicing gesture is
attested either in this position or elsewhere in the sequence.
Observation of Tashlhiyt data shows that the glottis does not maintain a static open position
although the whole utterance is voiceless. Rather, the degree of glottal aperture is continuously
changing. Because of its low frequency (25 images/second) one cannot however determine based
only on fiberpotic films the exact nature of these modulations and the type of laryngealsupralaryngeal adjustments produced during the production of these voiceless words.
Photoelectroglottography (combined with fiberoptics) with a higher frequency (200 Hz) is a
much more reliable experimental procedure to handle these issues (see among others, Yoshioka,
Lfqvist, and Hirose 1981, Lfqvist and Yoshioka 1984). Such experimental procedure was used
in a preliminary study on the same data (Ridouane 2004). Results show in actual fact that the

Video files of some selected items produced by the two subjects are available at: http://ed268.univparis3.fr/lpp/?page=equipe/rachid_ridouane

19
glottis does not maintain a static open position but that the glottal aperture is continuously
modulated in a manner that is related quite systematically to the individual obstruents present in
the voiceless sequence. A general aspect that comes out from this study is that glottal opening is
characterized by one, two, three or more than three glottal opening peaks according to the number
and the nature of the segments present in a sequence and the way they are combined. Each
voiceless obstruent accompanied by frication noise tends to require a specific separate peak
glottal opening. Contrary to what Tsuchida (1997) observed during the production of Japanese
voiceless sequences of the type CVC (where V is devoiced), laryngeal movements during the
production of Tashlhiyt voiceless sequences display smooth transitions from the target of one
consonant to the next, without any deviation towards a vocalic target. A form such as [tStft] you
crushed, for instance, is generally produced with two glottal opening peaks, both located during
the two fricatives.

Additional evidence
A final argument is provided, below, as additional evidence that schwa vowel is not a segment at
the level of phonetic representations in Tashlhiyt. This argumentation is drawn from
versification. Following the works of Jouad (1983, 1986) and Dell and Elmedlaoui (1997, 2002),
it will be shown below that some voiceless obstruent-only syllables of the type CC are treated by
Tashlhiyt poets as CV syllables, in the sense that they are light syllables where the second
segment is a nucleus and not a coda. In Tashlhiyt poetry, all the lines of a piece often share the
same meter, characterized by specific sequences of a definite number of heavy and light syllables
(Jouad 1983, 1986). A heavy syllable (H) is one that has a coda consonant, while a light syllable
(L) lacks a coda consonant.

20

In the piece given in (2), the pattern is LHLLLHLLLLH. The meter is thus composed of 11
syllables where the second, sixth and eleventh must be heavy and all the others must be light. The
text presents some selected lines of a well known poem song by Rrays M. Albensir in the early
70s, and composed of 123 lines (The five lines in (2) correspond to lines 3, 5, 12, 87 and 99 in
the poem respectively). The whole text and large audio extracts of the song are available on
http://www.azawan.com/tachelhit/albensir/albensir.htm.
(2)

a.

mqar tnt ksi ar disnt nttlab

Even if I feed them on and play with them

b.

han ur gi nkkin amsa ula kssab

I am neither a purchaser nor an owner

c.

iSSatn ukssab is da ira wayyad

The owner ate them and looks for more

d.

i a tsllan i waStuk sid ibidd

If they listen to Achtouk Said (a singer) standing up

e.

mn waKd u sttin att ukan ntmZZad

We have been praising him since 1961

The same text is given in Table 6, broken into eleven boxes corresponding each to a metrical
syllable. Scansion operates regardless of morphological or syntactic boundaries, as is the case in
Tashlhiyt poetic scansion in general (see Jouad 1986). Some geminates behave as singletons (ex.
2c) and others as sequences of two identical consonants (4d and 4e) depending on the needs of
the meter (see Dell and Elmedlaoui 2002). Text (2) contains 55 metrical syllables, 14 of which
have consonants as nuclei. What is worthy of notice are the voiceless syllables in 4a, 4c, 4e, 8d
and 10b. Let us consider those in 4a, 4c, and 4e. Suppose there was a schwa vowel associated
with the syllabic voiceless obstruents (i.e. [t@k] instead of [tk] in 4a for example) and that this

21
vowel is obscured by phonetic implementation or contextually devoiced (being surrounded by
voiceless obstruents). The presence of this schwa vowel here should normally change the weight
of these syllables which would then become heavy syllables (i.e. CVC instead of CC). But these
syllables as is required by the parsing of this verse are light just as the syllable [la] in the
corresponding box in 4d.

Summary and future work

The acoustic and fibroscopic data presented in this article confirm the existence of voiceless,
vowel-less words in the three dialects of Tashlhiyt. These data also explain why some researchers
have found sporadic examples of vowels in what have been reported to be vowel-less words by
other researchers. The acoustic data showed the predominance of realizations of long sequences
of voiceless obstruents with no voiced schwa vowel. The presence of this vowel in the final
position of some subjects utterances is not a cue of the syllabicity of the precedent consonant, as
is advocated by Coleman and by Louali and Puech. This final schwa epenthesis is interpreted
here as a cue used for the listener to identify the utterance-final consonant by placing it in a
prevocalic position where cues to its place of articulation are conveyed by the burst, the noise
transient, and by formant transitions into the schwa. Non such final schwas were observed in data
collected from elicitation method 2, where the voiceless words were embedded in a frame
sentence. The presence of schwa vowels in the internal position of some items produced by
Agadir subjects is due to the influence of Moroccan Arabic, a national language which stands in a
relation of prestige to Tashlhiyt. The fibroscopic argument showed that, at the exception of one
repetition, all the words in Table 2 were produced by the two subjects with a non interrupting
devoicing gesture from the onset to the end of each sequence with clear abducted vocal folds. The

22
vocal folds during the production of these words were never set into vibration. Supporting
evidence was drawn from a phonological/psycholinguistic argumentation, based on versification,
which showed that voiceless obstruent -only syllables of the type [tk] are treated as light syllables
where the second consonant is a nucleus and not a coda.
These results provide compelling arguments to the view that in Tashlhiyt any consonant can be
syllabic, even a voiceless stop. One argument usually presented as evidence showing that
consonant-only words are parsed into syllables is related to native linguists intuitions (this is the
case, for instance, of Elmedlaoui (Dell and Elmedlaoui 1985), Boukous (1987), and Jebbour
(1995)). To the question how many syllables do the voiceless words in Table 2 have and how
are they parsed?, my own intuitions as a native speaker prompt me to do the parses shown in
Table 2. While these long consonant sequences seem extremely complex, their syllable structure,
at least to my intuitions, is quite simple and straightforward for the majority of these forms 8. An
aspect that merits thinking about would be to determine whether these judgements, if shared by
other non-linguist native speakers, are based on some surface physical differences perceived by
Tashlhiyt speakers. This question re-echoes one of the most hotly debated questions concerning
syllable theory: what are the phonetic correlates of the syllable, if any? A number of
phoneticians, from Scripture (1902) and Rousselot (1909) to Rosetti (1963) and Malmberg
(1971), consider the syllable merely as a psychological reality with no direct physical correlates.
Others, on the other hand, consider the syllable as a physical unit. (Sievers 1881, Stetson 1951,
Catford 1977). More recently, it has been shown that syllable position plays an important role in
shaping articulatory patterns, both in the realization of the consonants and in the timing relation
between consonants (see Byrd 1994, and Browman and Goldstein 1995).

These judgements are less straightforward as far as forms with initial and final geminates are concerned. This is
indicated in Table 2 by an interrogation mark following these forms

23
Concerning Tashlhiyt, a question is to determine whether voiceless syllabic consonants display
acoustic or articulatory properties that distinguish them from their non syllabic counterparts. In
other words, is the syllabic /s/ in [ts.ti] she chose produced in a different way from its non
syllabic counterpart in [is.ti] he chose? Another question would be to determine whether
voiceless vowel-less syllables share some articulatory properties with normal vowel-full
syllables 9 . Two preliminary studies presented by Browman, Goldstein, Honorof, Jebbour, and
Selkirk (1998) using EMMA and by Ridouane and Fougeron (2005) using Electropalatography
examined topics related to these issues. Their reults, obtained each from one subject, are in
accordance. They show that syllable organization in Tashlhiyt is not reliably reflected in any
superficial properties of the articulatory gestures and their relative timing, but rather in the
tightness of their coordination. Consonant gestures bearing an onset -nucleus relation are more
strongly bonded than a heterosyllabic sequence (i.e. less overlap, longer delay between events,
and more stable coordination). If these result are confirmed from additional data and subjects,
that would imply that native speaker intuitions about syllabification are not based on surface
physical differences, but rather on some abstract syllable structure differences or their reflection
in bonding strength (see Browman, Goldstein, Honorof, Jebbour, and Selkirk 1998). It is not
unsurprising, in fact, that a syllabic /s/, for example, may not be acoustically or articulatorily
different from its non syllabic counterpart. /s/ is syllabic in [ts.ti] but not in [is.ti] not because it
has additiona l acoustic or articulatory make-up but because its degree of sonority relative to the
precedent segment is higher in the former and lower in the latter. Being syllabic can thus be
considered mainly (though not exclusively) as the property of having a particular auditory

An additional question which comes up naturally in view of the results obtained here is that of stress in relation to obstruent
nuclei of Tashlhiyt. This aspect has not been investigated it yet and further work is still needed to determine how stress is marked
during the production of voiceless words.

24
prominence relative to the other elements in the phonemic string. Such a hypothesis needs to be
tested and questions raised above merit further investigation.

Acknowledgements
I am extremely grateful for the valuable comments and suggestions of Nick Clements, Franois
Dell, Cecile Fougeron, Alexis Michaud, and three reviewers on previous versions of this draft. I
would also like to thank Lise Crevier-Buchman for her expertise during the fibroscopic
experiment. Additionally, I thank the 7 subjects for their help as language consultants. This paper
was presented during March 2004 at the Research Laboratory of Electronics (MIT), at Haskins
Laboratory (Yale University), and at the Phonology Circle (Linguistic Department, MIT).
Thanks to members of each of these audiences for comments and suggestions.

References
Boogert, van den, N.: Medieval Berber orthography. in Chaker, Zaborski, Etudes berbres et
chamito-smitiques, pp. 357-377. (Peeters, Paris 2000).
Boukous, M.: Phonotactique et domaine prosodique en berbre (parler tachelhit dAgadir,
Maroc). Thse de Doctorat dEtat (Universit Paris 8, 1987).
Boukous, M.: Variation phonique et comptence globale: le cas du parler dAgadir. (Publications
de la Facult des Lettres, Rabat 1994).
Boukous, M.: Lamazighe : perte irrversible ou changement linguistique ? in Chaker, Zaborski,
Etudes berbres et chamito-smitiques, pp. 43-59. (Peeters, Paris 2000).
Boersma, P.: Praat, a system for doing phonetics by computer. Glot International, 5(9-10): 341345 (2001).

25
Browman, C. P.; Goldstein, L.: Dynamics and Articulatory Phonology. In Port, van Gelder,
Mind as Motion, pp. 175-194. (MIT Press, Cambridge 1995).
Browman, C. P.; Goldstein, L.; Honorof, D. N.; Jebbour, A.; Selkirk, E.: Gestural organization
underlying syllable structure. Oral presentation in Current Trends in Phonology II (Royaumont,
22-24 June 1998).
Byrd, D.: Articulatory timing in English consonant sequences. Ph.D. thesis (University of
California, Los Angeles 1994).
Catford, J.C.: Fundamental problems in phonetics. (University Press, Edinburgh 1977).
Chaker, S.: Chleuh (linguistique/littrature). in Gabriel Camps, Encyclopdie berbre XIII, pp.
1926 1933 (Aix-en-Provence, Edisud 1994).
Coleman, J.: Declarative syllabification in Tashlhiyt Berber. in Durand and Laks, Current Trends
in Phonology, pp. 177 218 (CNRS, Paris X and University of Salford, Salford 1996).
Coleman, J.: The nature of vocoids associated with syllabic consonants in Tashlhiyt Berber.
Proceedings of the 14th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 735-738 (1999).
Coleman, J.S.: The phonetics and phonology of Tashlhiyt Berber syllabic consonants.
Transactions of the Philological Society 99: 29-64 (2001).
Dell, F.; Elmedlaoui, M.: Syllabic consonants and syllabification in Imdlawn Tashlhiyt Berber.
Journal of African Languages and Linguistics 7: 105-130 (1985).
Dell, F.; Elmedlaoui, M.: Syllabic consonants in Berber: some new evidence. Journal of African
Languages and Linguistics 10: 1-17 (1988).
Dell, F.; Elmedlaoui, M. : La syllabation et les gmines dans la posie berbre du Maroc
(dialecte chleuh). Cahiers de Grammaire 22: 1-95 (1997).
Dell, F.; Elmedlaoui, M.: Syllables in Tashlhiyt Berber and in Moroccan Arabic. (Kluwer,
Academic Publications, 2002).

26
Elmedlaoui, M.: Le parler berbre chleuh dImdlawn (Maroc); segments et syllabation. Thse de
Doctorat (Universit Paris 8, 1985).
Elmedlaoui, M.: Larabe marocain, un lexique smitique insr sur un fond grammatical berbre.
in Chaker, Zaborski, Etudes berbres et chamito-smitiques, pp. 155-188. (Peeters, Paris 2000).
Fougeron, C.; Delais -Roussarie, E.: Fais_en Fez_en prlant : tude comparative de la liaison et
de lenchanement. Journes dEtudes sur la Parole (XXV), Fez 2004, pp. 212-225.
Jebbour, A.: Mores et poids prosodique en berbre. Langues orientales anciennes. Philologie et
linguistique 5-6: 167-192 (1995).
Jouad, H.: Les lments de la versification en berbre marocain tamazight et tachelhit. Thse de
Doctorat (Universit Paris 3, 1983).
Jouad, H.: Mtres et rythmes de la posie orale en berbre marocain. Cahiers de Potique
Compare 12: 105-127 (1986).
Lfqvist, A.; Yoshioka, H.: Intrasegmental timing: Laryngeal-oral coordination in voiceless
consonant production. Speech Commun. 3: 279-289 (1984).
Louali, N.; Puech, G.: Syllabification in Berber, the case of Tashlhiyt. Proceedings of the 14th
International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 747-750 (1999).
Louali, N.; Puech, G.: Etude sur limplmentation du schwa pour quatre locuteurs berbres de
tachelhit. Journes dEtudes sur la Parole (XXIII), Aussois, pp. 25-28. (2000).
Malmberg, B.: Voyelle, consonne, syllabe, mot, in Malmberg, Phontique gnrale et romane,
pp. 131-140 (Mouton, La Haye 1971).
Ouakrim, O.: Fontica y fonologia del Bereber. Ph.D. thesis (Universitat Autnoma de
Barcelona, 1993).
Podeur, J.: Textes berbres des At Souab. Anti-Atlas, Maroc. (Edisud, 1995).

27
Prince, A.; Smolensky, P.: Optimality theory: constraint interaction in generative grammar.
Rutgers University Center for Cognitive Sc ience Technical Report 2 (1993).
Ridouane, R.: Suites de consonnes en berbre : phontique et phonologie. Thse de Doctorat
(Universit Paris 3, 2003).
Ridouane, R.: Les mots sourds en berbre chleuh : analyses fibroscopiques et
photoglottographiques. Journes dEtudes sur la Parole (XXV), Fez, pp. 425-428. ( 2004).
Ridouane, R.: Gemination in Tashlhiyt Berber: quantity or quality? JIPA (submitted).
http://ed268.univ-paris3.fr/lpp/?page=equipe/rachid_ridouane
Ridouane, R.; Fougeron, C.: Looking for phonetic cues to obstruent syllabic consonants in
Berber. Oral presentation in Phonetics and Phonology in Iberia (Barcelona, 2005).
Ridouane, R.; Fuchs, S.; Hoole, P.: Laryngeal adjustme nts in the production of voiceless
obstruent clusters in Berber. in Harrington and Tabain, Speech Production: Models, Phonetic
Processes, and Techniques, pp. 275 301 (Macquarie University, Sydney, in press).
Rosetti, A.: Sur la thorie de la syllabe. (Mouton, La Hague 1963).
Rousselot, P.: Principes de phontique exprimentale. (Welter, Paris 1909).
Scripture, E.: The elements of experimental phonetics. (Charles Scribners Sons, New York 1902).
Sievers E.: Grundzge der phonetik. (Breitkopf and Hartel, Leipzig 1881).
Stetson, R.H.: Motor Phonetics. (North-Holland, Amsterdam 1951).
Stroomer, H.: An early European source on Berber. Chamberlayne (1715). in Chaker, Zaborski,
Etudes berbres et chamito-smitiques, pp. 303-316. (Peeters, Paris 2000).
Tsuchida, A. : The phonetics and phonology of Japanese vowel devoicing. Ph.D. thesis (Cornell
University 1997).
Yoshioka, H.; Lfqvist, A.; Hirose H.: Laryngeal adjustments in the production of consonant
clusters and geminates in American English. J. acoust. Soc. Am. 70(6): 1615-1623 (1981).

28

Table 1. List of Tashlhiyt phonemes.

Labials Dentals
Palatoalveolars

Velars

Uvulars

tt tt

kk kkW

qq qq W

bb

d
dd dd
n

kW

qW

Aryepiglottals

Glottal

gW

gg ggW

nn nn
f
ff

s
ss ss
z

zz zz
w
ww
u

ll ll

S
SS

XW

XX XXW

K
KK

ZZ

ZZ

rr

rr

h
hh

j
jj
i

Table 2. The linguistic material analyzed in the acoustic and fibroscopic experiments.
Syllabification of each form, according to my own intuitions as a native speaker, is indicated.
N.S. = Number of syllables. S.P. = Syllable parsing.
Item
Gloss.
N.S.
S.P.
1
fk
Give
1
fk
2
ks
Feed on
1
ks
3
fk=t
Give it
2
f.kt
4
ks=t
Feed it on
1
kst
5
Roll
2
ftX
f.tX
6
kks
Take off
2
k.ks ?
7
Fade
away
2
sXf
s.Xf
8
fqqs
Irritate
2
fq.qs
9
t-fss
She is quiet
2
tf.ss ?
10
She had an operation
2
t-ft
tf.t
11
It dried
2
t-kSf
tk.Sf
12
You crushed
2
t-Stf-t
tS.tft
13
t-kks-t
You took off
2
tk.kst
14
t-Xtf-t
You stole
2
tX.tft
15
kks=tt
Take it off (fem.)
2
k.kstt ?
16
You
cancelled
2
t-fsX-t
tf.sXt
17
t-qssf
It shrunk
2
tqs.sf
18
s-fqqs=t
Irritate him
2
sfq.qst
19
t-fk-t=stt
You gave it (fem.)
2
tfk.tstt
20
You dried
3
t-ss-kSf-t
ts.sk.Sft

29
21
22
23
24

t-kks-t=stt
t-ftk-t=stt
t-ftX-t=stt
t-ss-kSf-t=stt

You took it off (fem.)

You sprained it (fem.)
You rolled it (fem.)
You dried it (fem.)

3
3
3
4

tk.ks.tstt
tf.tk.tstt
tf.tX.tstt
ts.sk.Sf.tstt

Table 3. The frequency of Tashlhiyt vowel-less and voiceless words, based on the 20 texts
published in Podeur (1995). N = total number of words, VW1 = vowel-less words. VW2 =
Voiceless words.
Syntactic words
Phonological words
N
VW1
VW2
N
VW1
VW2
Text 1
278
57
22
198
15
00
Text 2
226
53
15
161
30
00
Text 3
191
44
11
128
14
00
Text 4
239
58
21
159
09
00
Text 5
201
56
29
126
15
00
Text 6
247
50
16
174
10
00
Text 7
169
44
21
107
11
00
Text 8
142
40
18
90
06
00
Text 9
315
70
39
198
03
01
Text 10
285
62
18
187
19
03
Text 11
718
137
39
494
26
02
Text 12
312
77
34
193
22
00
Text 13
232
58
21
150
07
00
Text 14
387
87
29
272
21
01
Text 15
231
59
18
167
09
00
Text 16
216
49
23
153
10
00
Text 17
273
61
22
193
11
00
Text 18
268
61
16
199
17
00
Text 19
196
33
06
144
03
00
Text 20
565
115
33
413
33
01
TOTAL
5700
1271
451
413
291
08
Table 4. List of speakers who participated in data collection. 4 of these 7 subjects participated to
the second acoustic experiment, 4 years after, using a different elicitation method. Details in the
text.
Speaker
Tashlhiyt Dialect
In France since
Age
1A
Agadir
1 month
31
2A
4 months
26
3AA
Anti-Atlas
4 months
33
4AA
4 months
30
5H
High-Atlas
30 years
63
6H
1 year
28
7H
7 years
30

30
Table 5. Data from the two elicitation methods showing the number of forms realized with a
voiced schwa as well as the location of these vocoids. When only one transcription is given, it
holds for all the repetitions. Hyphens indicate the forms excluded from analysis.
Elicitation method 1
Elicitation method 2
1A

2A

3 fk@
3 ks@
3 fkt@
3 kst@
3 ftX@
2 kks@
3 sX@f
2 fqq@s
0
2 tft@
1 tft@
3 tkSf@
3 tStft@
3 tkkst@
3 tXt ft@
3 kkstt@
3 tfsXt@
3 tqssf@
1 sf@qqst
2 sfqqst@
1 tfktstt@
1 tsskSft@
0
3 tsskSftstt@

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24

3AA

0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0

0
0
0
0

0
0
0
0

1 tkSf@

0
0
0
0

0
0
0
1
sfqqst@
0
0
0
0
0
0

0
-

0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0

4AA

3 fk@
3 ks@
3 fkt@
3
0
0
0
0
0
0

5H

6H

7H

3AA

4AA

0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0

0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0

0
0
0
0

0
0
0
0

0
0
0
0

0
0
0
0

0
1 tSt@ft
0
1 tXt @ft
0
0
0
0

0
0
0
0

0
0
0
0

0
0
0
0

0
0
0
0
0
0

0
0
0
0
0
0

0
0
0
0
0
0

0
0
0
0
0
0

0
0
0
0
0
0

0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0

0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0

0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0

0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0

0
0
0

0
0
0
0

0
0
0
0

0
0
0
0

0
0
0
0

0
0
0
0

0
0
0
0

0
0
0
0
0
0

0
0
0
0
0
0

0
0
0
0
0
0

Table 6. The analysis of the metrical structure of the material in (2).

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

2A

0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0

10

11

a.

qar

tn

tk

si

Gar

di

sn

tnt

tl

ab

b.

ha

nur

gi

Gn

(k)ki

nam

sa

Gu

la

ks

sab

c.

(S)Sat

nu

ks

sa

bis

da

Gi

ra

wa (y)yd

d.

Gat

sl

la

ni

waS

tu

ks

di

bid(d)

6H

31
e.

mn

wa

du

st

ti

nat

tu

ka

(n)nt

mZ

Zad

Legends to figures
Figure 1. Acoustic waveform and spectrogram of the form [sfqqst] irritate him as realized by
5H using elicitation method 1.
Figure 2. Acoustic waveform and spectrogram of the form [tftXtstt] you rolled it (fem) as
realized by 1A using elicitation method 1.
Figure 3. Acoustic waveform and spectrogram of the form [tftktstt] you sprained it (fem) as
realized by 4AA using elicitation method 2.
Figure 4. Acoustic waveform and spectrogram of the form [tsskSftstt] you dried it (fem) as
realized by 6H using elicitation method 2.
Figure 5. Waveforms and spectrograms of two productions of the form [sX@f] fade away a
Moroccan Arabic loan word as realized by 1A (5a) and by a native Moroccan Arabic speaker
(5b).
Figure 6. Waveforms and spectrograms of two productions of the form [sfqqst] irritate him as
realized by 1A with an internal schwa in the first production (6a) and with a final schwa in the
second (6b).
Figure 7 One state of the glottis during the production of a voiceless sequence (7a) and during
the production of a voiced schwa vowel (7b).
Figure 8. States of the glottis during the production of [tsskSft] you dried by RR.
Figure 9. States of the glottis during the production of [tfss] she is quiet by KA.
Figure 10. States of the glottis during the production of [tftXtstt] you rolled it (fem) by KA.
Figure 11. States of the glottis during the production of the Moroccan Arabic item [sX@f] fade
away by RR.
Figure 12. States of the glottis during the production of the Tashlhiyt item [sXf] fade away by
RR.