Syllabification and phonological rule application in Tashlhiyt Berber

Tashlhiyt variety of Berber, spoken in the southern part of Morocco has drawn particular attention from phonologists for its admittance of complex consonant sequences and of vowelless phonological words. The way words should be analysed into syllable constituents in these cases is by no means trivial and depends on which segments are identified as nuclear. Dell & Elmedlaoui raised the question at the heart of the problem: 'are there languages in which any segment can occur as a syllable nucleus?' One such a language is the variety of Tashlhiyt Berber where even a voiceless stop may act as a syllable nucleus. The fact that any segment can form the nucleus of a syllable causes potential ambiguity in syllabification. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the process of syllabification through various phonological and morphological processes which are affected by the results drawn from the syllabification algorithm in the language

Context-dependent articulation of consonant gemination in Estonian

Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0)The three-way quantity system is a well-known phonological feature of Estonian. In a number of studies it has been shown that quantity is realized in a disyllabic foot by the stressed-to-unstressed syllable rhyme duration ratio and also by pitch movement as the secondary cue. The stressed syllable rhyme duration is achieved by combining the length of the vowel and the coda consonant, which enables minimal septets of CVCV-sequences based on segmental duration. In this study we analyze articulatory (EMA) recordings from four native Estonian speakers producing all possible quantity combinations of intervocalic bilabial stops in two vocalic contexts (/alpha-i/ vs. /i-alpha/). The analysis shows that kinematic characteristics (gesture duration, spatial extent, and peak velocity) are primarily affected by quantity on the segmental level: Phonologically longer segments are produced by longer and larger lip closing gestures and, in reverse, shorter and smaller lip opening movements. Tongue transition gesture is consistently lengthened and slowed down by increasing consonant quantity. In general, both kinematic characteristics and intergestural coordination are influenced by non-linear interactions between segmental quantity levels as well as vocalic context.Peer reviewe

QUESTIONS AMAZIGHES (TACHLHIT) À L'INTERFACE DE LA PHONÉTIQUE ET DE LA PHONOLOGIE

The main concern of my research activities bears on phonological units and questions their physical manifestations and psychological reality as well as their role in phonological grammar. My main source of evidence for my theoretical analyses is drawn from Tashlhiyt, an Amazigh (Berber) language spoken in Morocco. This summary, meant as a complement to my Habilitation mémoire « Questions amazighes (tachlhit) – A l’interface de la phonétique et de la phonologie », provides a synthesis of my work on three main topics. The first topic deals with syllable without vowels. The second topic is concerned with the phonetics and phonology of geminated phonemes. The third topic deals with laryngeal distinctive features and extends to the general issue of laryngeal-supralaryngeal coordination in speech.La préoccupation majeure de mes recherches porte sur la structure et le contenu des catégories phonologiques – trait, phonème, syllabe – et pose la triple question de la place de ces unités de base dans les systèmes phonologiques, de leurs manifestations physiques, et de leur réalité psychologique. Cette problématique, qui constitue un des objectifs fondamentaux de la recherche actuelle à l’interface de la phonétique et de la phonologie, est explorée en examinant plus spécifiquement le tachlhit, langue amazighe (berbère) parlée au Maroc. Au-delà de la richesse de son inventaire consonantique, c’est notamment l’extrême souplesse que cette langue offre pour former de séquences consonantiques qui l’a fait connaître à la communauté des phonologues et des phonéticiens. Locuteur natif du tachlhit, je me suis intéressé depuis ma thèse aux questions soulevées par cet embarras de consonnes dans une démarche alliant questionnements théoriques et investigations expérimentales. L’écriture de ce mémoire a été guidée par le désir de mettre en perspective mes recherches par rapport aux questionnements théoriques généraux sur les unités de représentation. En cela, elle reflète le souci constant de partir du tachlhit pour aborder des questions théoriques dépassant largement le cadre restreint des études amazighes

Emergent consonantal quantity contrast and context-dependence of gestural phasing

Embodied Task Dynamics is a modeling platform combining task dynamical implementation of articulatory phonology with an optimization approach based on adjustable trade-offs between production efficiency and perception efficacy. Within this platform we model a consonantal quantity contrast in bilabial stops as emerging from local adjustment of demands on relative prominence of the consonantal gesture conceptualized in terms of closure duration. The contrast is manifested in the form of two distinct, stable inter-gestural coordination patterns characterized by quantitative differences in relative phasing between the consonant and the coproduced vocalic gesture. Furthermore, the model generates a set of qualitative predictions regarding dependence of kinematic characteristics and inter-gestural coordination on consonant quantity and gestural context. To evaluate these predictions, we collected articulatory data for Finnish speakers uttering singletons and geminates in the same context as explored by the model. Statistical analysis of the data shows strong agreement with model predictions. This result provides support for the hypothesis that speech articulation is guided by efficiency principles that underlie many other types of embodied skilled action.Peer reviewe

The production and perception of peripheral geminate/singleton coronal stop contrasts in Arabic

Gemination is typologically common word-medially but is rare at the periphery of the word (word-initially and -finally). In line with this observation, prior research on production and perception of gemination has focused primarily on medial gemination. Much less is known about the production and perception of peripheral gemination. This PhD thesis reports on comprehensive articulatory, acoustic and perceptual investigations of geminate-singleton contrasts according to the position of the contrast in the word and in the utterance. The production component of the project investigated the articulatory and acoustic features of medial and peripheral gemination of voiced and voiceless coronal stops in Modern standard Arabic and regional Arabic vernacular dialects, as produced by speakers from two disparate and geographically distant countries, Morocco and Lebanon. The perceptual experiment investigated how standard and dialectal Arabic gemination contrasts in each word position were categorised and discriminated by three groups of non-native listeners, each differing in their native language experience with gemination at different word positions. The first experiment used ultrasound and acoustic recordings to address the extent to which word-initial gemination in Moroccan and Lebanese dialectal Arabic is maintained, as well as the articulatory and acoustic variability of the contrast according to the position of the gemination contrast in the utterance (initial vs. medial) and between the two dialects. The second experiment compared the production of word-medial and -final gemination in Modern Standard Arabic as produced by Moroccan and Lebanese speakers. The aim of the perceptual experiment was to disentangle the contribution of phonological and phonetic effects of the listeners’ native languages on the categorisation and discrimination of non-lexical Moroccan gemination by three groups of non-native listeners varying in their phonological (native Lebanese group and heritage Lebanese group, for whom Moroccan is unintelligible, i.e., non-native language) and phonetic-only (native English group) experience with gemination across the three word positions. The findings in this thesis constitute important contributions about positional and dialectal effects on the production and perception of gemination contrasts, going beyond medial gemination (which was mainly included as control) and illuminating in particular the typologically rare peripheral gemination

Urban Mediterranean dialects of Arabic : Tangier and Tunis

textThis thesis compares two urban Mediterranean dialects of Arabic in North Africa: the Arabic dialect of Tangier, Morocco and the Arabic dialect of Tunis, Tunisia. Both of these dialects have traditionally been classified as "pre-Hilalian" varieties, which originated with the first wave of Arab Muslim invasions of North Africa in the late 7th century CE. Tangier and Tunis not only underwent similar historical developments; the Arabic dialects of these two cities also underwent similar developments, in addition to sharing the features used as criteria for the pre-Hilalian dialect grouping. This thesis shows the similarities between the language contact situations in Tangier and Tunis historically in order to explain the parallel development of the morphosyntactic features--specifically the paradigms for the 2nd person category in pronominals as well as perfective, imperfective, and imperative verb inflections--shared by the Arabic dialects of these two cities today.Middle Eastern Studie

Arabic and contact-induced change

This volume offers a synthesis of current expertise on contact-induced change in Arabic and its neighbours, with thirty chapters written by many of the leading experts on this topic. Its purpose is to showcase the current state of knowledge regarding the diverse outcomes of contacts between Arabic and other languages, in a format that is both accessible and useful to Arabists, historical linguists, and students of language contact

Arabic and contact-induced change

This volume offers a synthesis of current expertise on contact-induced change in Arabic and its neighbours, with thirty chapters written by many of the leading experts on this topic. Its purpose is to showcase the current state of knowledge regarding the diverse outcomes of contacts between Arabic and other languages, in a format that is both accessible and useful to Arabists, historical linguists, and students of language contact

Arabic and contact-induced change

This volume offers a synthesis of current expertise on contact-induced change in Arabic and its neighbours, with thirty chapters written by many of the leading experts on this topic. Its purpose is to showcase the current state of knowledge regarding the diverse outcomes of contacts between Arabic and other languages, in a format that is both accessible and useful to Arabists, historical linguists, and students of language contact