Tashelhiyt language

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Arabic script

Modern orthography

The way Tashelhiyt is written in the Arabic script is very consistent, to the extent that it is possible to talk about a "conventionalized orthography". It has remained virtually the same over four centuries.

Two extra letters were added to represent consonants which Tashelhiyt possesses but Arabic doesn't: a kaf with three under- or over-dots (<ݣ

Gaf

Gaf or Gāf may be the name of three different Arabic letters, all representing the sound of "g". They are all forms of the letter kāf, with additional diacritics, such as dots and lines...

>) for /g/, and sad with three under- or over-dots for /zˤ/. /rˤ/ and /lˤ/, which bear a minimal functional load

Functional load

In linguistics and especially phonology, functional load refers to the importance of certain features in making distinctions in a language...

, aren't represented.

Texts are always vocalized, with /a/, /i/, and /u/ being written with fatha, kasra, and damma respectively, and consonants without a following phonemic vowel (which might mean that they are followed by a schwa) always vowelized with a sukun.

Maghrebi script

Maghrebi script

Maghrebi script is a cursive form of the Arabic alphabet influenced by Kufic letters that developed in the Maghreb and later in Spain, particularly Andalusia.The Maghribi script can be divided in five other sub/scripts:...

 is always used. Some features of this: tashdiid may be represented with a different sign;Tashdiid may occur with sukun in Tashelhiyt, which never occurs in Arabic. and waṣl is indicated by echoing the final vowel of the preceding word on the alif, and a dot sometimes also occurs on top of the alif, or if the vowel is /u/ the alif occurs with a line through it.

In imitation of Arabic waṣl , word initial vowels are written with alif with fatha, kasra, or a bar (and no superscript bar), and /a, i/ may be accompanied by hamza. In addition the previous word's final consonant may echo the vowel, and this 'anticipatory vowel' may be written as longVowel length isn't distinctive in Tashelhiyt but orthographically long vowels may indicate prosody

Prosody (linguistics)

In linguistics, prosody is the rhythm, stress, and intonation of connected speech...

, see instead of its trigger.Note that this usage is the mirror-image of Maghrebi.

<ث, ذ, ﻅ> are often replaced by <ت, د, ض> respectively in Arabic loans, due to their Tashelhiyt pronunciation of /t, d, dˤ/ (e.g. lḥadit 'tradition'). Final /-a/ in both native Berber words and loan words is sometimes be written with alif maqsura, even if the original Arabic spelling didn't use it (e.g. zzka 'alms tax'. Final /-t/ in words of Arabic origin is sometimes written with ta' marbuta, whether or not the original Arabic word was spelled with it (e.g. zzit 'olive oil'). Nunation diacritics are sometimes used to write final /-Vn/ in Berber words. Words starting with VCː may sometimes be written similarly to the Arabic definite article. Final -u or -w in Berber words may be followed by an alif al-wiqaaya.

Under influence of Arabic's orthographic merging of stem + pronominal suffixes and some prepositions and preverbals into single words, Berber manuscripts do the same to a greater degree, merging all prepositions, preverbals, pronominal affixes, and demonstratives to adjacent words (usually onto nouns or verbs). Sometimes a verb's subject merges with the verb.

Ibrāhīm Aẓnag and Muḥammad Awzal indicate some prosody, representing vowels stressed in recitation or chanting by adding the appropriate ḥarf al-madd, even loanwords.

Old orthography

A different orthography was used in the few Berber texts in existence from the eleventh to the fourteenth century BCE, written in a older Berber language likely to be most closely related to Tashelhiyt. /g/ was represented by jim or kaf, /zˤ/ by sad or sometimes zay, /dˤ/ by ta or sometimes da, /a, i, u/ by harakat followed by huruf al-madd, word final waw usually accompanied by alif al-wiqaya, avoidance of sequences of two waws or yahs (in /uw/, /wu/, /ij/, /ji/), the schwa represented by a fatha with or without alif, and prepositions and possessive pronouns written separately from adjacent nouns. The texts also display archaicisms including /jə, əj/ where modern has /i/ and /wə, əw/ where modern has /u/, /ə/ in in places where it has disappearedSyllable-final /ə/ demonstrates its phonemicity, e.g. /jəwət/., schwa being written in places where it was likely to have been elided (but still written for consistency), some nouns with plural /u-/ or /tu-/ rather than /i-/ or /ti-/, plural stative verbs, /gəɣ/This word has no attested cognates in Berber languages for 'in' rather than the /ɣ/ of all later texts, and masculine construct forms with /wə/, /jə/ where Tashelhiyt has /u-/, /i-/. Some of this system's archaic conventions are preserved in Arabic loan words.

Literature

Tashelhiyt, like other Berber languages, has an extensive body of oral literature

Oral literature

Oral literature corresponds in the sphere of the spoken word to literature as literature operates in the domain of the written word. It thus forms a generally more fundamental component of culture, but operates in many ways as one might expect literature to do...

 in a wide variety of genres. Fables and animal stories often revolve around the character of the jackal (uššn); other genres include legends, imam/taleb stories, riddles, and tongue-twisters.

Less well known is the existence of a distinct literary tradition which can be traced back at least to the early sixteenth century. For at least four centuries, Sous Berber has been written by local scholars in a Magribic variant of the Arabic script. The most prolific writer of this tradition was (ca. 1680-1749); the longest extant text in Tashelhiyt however is a commentary on entitled 'the pasture' (al-Mandja) from the hand of al-Ḥasan b. Mubarak al-Tamudizti (d. 1899). Important collections of Tashelhiyt Berber manuscripts can be found in Aix-en-Provence (the fonds Arsène Roux

Arsène Roux

Arsène Roux was a French Arabist and Berberologist. He was born in Rochegude and emigrated to Morocco in his early twenties where he started studying Classical Arabic, Moroccan Arabic and the Moroccan Berber languages...

) and Leiden

Leiden University Library

Leiden University Library is a library founded in 1575 in Leiden, the Netherlands. It is regarded as a significant place in the development of European culture: it is a part of a small number of cultural centres that gave direction to the development and spread of knowledge during the Enlightenment...

. Virtually all manuscripts are of religious nature, and their main purpose was to instruct the illiterate common people. Many of the texts are in versified form to facilitate memorisation and recitation.

The written language differs in some aspects from normal spoken Tashelhiyt. For example, it is common for the manuscript texts to contain a mix of dialectal variants not found in a single dialect. The language of the manuscripts also contains a higher number of Arabic words than the spoken form, a phenomenon that has been called arabisme poétiqueA term introduced by Paulette Galand-Pernet as cited in vd. Boogert 1997:52.. Other characteristics of the written language include use of a plural form instead of the singular; plural formation by use of the prefix ida; use of stopgaps like 'again', hann and hatinn 'lo!' to fill the metre of the verse; and the use of archaisms.

Vowels

Tashelhiyt has three phonemic vowel

Vowel

In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...

s: . The schwa which turns up in many words between two consonants (e.g. inbgi = 'guest', tigmmi = 'house') has no phonemic status; some authors do not write it for that reason, while others (e.g. Aspinion) write it because it is heard nonetheless. Historically, schwa is thought to be the result of a pan-Berber reduction or merger of three other vowels. The phonetic realization of the vowels, especially , is highly influenced by the character of the surrounding consonants; emphatic consonants invite a more open realization of the vowel, e.g. = 'stone' vs. amud = 'seed'.

Evidence supports the conclusion that the schwa is non-phonemic - for instance, it lacks its own time slot or articulatory target. Due to this Tashelhiyt can be analyzed as containing words without phonemic vowels.

Consonants

Tashelhiyt has thirty-three phonemic consonant

Consonant

In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the upper vocal tract, the upper vocal tract being defined as that part of the vocal tract that lies above the larynx...

s. Like other Berber languages and Arabic, it has both pharyngealized ("emphatic") and plain dental consonants. There is also a distinction between labialized and plain dorsal

Dorsal consonant

Dorsal consonants are articulated with the mid body of the tongue . They contrast with coronal consonants articulated with the flexible front of the tongue, and radical consonants articulated with the root of the tongue....

 obstruent

Obstruent

An obstruent is a consonant sound formed by obstructing airflow, causing increased air pressure in the vocal tract. In phonetics, articulation may be divided into two large classes, obstruents and sonorants....

s. Gemination

Gemination

In phonetics, gemination happens when a spoken consonant is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a short consonant.Consonant length is distinctive in some languages, for instance Arabic, Estonian, Finnish, Russian, Classical Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Latin, and Luganda....

 is contrastive.

In Latin orthography, emphatics are marked by an underwritten dot. Also, is written , is written <>, and is written .

		Labial Labial consonant Labials are consonants articulated either with both lips or with the lower lip and the upper teeth...	Dental Dental consonant In linguistics, a dental consonant or dental is a consonant that is articulated with the tongue against the upper teeth, such as , , , and in some languages...		Postalveolar Postalveolar consonant Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate .Among the fricatives and affricates, a subtype called... / Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate...	Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....		Uvular Uvular consonant Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. Uvulars may be plosives, fricatives, nasal stops, trills, or approximants, though the IPA does not provide a separate symbol for the approximant, and...		Pharyn- geal Pharyngeal consonant A pharyngeal consonant is a type of consonant which is articulated with the root of the tongue against the pharynx.Pharyngeal consonants in the International Phonetic Alphabet :* Pharyngeal plosives are thought to be impossible...	Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricatives, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider...
			plain	pharyn.		plain	lab.	plain	lab.
Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The oral cavity still acts as a resonance chamber for the sound, but the air does not escape through the mouth as it is blocked by the lips or tongue...
Plosive	voiceless
	voiced
Fricative	voiceless
	voiced
Approximant Approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that could be regarded as intermediate between vowels and "typical" consonants. In the articulation of approximants, articulatory organs produce a narrowing of the vocal tract, but leave enough space for air to flow without much audible turbulence. Approximants are...
Trill Trill consonant In phonetics, a trill is a consonantal sound produced by vibrations between the articulator and the place of articulation. Standard Spanish <rr> as in perro is an alveolar trill, while in Parisian French it is almost always uvular....

Some pharyngealized consonants are very common(i.e. /tˤ, dˤ, sˤ, zˤ/), while others are very rare, found mostly in Arabic loans (e.g. /nˤ, lˤ, rˤ/).

Via assibilation

Assibilation

In linguistics, assibilation is the term for a sound change resulting in a sibilant consonant. It is commonly the final phase of palatalization....

 /t, d/ sometimes become /s, z/ respectively.

Syllable structure

Due to the presence of vowel-less words, sometimes entirely voiceless (e.g. t-fk-t=stt 'you gave it') Tashelhiyt poses a difficulty regarding syllabification. Some regart all consonants as possible nuclei, while another opinion is that schwa serves as the phonetic realization of the syllable nucleus.

Pronouns

Tashelhiyt pronouns distinguish between male and female gender in both singular and plural forms of the second and third person. There are several sets of pronouns, each for different contexts. Five common paradigms are given below. The first paradigm of possessive pronouns is used for some specific associative relations such as kinship terms (e.g. baba-k 'your (m) father', 'our father') and spatial relation terms, as in 'its underpart' (lit. in-under-its). The second set of possessive pronouns consists of the preposition nn 'of' and the first paradigm, e.g. tigmmi-nn-k 'your (f) house' (lit. house of you), aydi-nn-sn 'their (m) dog' (lit. dog of them (m)). The 3sm independent pronoun ntta 'he' may be shortened to ntt. The 3sf direct object pronoun appears as stt after a dental stop, e.g. krfat stt 'shackle her!' and also after the particle 'ad'. The 1s possessive pronoun has several allomorph

Allomorph

An allomorph is a linguistics term for a variant form of a morpheme. The concept occurs when a unit of meaning can vary in sound without changing meaning. It is used in linguistics to explain the comprehension of variations in sound for a specific morpheme.-Allomorphy in English suffixes:English...

s; after a consonant, the form inu is used and after a vowel the form nu. The final u is realized as w when followed by a vowel-initial word.

Some pronominal paradigms in Tashelhiyt

	Independent	Direct object	Indirect object	Possessive 1	Possessive 2
1s	nekk(in)	yyi
-ø	(i)nu
2sm	keyy(in)	k	a-k
nn-k
2sf	kemm(in)	km	a-m
nn-m
3sm	netta(n)	t	a-s
nn-s
3sf	nettat	(s)tt	a-s
nn-s
1p
2pm			a-wen
nn-un
2pf			a-went
nn-unt
3pm	n(it)tni	ten	a-sen
nn-sen
3pf	n(i)tenti	tent	a-sent
nn-sent
s = singular, p = plural, m = male, f = female, ø = zero morpheme.

Nouns

Nouns are marked for gender, number, and case. There are two genders, masculine and feminine.
There are several ways to mark plural

Plural

Plural, commonly abbreviated pl., is a grammatical number, typically referring to more than one of the referent in the real world. In the English language, singular and plural are the only grammatical numbers.-English:...

ity in Tashelhiyt. Common plural formations are:

• the affixation of i-…-n for masculine nouns starting in a, or ti-…-in for feminine nouns starting with ta-, e.g. a-fullus 'rooster, cock' > i-fullus-n or ta-gan-t 'forest' > ti-gan-in.
• several kinds of vowel change, for example a…a…u > i…u…a (a-gayyu 'head' > i-guyya) or
• in ethnonyms and loanwords, prefixation of the word id or ida, (id-bllarj 'stork
  Stork
  Storks are large, long-legged, long-necked wading birds with long stout bills, belonging to the family Ciconiidae. They are the only family in the biological order Ciconiiformes, which was once much larger and held a number of families....
  
  s' < Gr
  Greek language
  Greek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical...
  
  . pelargos; ida ssur 'walls' < Arabic, ida wsmlal 'the Ida Ousemlal people' < asmlal sg.). The use of ida is a characteristic feature of poetic language.

Sometimes a combination of vowel change and affixation is used, e.g. ilf 'wild boar' > alfiwn or ass 'day' > ussan. Double consonants are often shortened and single consonants doubled, e.g. a-fus 'hand' > i-fass-n, a-gllid 'king' > i-gld-an.

Tashelhiyt nouns come in two cases, commonly called état libre (EL) and état d'annexion (EA), that are marked by prefixes. A noun appears in the état d'annexion in a number of syntactic contexts. The most important among these is when the noun occurs as a subject in postverbal position, e.g. isu wa 'the horse drinks', y-azzl wu-ššn 'the jackal (u-ššn) runs', or tnwa t-fiyyi 'the meat (ti-fiyyi) is cooked, done'. Nouns are also in the état d'annexion after numerals and most prepositions: sin wu-lawn 'two hearts (u-lawn, sg. ul)', tamart n u-rgaz 'beard of the man (a-rgaz)', ifta s dar 'he went to the woman '.

In most other cases, nouns have the état libre or unmarked case; this is also the form in which the noun would appear in a dictionary. Nouns starting with u or tu in the état libre have wu and tu in the état d'annexion. Other forms cannot simply be predicted from the unmarked form, cf. for example a-fus (EL), u-fus (EA) 'hand' but a-fud (EL), wa-fud (EA) 'knee', and ta-gra (EL), t-gra (EA) 'bowl' but ta-ɣla (EL), (EA) 'lamb'. Another term for the état d'annexion is état construit or construct state.

Verbs

Verbs carry the person, number and gender information of their subject in the form of affixes. There are four inflectional forms of the verb, traditionally called aorist, preterite, negative preterite and intensive. The basic opposition is between the aorist, a non-past form which lacks further tense information, and the preterite which often conveys past tense. The intensive (usually called inaccomplit in French) encodes habitual and/or durative/continuative aspect. It is often preceded by a particle ar, for instance in ar ttsisn waman (lit. ar cook:3pm:INT water:EA) 'the water is cooking'A term introduced by Paulette Galand-Pernet as cited in vd. Boogert 1997:52.. In texts, a sequence of aorist verb forms usually follows after the initial setting of tense by an imperfect or intensive verb form.

A relative form of the verb, usually called participle, is used in relative clauses. It looks like the preterite form of the verb, with affixes added for person and number: i-...-n for 3rd person singular (y-...-n with vowel-initial verbs), and -in for 3rd person plural. For example, the relative forms of ili 'to be' (with preterite form lli) are illan and llanin for singular and plural, respectively. A singular imperative consists of the bare form of the verb without any affixes (fssa! 'be silent, sg'); in the plural, the imperative distinguishes between masculine and feminine by means of the affixes -at and -amu, respectively.

Stative verbs, verbs expressing qualities, are characterized by initial i- in the aorist, e.g. 'be big (aorist)', imim 'be sweet (aorist)', ili 'be, exist (aorist)'. The aorist form of stative verbs usually has a subjunctive or counter-factual reading, whereas the preterite form (characterized by gemination of the consonant, e.g. lli/lla 'be (pret.)') generally is used to express a (current) state of affairs, e.g. llan islman ɣ isaffn (be:PRET:3pm fish:pm in river) 'there are fishes in the river'. Tashelhiyt has only few simple adjective

Adjective

In grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntactic role is to modify a noun or pronoun, giving more information about the noun or pronoun's referent...

s; the most common adjectival construction is the relative form of a stative verb, as in (man PTC:sg:m-be.big-PTC:sg:m) 'big man'.

Derived verb forms exist: a causative

Causative

A causative form, in linguistics, is an expression of an agent causing or forcing a patient to perform an action or to be in a certain condition--salient cause, is an expression of a patient involves in a non-volitional event that registers the changes of its state--salient effect, is an...

 s, medial

Medial

- Medial magmas :In abstract algebra, a medial magma is a set with a binary operation which satisfies the identity, or more simply, using the convention that juxtaposition has higher precedence...

 m (or nasal), and passive

Passive

Passive is the opposite of active. It has several specific meanings:* Passive voice of a verb* Passivation is the formation of a non-reactive surface film that inhibits further corrosion of a metal* Passive language, a kind of metalanguage...

 tt... can be recognized, as in muddu 'travel' from ddu go' + medial, or smugr 'meet each other' from gr 'touch' + causative + medial. However, derivation is no longer productive, i.e. speakers no longer consciously produce causatives, medials, or passives by applying derivative morphology to verbs.

Prepositions

Most prepositions have a short and a long form. The long form is used with pronominal suffixes, and the short form is used in all other contexts, e.g. nniga-s 'on top of him/her', nnig- tgmmi 'on top of the house'. A common colocation is s-dar 'to' as in s-dar tgmmi 'to the house'. Most of the prepositions require the following noun to be in the état d'annexion; only ar 'until' and some prepositions of Arabic origins such as bɛd 'after' and qbl 'before' are exceptions to this rule. Examples: ddu tafukt 'under the sun (EA)', wayyur n šuttanbir 'in the month (EA) September', ifškan n tgmmi 'the things of the house (EA)', s wuzzal 'by means of the iron (EA)', but ar assf n ljaza 'until the Day (EL) of Judgment', qbl iḍ 'before the night (EL)'.

Tashelhiyt prepositions (v.d. Boogert 1997:284)

short form	long form	translation equivalent
d	id-	'with, in the company of'
dar	dar-	'at, by'
ddu	ddaw-, ddawa-	'beneath, under'
f	flla-	'on; because of'
gr	gra-	'between'
	gi-, gig-	'in'
i	a-	'for, to'
n	nn-	'of'
nnig	nniga-	'on top of'
s	is-	'with, by means of'
	zgi-, zgig-	'from'
s	sr-	'to'
ar	—	'until'

Numbers

In Tashelhiyt, as in most Northern Berber languages, the number system is permeated with Arabic numbers. The original cardinal numbers (one to ten) are yan, sin, , , smmus, , sa, ttam, , mraw, but they are increasingly rare. Van den Boogert (1997) argues some of these to be of Phoenician-Punic origin. As with nouns, feminine forms are derived from the masculine: yat (irregular), snat (irregular), , kkuṣt, smmust, etc. Nouns following cardinals from 1 to 10 are in the état d'annexion. Above ten, they are not pluralized and n 'of' precedes the noun: contrast (four EA-day.pl) 'four days' with (three and ten of EA-jackal) 'thirteen jackals'. In the tens, Arabic numerals are used, e.g. ɛšrin 'twenty', tltin 'thirty', etc. Tens are combined with Arabic units. Sometimes cardinals behave like nouns in that they are countable as well: (two pl-twenty of EA-houses) 'forty houses'. Ordinal numbers are constructed by use of wiss (m) or tiss plus the cardinal number, e.g. 'the third (m)'.

Vocabulary

Like all Berber languages, Tashelhiyt has absorbed quite some Arabic vocabulary, especially in the religious domain.

Sample text

Source of this short text: Stroomer 1995.

The story of the man who sold honey in the souk

Souk

A souq is a commercial quarter in an Arab or Berber city. The term is often used to designate the market in any Arabized or Muslim city...

. ¹ A man was filling some leather bags of honey in the souk. ² There came another man to him, who wanted to buy honey. He said: "At how much do you sell that honey?" ³ The seller said to him: "Just taste it, and if it pleases you, make a bid." ⁴ The man took a bag, poured out some, tasted the honey and gave it back to its owner; he said: "Please hold it, so that I can try another one". ⁵ The seller held it in his hand, the buyer took another bag, poured out some, tasted the honey and gave it back to its owner, ⁶ who held it in his other hand. Then the man took another bag of honey and ran away. The seller could not do anything because of the bags he held. ⁷ He called for help until they liberated him.

[Word for word translation:] Story of one man who selling honey in souk. ¹ One man he.fill some leather.bags of honey in souk. ² He.came there to.him one man, want to him buy honey. He.say to.him: "How.much is.it you.sell honey that?" ³ He.say to.him: "Taste it, if to.you it.please then about.her speak. ⁴ He.take man there one leather.bag, he.pour-out it, he.taste honey, he.give it to owner its, he.say to.him: "Hold, until (ar kiɣ) I.test another. ⁵ He.hold it in hand his, he.take again seller that another, he.pour-out it, he.taste honey, he.give it again to owner its. ⁶ He.hold it in hand his other, he.take seller one bag of honey, he.run, he.not-able owner.of honey what to he.do because leather.bags that he.held. ⁷ Then he.call to people that him they.liberate.

External links

- see Chapter 3, section 2

• WALS - Tashlhiyt
• Tashelhiyt Music
• Sous Music
• Atlas Music
• John Coleman, 'Epenthetic vowels in Tashlhiyt Berber' (includes sound samples)
• Berber folktales including many Tashelhit folktales