Syllabification and phonological rule application in Tashlhiyt Berber

Abstract

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.