Geminate! Sonority beyond syllables

Résumé En

Tashlhiyt has played an important role in theories of syllable structure, because it exhibits many words consisting exclusively of consonants. Based on this property, Dell and Elmedlaoui (1985, 2002) argued that any segment in Tashlhiyt – even a voiceless obstruent – can act as the nucleus of a syllable (see also Boukous 1987, and Ridouane 2008). Their analysis showed that vowelless words with exactly the same number of consonants can display different syllabic structure: For instance, smd 'add' is viewed as monosyllabic [sm̩d], as opposed to disyllabic lmd 'learn' [l̩.md̩]. The proposed difference was used in accounting for the gemination pattern of the imperfective; according to Dell & Elmedlaoui 1988, gemination systematically targets the consonant that is syllabified in the onset position, namely C1 in monosyllabic verbs [sːmd], and C2 in disyllabic verbs [lmːd]. This analysis is not without difficulties. First, it claims that Tashlhiyt has a highly unusual pattern, where a morphological operation targets an onset constituent, which may or may not coincide with the word-initial position. Second, it is not the case that all verbs displaying a consonant in the onset position undergo gemination, as explicitly noted by Lahrouchi (2010: 270). In this talk, I will reexamine the problem of imperfective gemination and, in doing so, address the following issues:- Assuming that morphology is additive and linear, what kind of morpheme is gemination?- What does such an operation tell about the phonology of Tashlhiyt?In addition, I will argue that sonority, which underlies the organization of consonantal roots in Tashlhiyt, allows determining not only the consonant that geminates in the imperfective but also the entire class of verbs that resort to gemination. The sonority scale to be used requires distinguishing between obstruents and sonorants, without any other intermediate level (contra. Dell & Elmedlaoui 2002: 98). Further evidence in support of this proposal will be provided from loanword adaptation (Lahrouchi 2020) and from the perception of vowelless words (Zellou, Lahrouchi & Bensoukas 2024).