1

Tashlhiyt Berber syllabification within the Onset Prominence representational environment

Geoffrey Schwartz – UAM Poznań

0 Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of Tashlhiyt Berber syllabification in the Onset Prominence

(OP) representational framework. With a structural perspective on manner of articulation, OP

captures the apparent role of sonority in TB syllabification. It is shown, however, that this

does not entail the assignment of “peak” status to the most sonorous available segments in a

given string. Sonority based “peak” assignment cannot account for the ambiguous behavior

exhibited by syllables in with the “peak” is less sonorous than its “onset”, and makes

infelicitous predictions with regard to the behavior of “onsetless” syllables. By contrast, the

OP environment provides mechanisms in which such ambiguities fall out from more general

principles of constituent formation.

1 Introduction

In the study of phonotactics, Tashlhiyt Berber (TB) is a fundamental hurdle that any

theoretical proposal must overcome. The crucial observation is that any segment type may

occupy the “nuclear” position of a “syllable”.1 At the same time, the choice of syllabic peaks

is subject to systematic restrictions in which the traditional sonority hierarchy has been

claimed to play a primary role. On a more general level, data from TB have served as

ammunition in theoretical debates about the nature of phonological representation and

computation. Most notably, Prince & Smolensky (1993) used TB syllabification to introduce

Optimality Theory (OT) and explicate their view that a constraint-based account of

phonological computation is superior to rule-based analyses requiring serial derivations found

in Dell & Elmedlaoui (henceforth D&E; 1985).

TB has also attracted the attention of phoneticians investigating whether obstruent-

only syllables contain underlying vowels that may surface phonetically (Coleman 2001;

Ridouane 2008). This latest research has spawned something of a disagreement about

whether syllables with obstruent nuclei really exist, as well as how to interpret certain surface

schwas with questionable phonological status. Despite disagreements both phonetic and

phonological, researchers have largely shared a single fundamental aim – to explain TB

syllabification phenomena in terms of traditional views on the structure of syllabic

constituents. Syllables are commonly assumed to be constructed around their peaks or nuclei,

and a primary goal has been to explain how obstruents may appear in nuclear position.

While a great deal of attention has been given to the issue of syllabic peaks, there is

reason to believe that the demarcation of syllable margins plays a more significant role in TB

syllabification. Prince & Smolensky’s constraint-based analysis relies on two constraint

hierarchies, a peak hierarchy that regulates the type of segments that may occupy the nuclear

position, and a margin hierarchy that defines well-formed onsets and codas. In their analysis,

all members of the margin hierarchy are ranked above all members of the peak hierarchy.

Additionally, there are cases of uncertainty with regard to peak assignment. Thus, “a

sequence /nʃ/ must represent a syllable, but he [Elmedlaoui] cannot decide whether the nasal

or the sibilant fricative is the peak (D&E 1985:115)”. If peak assignment were really the

driving force behind syllabification in TB, we would not expect such ambiguities to arise.

This paper will argue that it is possible to model TB syllabification without any

1 All terms related to syllables and traditional syllabic positions (“syllabic”, “onset”, “nucleus”, “coda”, etc.) are

used here solely for descriptive convenience. Consistency demands that these labels should always appear in

quotation marks. For the purposes of convenience and readability, however, this has not been done.

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reference whatsoever to syllabic peaks. Since phonology is concerned with discreteness, and

discreteness is defined in terms of boundaries, it might be reasonable to question whether the

“nucleus”, the only syllabic position that does not by definition define a boundary, should

play any role in the delineation of phonological constituents. At the very least, excising peak

hierarchies from the grammar might offer a simpler, more elegant explanation of the TB

syllabification facts, while at the same time allowing us to avoid the problems inherent in

claiming that sonority is a formal phonological entity (see Ohala 1992, Harris 2006).

Data from TB syllabification will be employed here to advance an alternative view of

phonological constituency. The Onset Prominence (OP; Schwartz 2013) representational

environment builds on insights into the structural nature of segmental phonology, in

particular manner of articulation (Steriade 1993, Golston & van der Hulst 1999, Pöchtrager

2006). A preview of the basic building block of OP structures is given in (1).

(1) Preview of universal CV constituent in the OP representational environment

This structure represents the functional equivalent of a universal CV, and acts as the prosodic

frame for segmental representations. Each level of the hierarchy in (1) is defined as a specific

phonetic event associated with a stop-vowel sequence. The first relevant event is the closure

(Closure) of the stop. The release of the stop produces a portion of aperiodic noise (Noise).

Noise is followed by a significant rise in amplitude (Vocalic Onset), after which we may

observe a portion of relatively stable formant frequencies (Vocalic Target).2 A stop-vowel

sequence will contain all four layers of the structure. Place and laryngeal specifications attach

to the terminal nodes.3

We shall see that the Berber facts may be accounted for in the OP framework in a

straightforward and intuitive way. The crucial claim is that all segments in TB, including

consonants, are specified with a built-in Vocalic Target (VT) node from the tree in (1). In

other words, each segmental structure is derived from its own autonomous CV “syllable”.

Syllabic consonants result from the submersion of a consonantal tree beneath the VT node of

the preceding constituent. This submersion process is a sort of phonological recursion (cf. van

der Hulst 2010) that is related to the process by which coda consonants are formed. However,

these “syllabic” consonants are not “codas”, nor are they “nuclei” – these terms have no

formal status in the OP environment. They are consonantal structures that have undergone

submersion, a process that is motivated by well-formedness requirements of prosodic

constituents.

The rest of this paper will proceed as follows. Section 2 will provide a brief

introduction to the OP environment, motivating its assumptions and illustrating its

2 With regard to Vocalic Target, “relatively” is a key word here. In natural speech, spectral steady states are often

not reached due to the effects of coarticulation, so the label represents a slightly more idealized phonetic

event than the labels of the higher nodes. 3 Our primary focus will be on the structural properties of OP representations. Segmental symbols are used as

shorthand for place and laryngeal specifications, which are beyond the scope of this paper.

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representations and mechanisms. Section 3 will briefly review the syllabication data from TB.

Section 4 presents the OP analysis of TB syllabification. Section 5 will conclude by

comparing the OP perspective with previous approaches based on sonority-based peak

assignment.

2 The OP environment

This section will provide an introduction to the OP representational environment. In 2.1 we

will motivate the assumptions concerning the hierarchical levels occupied by consonants and

vowels. In 2.2 the structures of individual segments will be presented. In 2.3 we will

introduce the relevant mechanisms in OP constituent formation, as well as some constraints

on their application.

2.1 Consonants and vowels in the OP representational hierarchy

A common empirical observation, one which obtains in the vast majority of the world’s

languages, is that a “syllable” must contain a vowel. As a consequence, most theorists have

adopted the view that a vowel represents an obligatory “nucleus” of a syllable. This

perspective implies that vowels are somehow take precedence over consonants in the

organization of phonological systems. This primacy of vowels, however, may be at odds with

functional considerations – across languages far more lexical contrasts are defined by

consonants. In other words, consonants generally bear more of the meaning of an utterance

than vowels. This notion is reflected in the fact that an SMS text message containing only

consonant letters is ndrstndbl4 in most languages, while one containing only vowel letters is

very difficult to oee.5 The meaning-bearing capacity of consonants, which finds a parallel in

the morphological patterns of Semitic languages, is described by van der Hulst (2010: 306),

who characterizes consonants as “lexical units” and vowels as “functional units”. It is

therefore reasonable to suggest that a desirable goal for any theory of phonological

competence should be to encode the greater load that consonants bear in the formation of a

language’s lexicon. The question that remains is the following. How can we reconcile the

functional primacy of consonants with the obligatory nature of vowels?

Research into speech perception suggests an answer (for a review, see e.g. Wright et

al. 1997). A common theme in the perception literature is the role that vowels play for

listeners in the identification of neighboring consonants. Briefly stated, vowels may act as

acoustic background, offering robust formant structure that houses transitional cues to

consonant identification (Wright 2004). From this perspective, a major role of vowels is the

transmission of the linguistic message, while consonants constitute a greater fraction of the

message itself. To capture this notion, the Onset Prominence representational environment is

not built up from vocalic nuclei that project to higher levels or license the appearance of

consonants. Strictly speaking, in the OP environment syllabic nuclei do not exist. Rather, the

function of vowels as a transmission device is reflected in the fact that they are housed at the

lowest levels of the OP hierarchy, while the greater lexical role of consonants is expressed in

terms of their higher-level structural positions.

The hierarchy in (1) suggests an analogy with an additional principle of speech

perception. Researchers have observed a perceptual boost at stimulus onset that is manifested

in heightened auditory response, followed by a period of decay in perceptual sensitivity.

Wright (2004: 44; Figure 2.4) presents a schematic diagram of auditory response projected on

4 understandable

5 comprehend

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an acoustic representation of a CVC syllable. In this representation, the onset consonant

corresponds with the perceptual boost, while a decline in auditory sensitivity takes place over

the course of the vowel until a point of saturation is reached. This schema has a clear parallel

in the OP environment. Vowels are relegated to lower layers of structure because they are the

only segments that are acoustically robust enough to overcome auditory saturation and be

audible in perceptually dull portions of the signal.

In sum, the hierarchical organization of consonants and vowels in the OP environment

is derived from a sequence of concrete phonetic events associated with a stop-vowel

sequence, the most common syllable type across languages. This configuration is also

suggestive of functional considerations by which the status of vowels as linguistic units is

subordinate to that of consonants. At this point it should be mentioned that despite parallels

with phonetic considerations that have been and will be drawn, the representations to be

advocated in this paper are phonological. I assume that speakers’ transform the

representational hierarchy into an abstract prosodic structure. The OP environment is a

phonological entity that may be manipulated in ways that may not have obvious phonetic

motivation. Our account of TB syllabification will rely on processes in which segmental

structures are moved from one layer of the structure in (1) to another. We might speculate that

such processes may arise from discrepancies between the acoustic signal and OP structures.

These postulates may allow us to create new hypotheses for future phonetic study. For the

time being, however, our focus is phonological representation.

2.2 Manner and sonority

Before addressing the question of syllabification, we must first examine the relationship

between prosodic constituents and the representation of individual segments within the OP

environment. In the primitive constituent in (1), manner of articulation is built directly into

the structures of individual segments. Manner is a structural property (cf. Aperture Theory,

Steriade 1993), defined by the nodes contained in an individual segmental tree. This is

shown in the set of trees in (2), illustrating, from left to right a labial stop, nasal, fricative,

approximant, and vowel.

(2) Manner contrasts in the OP environment

The binary nodes indicate the levels of the hierarchy occupied by individual segment types.

The unary nodes act as placeholders to define the levels of the representational hierarchy. The

segmental symbols may be interpreted as shorthand for place and laryngeal specifications.

The specifications are assigned at the highest level binary node associated with a given

manner of articulation and “trickle” down the trees until they reach a lower-level annotation.

The details of the “trickling” process may be established on the basis of phonetic

considerations, but will not be fully addressed in this paper. Suffice it to say that those

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positions in the tree below the melodic specification are not “empty” in the sense of empty

categories found in other frameworks. Thus, for the stop /p/ we assume that the labial

specification is present, at least latently, in all three active nodes of the structure: Closure,

Noise, and VO. This is intended as a reflection of the fact that the acoustic effects of a labial

closure in /p/ in (2) are typically present in the noise spectrum of the release burst (on the

Noise node), as well as the formant transitions in initial portion of the following vowel (the

VO node).6

In (2), manner of articulation is shown as a function of the structural nodes active in a

given segmental tree. Stops contain Closure, Noise, and VO (formant transitions). Nasals lack

an aperiodic noise element, so the Noise node is not active in /m/. Fricatives lack complete

closure, so the Closure node is not active in /f/. Approximants such as /w/ contain the Vocalic

Onset node (VO), but are missing the top two nodes associated with obstruents. Vowels are

specified under the Vocalic Target (VT) node. The trees in (2) allow for a non-arbitrary and

unified representation of two commonly invoked yet difficult to define phonological

phenomena: sonority and consonantal strength. Stronger, less sonorous segments occupy

higher levels of the representational hierarchy, while more sonorous segments are at the

bottom.7

The structures in (2) contain a number of potential representational ambiguities that

may serve as parameter settings for individual languages. For example, the VO node may or

may not be present in vowel representations. This parameter that captures the ambiguous

behavior of onsetless syllables (Schwartz 2013), which in some langauges appear to be

prosodically deficient (cf. Downing 1998). Other ambiguities in the OP hierarchy can account

for language specific behavior with regard to sonority and manner specifications. For

example, Rubach & Booij (1990: 123) argue that Polish does not show sonority distinctions

between stops and fricatives. Such behavior is suggested by the unary Closure node in the

fricative representation in (2). If the unary Closure node is pruned, the fricative structure may

be “promoted” to the Closure level.8 Given this type of ambiguity, it should be noted that

although OP representations allow us to derive sonority and strength generalizations, such

generalizations should not be seen as a universal part of phonological grammars. Rather, they

emerge on a language-specific basis from the universal hierarchy in (1).

2.3 From segments to constituents

The relations between manner and prosodic constituency may be gleaned from (3), an

illustration of the segmental string and prosodic representation of the English word quick. On

the left we see the individual segmental structures. The stops occupy the top two layers of

6 The status of unannotated nodes may be thought of in terms of a carrier signal in Modulation Theory

(Traunmüller 1994). In most implementations of the theory, the carrier is seen as a periodic schwa-like

vocoid. In the OP approach, the phonetic shape of the carrier is determined by the hierarchy. 7 With regard to the representation of strength, the OP approach allows for an explicit account of consonant

lenition and fortition. Lenition in its most basic form eliminates the highest node of a consonantal tree,

turning stops into fricatives and fricatives into approximants. This approach also can handle a problem

encountered by earlier accounts in which lenition is defined terms of sonority promotion (for discussion see

Harris 2009): weakening of fricatives never produces nasals. This restriction is predicted with OP

representations, in which stops and nasals share a high-level closure node. In other words, fricatives are

lower than nasals in the OP hierarchy, so naturally their weakening could not yield nasals. Debuccalization

processes are typically described as lenitions. In the OP environment debuccalization is the loss of a place

specification. The degree to which debuccalization may be unified with other lenition process in the OP

environment is beyond the scope of this paper and must be left for future work. The same can be said for

processes by which voiced stops weaken to nasals, which entails the loss of the Noise node. 8 Promotion is subject to parametric variation that will not play a direct role in our account of TB.

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structure, Closure and Noise. The /w/ is housed at the VO layer. The vowel attaches at the

bottom of the tree. In other words, stops are the highest level structures, followed by

fricatives, sonorant consonants, and vowels. The “syllabified” constituent is shown on the

right. We shall address the final /k/ in quick shortly.

(3) Segmental structures and the Onset hierarchy in English quick

In its most basic form, OP constituent formation entails the absorption of a lower-level vowel

into a preceding higher-level consonant to form a CV. This is shown in (4). On the left we see

individual structures for /t/ and /a/ joined by an arrow designating absorption. The fully

formed /ta/ constituent is seen on the right. As the basic constituent-forming operation in the

OP environment, absorption may be expected whenever structural configurations allow it,

subject to certain restrictions that will be discussed shortly.

(4) Absorption

In the representation of quick in (3) we see that sonorant consonants may be absorbed into

higher-level obstruents to produce rising sonority onset clusters.9 Absorption in the OP

environment thus allows to capture at least some of the empirical insights of the sonority

sequencing generalization (SSG; e.g. Selkirk 1984), without the need to grant any formal

status to sonority.

In the representation of quick shown in (3), the final /k/ containing high-level Closure

and Noise nodes may not be absorbed into the preceding constituent. It is also is unable to

stand alone as a prosodic constituent. It may therefore be submerged under the preceding

structure as in (5).

(5) Submersion of final /k/ in English quick

9 Obstruent-nasal clusters are not formed by means of absorption, so it might be more precise to avoid the term

“rising sonority” clusters.

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The submersion process shown in (5) raises the possibility of recursion discussed in van der

Hulst (2010), who investigates analogies between phonology and syntax. He proposes a

configuration in which both codas and unstressed syllables in a trochaic foot are

complements to the nucleus. In doing so he makes a revealing argument against the

traditional view that there is no recursion in phonological constituency.

This analogy indeed invites the question why ‘complements’ within the syllable are not syllables, just

like the complements in syntactic phrases? It would seem that the apparent lack of recursion within the

syllable is an artifact of using the labels that we traditionally use. If the right labels are used we see that

. . . . ‘codas’ are ‘syllables inside syllables’ (van der Hulst 2010: 309-310).

A question that must be addressed is this point is to what degree absorption and submersion

may be restricted. In this regard, let us first consider absorption. Unrestricted absorption

entails an implication that every sequence in which the segment to the left is lower in sonority

should be able to form an onset cluster. This prediction, of course, does not hold. Stop-

fricative onset clusters are quite uncommon across languages, and stop-fricative-sonorant

clusters are even more rare. Clearly absorption must be restricted, and in a moment we shall

describe a major restriction on absorption that will play a crucial role in our analysis of TB.

With regard to submersion, not all “coda” consonants are the result of submersion. In some

languages, “codas” are adjoined to the syllable at a higher level of structure. Submersion of

codas is a parametric decision that has implications for the weight of CVC syllables.10

The motivation for the both absorption and submersion in quick should be clear from

the structures in (3). Without these processes, the individual segmental structures would be

forced stand alone as prosodic constituents. The prosodic motivation of absorption may be

expressed as a well-formedness condition for prosodic constituents. A preliminary version is

given in (4).

(4) MINIMALCONSTITUENT (MC) 11

– A well-formed prosodic constituent must contain

melodic specification assigned both below and above the VT level.

The MC condition on the well-formedness of OP constituents does the duty of constraints

requiring syllable peaks and onset consonants. Note that the MC condition as it is formulated

stipulates that vowel-initial syllables may be prosodically ill-formed, depending on the

parametric status of the VO node (see Schwartz 2013). We will return to this issue in our

analysis of TB, in which onsetless syllables are restricted to phrase-initial position.

10

Submersion is also responsible for long vowels (see Schwartz 2013), which provides another link with weight

phenomena. 11

The exact formulation of MC should be a language-specific matter. For example, English demands a coda or a

long vowel in stressed rhymes, suggesting a demand for at least two layers of structure below the VT level.

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2.3.1 Further restrictions on absorption

In (4), the /kw/ sequence in quick entails the absorption of the VO-level glide into the higher-

level stop structure.12

In the absorbed constituent, two nodes above the VT level contain

melodic specifications. Such a configuration raises the risk of functional overload that may

inhibit listeners’ ability to parse the absorbed structure. Many languages, including TB,

prohibit such configurations, often expressed as a *COMPLEXONSET constraint in OT analyses

that has become textbook material for basic phonology courses. As it happens, restrictions on

onset clusters may be somewhat more complicated, interacting with place specifications. In

English violations of *COMPLEXONSET are possible in clusters such as /kr/ and /pl/, but */tl/

and */bw/ are impossible. The OP environment offers a useful perspective on such

restrictions. Stated briefly, from the OP perspective *COMPLEXONSET mitigates against

melodic ambiguities on the VO node resulting from the fusion of obstruent and approximant

strucures. These melodic ambiguities may assumed be derived from auditory considerations.

With regard to */tl/, /t/ and /l/ may be associated with a high third formant (Harris et al. 1958;

Stevens 1997) on the CV transition. The sequence */bw/ is disfavored because /b/ and /w/ are

marked by a lowered second formant. If such structures are absorbed, listeners may have a

hard time parsing the segmental affiliation of the formant transition.

This ambiguity is illustrated in (9), which shows a prohibited *tl onset cluster in English. The

segmental symbols are accompanied by a description of the auditory cue associated with both

/t/ and /l/: a high third formant. Note this kind of ambiguity difficult to express with

traditional representations based on a linear string. In the OP environment, on the other hand,

the VO node is a built-in element of both members of the cluster, and the functional difficulty

is predicted.

(9) Initial absorbed *tl cluster

The status of stop-liquid clusters in English suggests that in the OP environment

*COMPLEXONSET restrictions might be comprised of an entire family of constraints. For

English, the ban is limited to melodic specifications with similar acoustic effects. For TB, in

which all onset clusters are banned, the constraint is more restrictive. It is formulated for TB

in (10).

(10) *COMPLEXONSET – No more than or more one segment’s melodic specifications may be

housed at the VO level or above.

We now have assembled the necessary mechanisms and constraints required for our analysis

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Flat and falling sonority clusters, as well as obstruent-nasal clusters, are not the result of absorption. They

arise from a distinct adjunction process that is not relevant for this paper, since the two members of any such

cluster in TB may never form a complex onset.

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of TB syllabification in the OP environment. The MC condition motivates absorption and

submersion in constituent formation, the former of which is restricted by the

*COMPLEXONSET constraint. In our analysis of TB, we shall that this restriction motivates an

additional form of submersion that produces “syllabic” consonants.

3 A brief review of the TB syllabification patterns

The empirical facts regarding TB syllabification have received a good deal of attention, so we

will only give a brief summary here. The TB language has a rich system of consonants. It

includes four obstruent series (plain voiced, voiced pharyngealized, plain voiceless, and

voiceless pharyngealized), with only a few gaps, at most major places of articulation: labial,

dental, palato-alveolar, velar, uvular, epiglottal, and glottal. There are also plain and

pharyngealized sonorant consonants. In addition, all consonants may appear as either

singletons or geminates. By contrast TB only features three vowels, /i a u/. The high vowels /i

u/ are frequently referred to as High Vocoids, which show a syllabicity alternation, appearing

as the glides /j w/ in when they are not nuclear. A first look at syllable structures in D&E’s

initial analysis of TB reveals a number of generalizations given in (11).

(11) TB syllable structure generalizations (Dell & Elmedlaoui 1985, 1988)

All syllables have consonantal onsets, except after a pause

All segments have syllabic and non-syllabic variants with the exception of /a/, which

is always syllabic

Complex onsets do not occur except after a pause

Complex codas do not occur except before a pause

These generalizations may be observed in the following set of data gleaned from Dell &

Elmedlaoui (1985), Clements (1997) and Ridouane (2008), and given in (12). Syllabic peaks

are underlined, while periods mark syllable boundaries.

(12) Examples of TB syllable structures

tl.di ‘pull’ 3rd

f. sg.

tr.ba ‘carry on one's back’ 3rd

f. sg.

tn.da ‘shake’ 3rd

f. sg.

tz.di ‘put together’ 3rd

f. sg.

ts.ti ‘select’ 3rd

f. sg.

tf.tkt ‘you (sg.) suffered a sprain’

ra.tk.ti ‘she will remember’

iʃ.kd ‘broken branch’

txz.nas ‘she stored for him’ (phrase-initial)

it.bd.rin ‘for the cockroaches’

i.xng ‘he has strangled’

irks ‘he hid’ (phrase-final)

i.gi.dr~i.gidr ‘eagle’ (phrase-final)

Dell & Elmedlaoui (1985) develop a rule-based analysis to account for the syllabification

facts. A set of rules, referred to as the Core Syllabification Rule (CSR) builds so-called ‘core

syllables’. A brief illustration is given in (13).

(13) Dell & Elmedlaoui’s (1985) Core Syllabification

CSR /a/ (ra)tkti -

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CSR /i u/ (ra)tk(ti) -

CSR /f/ (tf)tkt

CSR /k/ (ra)(tk)(ti) (tf)(tk)t

Coda rule (tf)(tkt)

The first step of the CSR establishes syllabic peaks. After a peak is assigned, the segment to

its left is designated as an onset. Peak assignment starts with the highest sonority segment /a/

and proceeds down the sonority scale assigning peak status to unsyllabified segments. Later a

Coda rule attaches any leftover segments to the preceding core syllables.

In their early analyses, Dell & Elmedlaoui reported that at phrase edges, onset and

coda clusters may appear. To account for these, they posited two rules of annexation that are

assumed to apply after core syllables have been formed. These rules are fed by the CSR,

suggesting the need for serial derivation in TB grammar. After a pause, onset clusters may be

formed if the first member is a stop. For example, the sequence /gnu/ 'sew' forms the core

syllables g.nu, but is parsed as gnu after a pause. Preceding a pause, syllables with an

obstruent peak and no coda attach to the preceding rhyme: ir.ks > irks ‘he hid’. This

annexation is optional when the pre-pausal syllable has a sonorant consonant as its peak

(i.gi.dr ~ i.gidr; ‘eagle’).

More recent examination of TB metrics (D&E 2002, 2008) suggests that annexation

should not be considered as part of the syllabification algorithm. After a pause, the initial

obstruent in what had been considered an onset cluster (e.g. txz.nas) is in fact parsed as a light

syllable (t.xz.nas). Before a pause, no more than one coda consonant may be parsed into the

metrical structure. One question that should therefore be addressed is how such discrepancies

between metrics and the earlier parses of syllable structure may be described. In other words,

if /t/ in txznas is indeed an autonomous syllable, why was /tx/ perceived as an onset cluster?

Similarly, if ks in irks is indeed a syllable, why was it not heard as one in earlier descriptions?

We shall see that the answer to these lies in representational ambiguities that are derivable

within the OP environment.

4. TB syllabification in the OP environment

This section will provide the heart of the OP analysis of TB syllabification. We start in 4.1. by

making some preliminary remarks and outlining the key representational feature by which TB

is claimed to differ from the vast majority of other languages. In 4.2. we describe two

different mechanisms by which syllabic consonants may arise, as well as the implications of

these mechanisms. This is followed in 4.3 by discussion of phrase-edges and the previous

claims of annexation. The section concludes in 4.4 with an account of stop release behavior

and the representation of geminates in TB

4.1 Preliminaries

An important observation about TB syllabification is that every segment with the exception

of /a/ has “syllabic” and “non-syllabic” allophones.13

This means that a primary goal of any

analysis should be to capture the relationship between the two types of allophone. In addition,

sonority appears to play a role determining consonant syllabicity. Since the OP environment

eliminates both syllabic “peaks” and “sonority”, it is necessary to show how these

generalizations may be expressed with OP representations.

13

See Ridouane (2008) for evidence, both phonetic and phonological, that obstruent-only syllables in TB do not

have a vocalic nucleus.

11

The appearance of syllabic consonants in TB is facilitated by a single representational

claim. We assume that all consonants are specified with a VT node. In other words, each

consonant may be thought to have a “built-in vowel”, and represent an autonomous CV

syllable. This is shown in (14), which shows three different structures for a stop /k/. The tree

on the left represents the structure observed in most languages in which syllabic stops are

absent. The tree on the right is the stop in TB.

(14) Stop structure in most languages (left) vs. TB (right)

The /k/ in TB is structurally equivalent to a CV, but lacks melodic annotation under the VT

node. Thus, although the TB stop contains the same amount of structure as a CV, it is not a

well-formed prosodic constituent as designated by the MC condition in (4).14

The claim that consonants in TB are representationally equivalent to CV syllables has

found phonetic support in recent experimental work on articulatory coordination (Goldstein

et al. 2007, Hermes et al. 2011; see also Shaw et al. 2009 for Moroccan Arabic). Several

studies have observed asynchronous articulation of initial consonant sequences, suggesting

that speakers plan the articulation of each consonant in a cluster as if it were a complete

prosodic unit. The OP environment, in which segments and prosodic constituents are

constructed from the same representational materials, provides a natural expression of this

insight.

4.2 The sources of consonant ‘syllabicity’ in TB

In our analysis, there are two separate mechanisms by which a consonant may appear as

syllabic. There will be cases in which it is not immediately transparent which mechanism is

in play, resulting in ambiguities between two types of syllabic consonants that will be

instrumental in accounting for certain discrepancies that have arisen between previous

analyses.

4.2.1 Syllabic consonants 1 – avoiding complex onsets

In the first mechanism, absorption takes place but results in an illicit onset cluster that is

repaired by submerging the second consonant under the first consonant’s VT node. This

mechanism produces syllables in which the peak is more sonorous than the onset (ts, dr, etc.).

That is, syllabic consonants are formed to satisfy the *COMPLEXONSET constraint. This is

illustrated in our first example, ts.ti ‘she has selected’ (Ridouane 2008). The input string of

14

In phrase-initial position, which is the only position in TB in which syllables may contain only one segment,

the MC condition is satisfied by a process of melodic reassignment. See 4.3.

12

segmental structures is shown in (15).

(15) Segmental structures for ts.ti

The segmental structures in (15) reveal a number of aspects of OP representations and their

application to the TB data. First all, we can see that more sonorous segments are lower-level

structures. The stops are the highest containing closure, the next is /s/ followed by the /i/.

Thus, an aspect of sonority is indeed represented, but it is not given any formal status. Since

sonority-based generalizations are quite robust across languages, but sonority itself is

something of an elusive concept to define (see Ohala 1992, Harris 2006), this should be seen

as a welcome development. In other words, the representations express the generalization, at

least in part, but avoid the circularity inherent in granting formal theoretical status to that

generalization.

A question may arise here about the extent of OP’s empirical coverage of sonority

distinctions. There are of course sonority distinctions across languages that are not obviously

covered here. For example, liquids and glides, both specified at the VO level, are predicted in

the OP environment to be of equal sonority, yet glides are generally accepted to be more

sonorous. However, there is evidence that in cases where glides and liquids behave

differently with regard to sonority effects, those glides are better analyzed as the initial

portion of rhymal diphthongs (see e.g. Smith 2012 for such effects in Korean). In other

words, such rhymal glides are lower in the OP hierarchy. They are housed under the VT node

that replaces the traditional rhymal constituent. In this connection, Davidson and Erker

(2012) provide phonetic evidence that what are traditionally trancribed as inserted glides in

American English vowel sequences are distinct from lexical glides. The non-lexical glides

that are not glottalized show less formant displacement, indicating that they are less

consonantal in nature. Thus, our generalization that “sonorous” means lower in the OP

hierarchy may be applicable to cases where glides behave differently from liquids with regard

to phonotactics.

Indeed, the class of segments described as glides are inherently ambiguous

phonological entities that may show dual phonotactic behavior in a single language (e.g. Yip

2003, Levi 2008, Schwartz 2012). An additional element of this ambiguity is shown in (15) in

the structure of /i/ in ts.ti. In TB there is a robust alternation between glides and high vowels

that parallels the other allophonic variation between other syllabic and non-syllabic

consonants. Thus, we posit a VO-specified, two layer structure for the high front vocoid,

which in ts.ti surfaces as “nuclear” /i/. Note that this structure is distinct from the glide shown

in (2), which only has a single VO node and should not be subject to “syllabicity”

alternations.

In the string in (15) absorption takes place twice. The /i/ is fused with the preceding

/t/, and the /s/ is absorbed into the initial /t/. The absorbed structures are shown in (16). Both

trees in (16) constitute *COMPLEXONSET violations. To repair this, the lower-level segments

13

are submerged under the VT level, as shown by the arrows.

(16) Absorbed structures in ts.ti

The syllabified ts.ti stuctures are shown in (17).

(17) Syllabified ts.ti

In (17), we see syllabic “peaks” under the left daughter of the VT node, which have been

submerged from higher nodes: Noise in the case of /s/ and VO in the case of /i/. The marked

status of these syllabic consonants is reflected in the fact that the structure of the syllables

containing them diverges from that of the primitive constituent shown in (1). An unmarked

CV contains melody under the VT node that determines vowel quality. These structures

contain additional structure under the VT node that has been displaced from higher nodes.

Additional comments on the structures in (17) are warranted at this time. The OP

environment offers a story about how syllabic consonants, which are uncommon across

languages, may be motivated. The prohibition against onset clusters in TB is well-established

both phonetically and phonologically. When combined with VT specification in structures of

consonants, *COMPLEXONSET results in syllabic consonants. *COMPLEXONSET is of course a

common phonotactic restriction across languages. What makes TB unusual is the VT

specification in consonants. That is, our analysis does not predict widespread development of

syllabic consonants across languages. For syllabic consonants to form, *COMPLEXONSET

must be combined with VT specification in consonants, the latter of which is assumed to be

relatively uncommon. In (17) it is also evident why syllabic obstruents are less common than

syllabic sonorants. The syllabic /s/ contains more structure below the VT node than the

syllabic high vocoid, entailing greater structural displacement from the CV building block. As

a result it should be expected to be less commonly encountered.

4.2.2 Syllabic consonants 2: codas without nuclei

14

Comparison of the submersion mechanism shown in (17) with the one illustrated for the final

/k/ in quick shown in (8) reveals a fundamental difference. In the latter case, a consonant has

been submerged into the previous constituent, producing a “coda”, while in the former case

the consonant is submerged under its own VT node, resulting in a “syllabic” consonant. Some

authors (e.g. Coleman 2001) have suggested that syllabic consonants in TB are codas that are

preceded by a nucleus that is not necessarily phonetically realized. The approach presented

here suggests a link between syllabic consonants and codas as marked structures resulting

from submersion. However, a representational distinction is maintained between the

structures under which consonants are submerged.

As it happens, not all “syllabic” consonants in TB may be attributed to the

mechanisms described above for ts.ti. In the case of syllabic consonants that are of equal or

lesser sonority then their “onset”, absorption is impossible – the structure to the left is not

higher in the OP hierarchy – and *COMPLEXONSET violations are not created. In such cases

the same submersion mechanism that produced the coda in quick is results in a syllabic

consonant. What is unusual about these cases in TB is that there is a VT node under which

the consonant is submerged. Submersion thus leaves us with syllables that, translated into

traditional positions, contain an onset and a coda but no nucleus.

To illustrate this process we will consider the form iʃ.kd (Ridoane 2008) ‘broken

branch’. The string of segmental structures is shown in (19), the arrows indicate the segments

that undergo submersion.

(19) Individual segmental structures for iʃ.kd

In (19) the fricative and the voiced stop are not absorbable.15

To produce prosodically well-

formed constituents, they are submerged under the structures of the preceding segments. The

syllabified representation of this word is shown in (20).

(20) Syllabified iʃ.kd

15

In some versions of the sonority scale, voiced obstruents are more sonorant than voiceless ones, a notion with

may explain intervocalic voicing as a sonority-promoting lenition process. However, with regard to cluster

phonotactics, I know of no language that has voiceless obstruent-voiced obstruent onset clusters. Thus, we

posit here that voiced and voiceless stops are structurally equivalent.

15

In previous descriptions of TB, the /d/ in this word is assumed to be nuclear. In the OP

account it is structurally distinct from the “syllabic” /s/ in ts.ti. The /kd/ syllable may be said

to have a “coda”, but lack a “nucleus”. Nevertheless, it satisfies the MC condition with

melody both above and below the VT level.

In sum, we have seen two mechanisms by which syllabic consonants can arise in TB.

The two different mechanisms reflect the OP perspective on sonority distinctions, which is

based based on the possibility of absorpiton. When the “nuclear” consonant may be absorbed

into the preceding structure, it is submerged under its own VT node . Syllabic consonants that

are not absorbable are submerged under the preceding VT nodes, in a similar fashion to

submerged coda consonants.

4.2.3. Multiple submersion and directionality

Since submersion is a form of phonological recursion (cf. van der Hulst 2010), one question

that might be asked at this point is how many times it may be allowed to occur. I would like

to suggest that the answer to this question is related to the exact formulation of the MC

condition in a given language. Submersion happens as many times as is necessary to produce

well-formed prosodic constituents.

In our next example, we shall see two instances of submersion. The form is i.xng ‘he

has strangled’ (Ridouane 2008), The input string is given in (21).

(21) Input string for i.xng

Thus, in (21) the first thing that happens is that the non-minimal /g/ is submerged under the

/n/, producing /ng/. Nasal-stop sequences are perfectly well-formed syllables in TB.

However, the preceding fricative /x/ is not a minimal constituent. To repair this, there are two

possibilities. Either the fricative may be submerged under the preceding vowel, or the /ng/

16

may be submerged under the fricative, as shown in (22)

(22) Submersion of /ng/ sequence in i.xng

It is the latter of these options that produces the attested syllable /xng/, shown in (23).

(23) ‘Syllabified’ i.xng

One issue that must be addressed here is directionality. The Berber data require that

constituent formation proceed from right to left. Right to left constituent formation in the OP

environment may be motivated under the view that parsing is essentially a perceptual process.

Consider the English words fried and Friday. Assuming that listeners parse the words on the

basis of segments,16

the prosodic affiliation of the /d/ will not be known until the end of the

word is heard. That is, prosodic parsing of a segment is based on what that segment precedes.

You don’t know that you’ve heard an “onset” consonant until you hear that it is followed by a

vowel.

The attentive reader will notice, while examining i.xng in (23), that according to our

MC condition, the /i/ is not a prosodically well-formed constituent. Yet it does indeed stand

alone as a syllable. This fact may be attributable to the initial position in which it is located.

We will look at both initial and final positions in detail in 4.3. In the meantime, we shall

consider further implications of our claim that there are two separate mechanisms that

produce ‘syllabic’ consonants in Tashlhiyt Berber.

4.2.4. Implications for Imperfective Gemination

16

Certainly, in most instances there will be plenty of other factors affecting the perception of these words.

17

The discussion so far has centered on two types of submersion producing two types of

“syllabic” consonants in TB. There may be a certain degree of ambiguity between the two

mechanisms. In the OP environment, without a formal nuclear position, the ‘coda’

submersion method shown for iʃ.kd would also produce the correct syllabification of the form

ts.ti. A reviewer of an earlier draft of this paper argues that this is a weak point of the theory;

that there should be clear guidelines for choosing between the two mechanisms. I would

argue, however, that the guidelines are clear and have independent motivation. Absorption, a

universal mechanism forming CV syllables, takes precedence over submersion, which is

parametric. Nevertheless, it must be granted that the TB form ts.ti in principle may be derived

without absorption. We have no way of knowing which kind of syllabic consonant the word

contains.

Despite these issues, I would like to suggest that the ambiguity between complex

onset submersion, induced by absorption, and coda submersion, is indeed a positive

development for our understanding of TB phonology. One reason is that absorption and

submersion are processes that play an independent role in other syllabification phenomena in

addition to consonant syllabicity. Absoprtion forms CV-type syllables as shown in (4), while

submersion produces codas. In other words, absorption and submersion are not stipulations

designed to explain consonant syllabicity. They are mechanisms that work operate in

syllabification more generally. What is unusual about TB is that confusion may arise between

them. More importantly, syllables without vowels in TB appear to be characterized by

ambiguities by which their internal structure cannot immediately be determined on the basis

of segmental content. Recall the example /nʃ/, in which Elmedlaoui is unable to tell which of

the two segments is the nucleus. In the face of such ambiguity, the only adaquate explanation

is one that allows us to generate two parses.

One source of evidence for structural ambiguity in TB morphology is the process of

imperfective gemination, which has received a good deal of attention (D&E 1988, Lahrouchi

2010, D&E 2010). To form imperfective verbs, TB geminates one consonant of a three

consonant stem. Some examples include gzm~gzzm ‘slice off’ and frk~ffrk ‘guess’ (D&E

1988: 13-14). Dell and Elmedlaoui explain the process in terms their syllable-based analysis.

For them the imperfective is formed by geminating the “onset” produced by core

syllabification. For gzm, the Core Syllabification Rule produces g.zm, so the /z/ is geminated.

For frk, the CSR results in a single syllable, so the onset /f/ is geminated.

Lahrouchi (2010) criticizes the syllable-based approach. He notes that many types of

roots predicted to show gemination in the syllable account, in particular those containing only

obstruents, as well as those with only a single sonorant in root-initial positions, tend to form

their imperfectives by affixation. Examples include bzg ‘swell’ and bdg ‘be wet’ and rkz

‘dance’. D&E’s syllabic algorithm predicts their imperfectives should be *bbzg and *bbdg,

and *rkkz, instead of the attested ttbzag, ttbdag and ttrkaz.

Lahrouchi develops a new approach in which roots may form binary branching head-

complement structures. The essential insight in Lahrouchi's analysis is that it is the head

consonant, preferably an obstruent, which gets geminated in imperfective formation. At the

same time, when the consonantal makeup of a root dictates against a head-complement

structure, gemination is predicted to be impossible. For Lahrouchi, roots have no heads when

(a) they contain three obstruents, and (b) they have only a single sonorant that is the initial

consonant in the root. Lahrouchi uses the traditional terms sonorant and obstruent to define

his headed structures, so his designation of headedness appears to be lacking any principled

motivation. One is left to wonder why obstruents make better heads, and whether the reverse

situation is possible.

Onset Prominence representations capture Lahrouchi's prediction that obstruents,

18

since they contain higher-level structure than sonorants, should be more likely to serve as

obligatory elements. However, Dell & Elmedlaoui (2010:26) mention a number of counter-

examples to Lahrouchi's generalizations about which roots may geminate. They cite both

obstruent-only roots that do geminate (fttk ‘sprain’), as well as roots that fit Lahrouchi’s head-

complement structure which do not (tt-mlu ‘be limp’). They conclude that the geminating

status of a root is idiosyncratic, rejecting Lahrouchi’s structural explanation. The OP

approach, in which two distinct mechanisms are available to derive prosodic constituents,

allows for the reconciliation of the conflicting claims of the two previous analyses.

Lahrouchi’s structural insight is captured, yet the possibility of ambuiguity predicts the

occurrence of counterexamples.

4.3 Phrase edges and the annexation problem

In the original works in which their syllabification algorithm is developed, D&E (1985, 1988)

noted exceptional behavior at the boundaries of phrases. Phrase-initial consonant clusters

were said to be possible if the initial consonant is a stop, while final obstruent sequences were

said to form coda clusters. Later works (e.g. Dell & Elmedlaoui 2008) call into question

whether these cases are indeed exceptional. They showed that the ‘annexed’ segments that

formed these putative clusters were parsed as light syllables phrase-initially, and were extra-

metrical in final position. Our goal in this section is to explain how the discrepancies between

these analyses arose. First we shall address phrase-initial position, after which we proceed to

discuss phrase-final position.

4.3.1 Onsetless syllables and initial “annexation”

In phrase-initial position we find one important exception to the Tashlhiyt syllabification

generalizations. Initial position allows “onsetless” syllables, as we saw in i.xng. Vowel-intial

syllables constitute violations of one of the most commonly invoked constraints in OT:

ONSET. Violations of ONSET are fairly common in word or phrase-initial position, a fact that

played an important role in the development of the ALIGN family of constraints (McCarthy &

Prince 1993). Implicit in analyses based on ONSET and ALIGN is the assumption that onsetless

syllables are somehow prosodically deficient (see Downing 1998).

From the OP perspective, prosodic well-formedness is addressed by the MC

condition, which for TB states that a well-formed constituent must contain melodic

assignment both above and below the VT level. In the case of i.xng as it is shown in (23) the

onsetless /i/ syllable is ill-formed, with only a single melodic specification attached at the VO

level. Nevertheless, in phrase-initial position, and only in phrase-initial position, such

syllables are allowed. Thus, our theory must be able to express the well-formedness of these

syllables in this position. To achieve this goal requires a mechanism that strengthens phrase-

initial segments. Initial strengthening is of course a common phonetic and phonological

process (Fougeron & Keating 1997; Smith 2002).

While introducing OP segmental representations in (2), we noted that the theory

assigns melodic (place and laryngeal) specifications at the highest node associated with a

given manner of articulation. Thus the labial specification for a stop /p/ is assigned at the

Closure node, encoding the constriction location. In the phonetic realization of a labial stop,

the acoustic effects of the labial articulation are typically observable in the noise burst of the

stop release and the early portion of the following vowel. Thus, although the lower nodes are

not annotated with a place specification, the phonetic implementation of the labial stop allows

for the trickling of labiality down through the hierarchy.

If this phonetic trickling effect is strengthened in prominent prosodic positions such as

19

phrase initially, it may be phonologized through a process of melodic reduplication, defined

for TB in (24).

(24) Melodic Reduplication (MR): In phrase-initial position, melodic specifications are

reduplicated on available lower level nodes.

The effects of MR for the initial /i/ in i.xng are illustrated in the tree in (25). The strengthened

trickling of the melody associated with phrase-initial /i/ leads to an additional /i/ specification

under the VT-node. As a result, the structure is assigned melody both above and below the

VT node, and thus satisfies the Minimal Constituent requirement and can stand alone as a

syllable. MR thus encodes the generalization that onsetless syllables in TB may only occur

phrase-initially.

(25) Initial /i/ with Melodic Reduplication

While the MR mechanism may have origins as phonetic strengthening, its effects may

not always be perceptually salient in the speech signal. In TB, this discrepancy may be

claimed to have a led to confusion with regard to the parse of forms like txznas ‘she stored for

him’. D&E’s CSR produces t.xz.nas, which in phrase-initial position was said to undergo an

annexation rule, yielding txz.nas. Post-pausal annexation was claimed to be limited to stops

(D&E 1988), a crucial fact in Clements’ (1997) constraint-based analysis of TB. In a later

study, D&E (2008) show that line-initial obstruents may stand alone prosodically, in which

case they are parsed into the metrical structure as light syllables. In other words, t.xz

predicted by the CSR was indeed the correct parse. In what follows we will show how

confusion may have arisen between t.xz and txz parses of the same sequence.

The t.xz parse, by which /t/ may stand on its own as a syllable, is attributable to MR.

From the representational standpoint, the strengthening of the stop entails the reduplication of

the /t/ melody down through the constituent tree. The resulting syllable /t/ satisfies the MC

constraint. The /xz/ sequence is also well-formed; the /z/ is submerged under the VT node of

the /x/. Thus, a sequence t.xz is licit phrase-initially, as seen in (26).

(26) OP structures for t.xz

20

The ambiguity inherent in t.xz in also apparent in (26). In non-intial positions /t/ and

/xz/ would be joined by absorption. Since /z/ is taken as nuclear in previous analyses, the

absorption of /xz/ into /t/ would create an onset cluster, as stipulated by D&E’s annexation

rule. The apparent restriction of annexation to stops is explained by the fact that only stops

would create the environment for absorption. Thus, it becomes apparent how t.xz might be

interpreted as txz – the sequence creates the context for absoprtion.

One clarification of the MR mechanism is necessary at this point. The reduplicated

specifications in the initial constituent in (26) render the /t/ a well-formed constituent. It is

worth noting here, however, that the MR mechanism does not entail the prediction that initial

syllabic stops should appear frequently across languages. It is only in TB that the stop

structure contains a VT node, which is a necessary ingredient in prosodic minimality. In most

languages MR reduplication in stops simply produces stronger stops, not autonomous

prosodic constituents.

One of the insights of the representational approach advocated here is that we gain

perspective on discrepancies between previous analyses. In the case of t.xz, we see that the

claim for annexation, including the limitation to stops, may reflect the basic mechanism of

absorption without the need for an additional rule. By contrast, from the standpoint of

sonority based peak assignment and a linear segmental string, an annexed /t/ in txz.nas

requires an additional rule.

4.3.2 Phrase-final position

In phrase-final position a process of pre-pausal annexation is described (D&E 1985: 119-

120). This form of annexation is said to take final obstruent-only syllables that do not contain

a “coda”, and add them to the preceding syllable. This process was said to produce a complex

“coda”. Thus, a form such as ir.ks in final pre-pausal position appears as irks. Pre-pausal

annexation is not attested when the final syllable contains a vocalic “nucleus”, or when it

contains a “coda”. It is optional when the final syllable contains a sonorant “nucleus”, so we

may have parallel forms i.gi.dr and i.gidr. As with the case of post-pausal annexation, later

metrical studies (D&E 2008) suggest that no additional rule is necessary. Again, the question

that remains is how the earlier parses with complex codas may have originated.

Phonetic data on prominence in TB may suggest an answer. Acoustic evidence

presented by Gordon & Nafi (2012) suggests that TB is characterized by both word-level

final stress, and phrase-level final accent. In particular, prominence appears to be marked by a

raising of F0 in phrase-final syllables. As one would expect, the robustness of this effect

decreased as a function of the sonority of the final “nucleus”. However, when a voiceless

obstruent “nucleus” was followed by an intrusive vowel, F0 was raised. In sum, the phonetic

data presented by Gordon & Nafi (2012) show that phrase-final syllables are the most

21

prominent in the domain.

In light of these data, I suggest that the earlier parses of pre-pausal annexation may be

due to a mismatch between the acoustic signal and what listeners expected to hear. That is, in

phrase-final ir.ks, the syllable ks should be accented. Since this syllable has no F0 upon which

the accent can be realized, it may have been heard as annexed to the preceding syllable. The

fact that annexation was claimed to be obligatory for obstruent nuclei with the weakest F0

effects, optional for sonorant consonant nuclei with a somewhat more robust F0, and

unattested for vocalic nuclei, lends support to this hypothesis. The perception of annexation

apparently arose in those accented syllables without robust phonetic marking of prominence.

4.4 Intrusive schwas, stop release, and the representation of geminates

In TB syllables that are comprised of only consonants, intrusive vowels frequently appear.

For example, the form i.xng is pronounced as [ixnəg] (Dell & Elmedlaoui 1985: 117). Such

vowels are cited by Coleman (2001) as evidence for a claim that all Tashlhiyt syllables

contain a vocalic “nucleus”. However, Ridouane (2008) presents both phonetic and

phonological evidence against this claim. Phonetic analysis shows numerous cases in which

there is no acoustic or articulatory evidence of a vowel. Phonological evidence is found in

both metrics and a dialectal assibilation process before vowels. In metrics, syllables with

“codas” are heavy. However, two-segment syllables that lack vowels are light. If such

syllables contained an unrealized “nucleus”, the consonant would be pushed into the coda

position and they should be parsed as heavy. With regard to prevocalic assimilation, the

vocalic “nucleus” approach predicts that assibilation should occur across the board, yet it fails

to apply before consonants (Ridouane 2008: 353).

On the basis of this evidence it is argued that intrusive vowels in TB are best

described as “intrusive” rather than “epenthetic”, according to the distinction outlined by Hall

(2006). By this dichotomy, epenthetic vowels alter the prosodic structure of an utterance,

while “intrusive” vowels do not. In other words, epenthetic vowels are phonological while

intrusive vowels are phonetic. Interestingly, Gordon & Nafi’s (2012) study of TB suggests

that this dichotomy may not be as clear as we may have been led to believe. Their data show

numerous intrusive vowels. TB speakers are typically unaware of these vowels. They often

are not perceived, and play no role in versification. On the other hand, these intrusive vowels

were found to serve as anchors for the F0 patterns associated with phrase-final prominence.

Thus, the strict phonetics-phonology dichotomy suggested by the intrusive-epenthetic

division may not be warranted (see also Blevins & Pawley 2010). Rather, since there appear

to be systematic generalizations concerning where intrusive vowels may occur (D&E 1996), I

suggest that appearance should be describable in phonological terms.

In the OP environment, the epenthetic/intrusive distinction is captured by splitting

vowels into two layers: VO and VT. On this view, the prosodic distinction between intrusion

and epenthesis is encoded, yet intrusive vowels obtain phonological status. The difference is

represented as shown in (27), which we see two types of cluster interruption in a /gd/

sequence. Epenthetic vowels (right) appear under the VT level, while intrusive vowels (left)

occur at the VO level.

(27) Intrusive vs. epenthetic vowels

22

In (27), we see that although intrusive vowels may arise as the result of gaps between

phonetic gestures (Davidson 2007), they may be represented phonologically as an in the

structure of the first consonant. By representing intrusive vowels in this way, we may show

how they may be invisible for certain phonological processes, yet still serve a function in the

phonetic realization of prominence.

The appearance of intrusive vowels is inevitably tied up with the question of whether

a stop consonant is released. Intrusive vowels are impossible after unreleased stops, and stop

release frequently results in the development of schwa (Silverman 2011). Dell & Elmedlaoui

(1996) examine stop release in TB. Consonant releases are characterized by the presence of a

short vocoid between voiced consonants, and a short period of aspiration between unvoiced

consonants.17

According to D&E, stops in TB must be released unless followed by a

homorganic stop, nasal, or lateral. One example is that of an oral stop preceding a

homorganic nasal or lateral as in utnt ‘they (f) struck’. The first /t/ in this string may not be

released.

Homorganicity is of course a property of geminates, which are found for every

consonant in TB. It is therefore necessary to address the question of geminate representation

in the OP environment, which will also provide insight on stop release.

To represent a geminate consonant, an adjunct node is posited on the terminal daughter of the

highest level node. This is shown for the stop /t/ in (28). The configuration in (28) allows us

to capture important generalizations about geminates. They typically derive from and

syllabify as “coda-onset” sequences (see e.g. Blevins 2004). This constituent boundary is

predicted in (28), since the constituent contained in the adjunct is lower than second element

of the geminate, and is subject to submersion. In TB, geminates may not appear as entire

syllables in which the first element would be the onset and the second element would be the

peak (D&E 1985). This prohibition is captured with the lower level adjunct in the

representation of geminates; only the second half of the geminate can be an “onset”.

(28) OP representation of geminate /tt/

17

Gordon & Nafi’s data show some cases of a voiced intrusive vowel between voiceless obstruents.

23

Returning to the question of stop release TB, D&E (1996) provide an example of a

case where stop release may distinguish identical strings of segments with different

morphological origins. The string /istttut/ has two contrasting realizations differing in stop

release. OP representations of these forms are given in (29) and (30).

(29) /is t-ttu-t/, pronounced [istʰt̚ tut]

(30) /is=tt t-ut/, pronounced [ist̚ tʰtut]

Morphologically, the string of three /t/s is made up of a singleton and geminate. In (29) the

form’s gloss is ‘did you forget’. The 2nd

person singular marker, a singleton /t/, precedes the

geminate /tt/ in the root: /is t-ttu-t/. The singleton and the second member of the geminate (the

first and third /t/) are released in this example. In (30), glossed ‘did she hit her?’, the

geminate /tt/, a separate morpheme, precedes the singleton: /is=tt t-ut/. Again both the

singleton and the second member of the geminate are released, the second and third /t/s.

In sum, the facts concerning intrusive vowels and stop release in TB fall out naturally

from OP segmental representations. In this connection, it is interesting to note that previous

phonological analyses of TB syllabification have not directly addressed the issue of stop

24

release and intrusive vowels.18

They are seen largely as aspects of phonetic implementation

that are not relevant for the phonology. In the OP environment, it is shown that these

apparently phonetic effects may be derived from phonological considerations. Crucially,

segmental and syllabic structures are built from the same representational materials, so the

relationship between them allows us to derive the phonetic effects of consonant phonotactics.

The phonetics of these effects have already been described (e.g. Goldstein et al. 2007,

Hermes et al. 2011), and are entirely compatible with the representational claims of the OP

account.

5 OP vs. previous approaches

In the Onset Prominence representational environment, a new perspective on prosodic

constituency is put forth in which syllables are derivative rather than primitive units.

Segmental representations emerge from a hierarchy of phonetic events associated with a

sequence of stop+vowel, typologically the most common “syllable” type across languages.

Individual segmental structures in turn form prosodic constituents by means of a small

number of formal operations. Crucially, in the OP approach prosodic constituency is

constructed from the same materials as segmental representations. This is in contrast to

traditional approaches in which segments are “attached” to prosodic structures. From this

perspective, none of the traditional syllabic positions has any formal status. The “syllable”

has been altered to the extent that we can no longer talk about “onsets”, “nuclei”, and

“codas”. We have seen that this approach allows for a comprehensive description of

syllabification facts from Tashlhiyt Berber.

We will conclude this paper with some discussion of the advantages of the OP

perspective over traditional approaches based on sonority-based peak assignment. These

advantages are inherent in all previous approaches in which the syllabic peaks are given

formal status, yet the discussion will devote the most attention to the analysis given by

Clements (1997). The key issue concerns the status of syllables that are apparently lacking a

consonant onset. That is, syllables in which the “peak” is the first segment.

5.1 Are “onsetless” syllables well-formed in TB?

Prince & Smolensky (1993) use Berber syllabification data to argue for a constraint-based

phonology over approaches employing ordered rules. Part of their motivation is the fact that a

rule-based approach may generate many undesirable forms that in principle should be

excluded by phonological grammars. Prince & Smolensky's analysis is based on an ONSET

constraint along with sonority-based constraints that punish possible syllable peaks and

margins. One interesting aspect of Prince and Smolensky’s analysis is that the margin based

hierarchy is assumed to outrank the peak hierarchy. Thus, in their account, syllabification is

largely driven by identifying onsets and codas. Unfortunately, Prince & Smolensky do not

address phrase-initial onsetless syllables, stipulating that the ONSET constraint does not hold

in initial position.

Clements (1997) offers a constraint-based account of Berber syllabification that is

argued to represent an improvement on Prince & Smolensky's in three basic areas. First, it

addresses a larger chunk of TB data, expanding the constraint-based perspective to account

18

D&E (1996) discuss the implications of stop release and intrusive for featural specifications, not

syllabification. Coleman (2001) discusses intrusive vowels but assumes they are nuclei. Coleman‘s claims

are successfully falsified by Ridouane (2008).

25

for phrase-edge consonant clusters that had been reported earlier for TB. Second, Clements

takes objection to the lowest ranking members of Prince and Smolensky's peak and margin

constraint hierarchies, namely *P/a and *M/t, which legislate against low vowels as peaks

and voiceless stops as margins, respectively. These constraints clearly go against language

universals, and Clements points out that any grammar that can express this type of anti-

constraint is subject to similar problems of overgeneration that haunt rule-based accounts.

The third point where Clements takes issue with Prince and Smolensky is in the differing

fundamental claims of their analysis as opposed to that of Dell and Elmedlaoui. He points out

that the constraint ranking in which the Margin Hierarchy outranks the Peak Hierarchy

betrays a position that syllabification “primarily involves comparison of syllable margins”,

rather than peaks as assumed by Dell & Elmedlaoui (Clements 1997:299). In a later work,

D&E (2002) offer a slightly revised version of their 1985 algorithm. In place of the earlier

observation concerning onsetless syllables, they offer a formal constraint, NOHIATUS that

requires onsets except in phrase-initial position.

In the case of NOHIATUS, the exceptional status of initial position appears to be a

stipulation. D&E do not explain why such an exception may arise. Clements (1997), after

McCarthy & Prince (1993), attributes the motivation for initial onsetless syllables to the

family of Alignment (ALIGN) constraints. ALIGN requires the edges of various morphemes

and prosodic domains to correspond. An important task of ALIGN is to disallow epenthesis or

deletion that would serve to satisfy ONSET. The implicit claim of analyses based on

ALIGN/ONSET interactions is that onsetless syllables are prosodically ill-formed, a violation

that may be overridden by a higher ranked Alignment constraint.

In Clements’ account of TB, ONSET is outranked by ALIGN. This system requires the

grammar to evaluate a candidate containing what Clements (1997:305) refers to as an

“epenthetic place holder”, which allows the initial syllable to satisfy ONSET. A tableau based

on Clements analysis is given here in (31).

(31) ALIGN>>ONSET for r.ʃq (adapted from Clements 1997:305) /rʃq/ ALIGN-L ONSET

r.ʃq *

Ør.ʃq *!

The winning candidate incurs an ONSET violation but satisfies ALIGN, while the

candidate with the place holder violates the higher ranking Alignment constraint and is

eliminated. In order to evaluate this approach, it is necessary to determine whether an initial

“onsetless” syllable is a well-formed prosodic constituent. The claim implicit in (31) is that it

is not. However, evidence from TB versification (D&E 1988, 2008; Ridouane 2008) shows

that “onsetless” syllables are parsed normally into metrical structure. Ridouane (2008: 351)

provides examples of line-initial syllables containing only /i/ and /m/. Indeed, onsetless

syllables can be heavy, as shown by the metrical parse of the line-initial sequence /lx/ (D&E

1988: 6). It is therefore reasonable to claim that syllables predicted by peak-based

syllabification to be “onsetless” are not ill-formed, as ONSET would have us expect.

A fundamental difference between the OP analysis and the ALIGN/ONSET analysis

concerns the prosodic status of the initial syllable. This may be seen in (32), which shows OP

representations for r.ʃq. On the left we see the string segmental trees, on the right we see the

syllabified version. The initial /r/ undergoes Melodic Reduplication and thus satisfies MC.

Thus, the /r/ constitutes a well-formed prosodic constitent, as suggested by the behavior of

single segment syllables in TB versification.

(32) Input string and syllabified r.ʃq

26

It appears that issues with the ALIGN/ONSET analyses stem from the fact that ONSET is

formulated in linear terms, while its function is enforce a hierarchical prosodic structure. That

is, in order to evaluate whether ONSET is satisfied, one typically checks to see if a vocalic

“segment” is preceded by a consonantal “segment”. McCarthy & Prince thus refer to

epenthesis, the addition of a segment to the linear segmental string: “[ALIGN] bans

epenthesis, [ONSET] requires it, but the generalizations devolve from structurally similar

conditions on the relation between prosodic and morphological constituency” (McCarthy &

Prince 1993: 33).

By contrast, OP produces parameter settings by which some onsetless syllables may

be well-formed while others are not (Schwartz 2013). Thanks to this apporach, the Onset

Prominence environment makes explicit claims about how McCarthy’s “structurally similar

conditions” may come about. Yip (2003) raises additional doubts about the ONSET constraint

on the basis of ambiguous behavior of pre-vocalic glides (see also Smith 2012).

. . . . [T]he use of the constraint ONSET does not, as far as I can see, make any claims about

syllable-internal constituent structure at all: it just demands a certain sort of start to a syllable. It is

a useful shorthand, nothing more. (Yip 2003:812).

Onset Prominence seeks to remedy this problem, directly addressing the question of what an

“onset” is and how it is represented.

5.2 Deriving discrepancies in earlier analyses

According to D&E’s original analysis, phrase initial stops could be annexed by the followed

syllable to create what may be called a “complex onset”. This was seen in the form txznas

discussed in 3.4.1. According to the traditional approach, the annexed /t/ lacked an onset. The

stop was parsed as a peak. To account for annexation and join the /t/ with the /xz/ into a

single syllable, Clements (1997:319) was forced to rank the constraint against syllabic stops,

*P/t, above ONSET. This ranking, however, makes an incorrect prediction for the form r.ʃq

discussed earlier. The tableau in (33) illustrates.

(33) Incorrect prediction of *P/t >> ONSET (based on Clements 1997:319) /rʃq/ *P/t ONSET

r.ʃq *! *

* r.ʃq **

The winning candidate is r.ʃq with two onsetless syllables – the fricative is syllabified as a

peak. This is the incorrect form. The second syllable of the correct form is an onset-peak

sequence, ʃq.

Syllables of this type with a “nuclear” stop are quite common in TB, so the ranking in

27

(33) is problematic. In the OP account, which eliminaties peak assignment altogether, this

problem does not arise. Clearly, the issue in (33) stems from the need to prohibit an

“onsetless” syllable with a /t/ as a peak in txznas. Such syllables were of course shown to be

licit in later work.

The discrepancy between earlier claims of annexation being limited to stops, and the

later evidence for single obstruent syllables, may be derived in the OP environment without

the need to posit any additional mechanisms to our syllabification algorithm. Only a stop

could absorb a syllable of the type /xz/. Thus, the “appearance” of annexation may thus be

attributed to basic OP mechanisms. What prevents annexation is the fortification of the stop

in phrase-initial position by means of Melodic Reduplication, a phonological interpreation of

unversal processes of phonetic strengthening.

The ambiguity that led to the claim of annexation falls out naturally from the the

general mechanisms of constituent formation in the OP framework. Neither parse, t.xz.nas or

txz.nas, requires any alteration to the OP account of TB syllabification. Thus, we see that our

approach affords an insightful perspective on the discrepancies between D&E’s original

analysis with annexation rules, and the later interpretation with obstruent-only initial syllables

and final extra-metricality. In my view, the ability to reconcile conflicting claims is an

important contribution of the OP analysis. When there are discrepancies between analyses of

linguistic phenomena, it is rarely the case that one version is completely correct while the

other is completely wrong. OP offers a story about how such conflicing claims can arise.

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