Tashelhiyt language

From Freepedia

Tashelhiyt (Tašlḥiyt)
Spoken in:	Morocco
Region:	Southern Morocco, Atlas, Sous plains and Anti-Atlas
Total speakers:	Between 8 and 10 million
Ranking:	Not in top 100
Genetic classification:	Afro-Asiatic  Berber   Northern    Atlas     Tashelhiyt
Official status
Official language of:	-
Regulated by:	-
Language codes
ISO 639-1	-
ISO 639-2	ber
SIL	shi
See also: Language – List of languages

Tashelhiyt (also Shilha, native name: tašlḥiyt, French: tachelhit or chleuh, Arabic: تشلحيت) is a Berber language of southern Morocco, spoken by between 8 and 10 million people. Tashelhiyt is spoken in an area ranging from the northern slopes of the High-Atlas to the southern slopes of the Anti-Atlas, bounded to the west by the Atlantic Ocean. The eastern limit of the Tashelhiyt area is difficult to pinpoint because of a smooth transition into Southern Middle Atlas Berber (Tamazight). The Sous plains are central to the Tashelhiyt area, hence the use of the Sous Berber in some publications on varieties of Tashelhiyt. Tashelhiyt is known for its rich oral literature. Literature written in the Arabic script has been produced from the second half of sixteenth century on.

Contents 1 Geography and demography 2 Literature 3 Sounds 3.1 Vowels 3.2 Consonants 4 Grammar 4.1 Pronouns 4.2 Nouns 4.3 Verbs 4.4 Prepositions 4.5 Numbers 5 Notes and references 5.1 Notes 5.2 References 6 External links

Geography and demography

Literature

Sounds

Vowels

Tashelhiyt has three phonemic vowels: /i, a, u/. The schwa (/ə/) which turns up in many words between two consonants (e.g. inbgi = [inəbgi] 'guest', tigmmi = [tigəmmi] '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 /a/, is highly influenced by the character of the surrounding consonants; emphatic consonants invite a more open realization of the vowel, e.g. aẓru = [azʢru] 'stone' vs. amud = [æmud] 'seed'.

Consonants

Tashelhiyt has about 33 consonants.

Grammar

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. Three common paradigms are given below; other sets often are slight variations on these^[1]. For example, the given paragdigm of possessive pronouns is used for some specific associative relations such as kinship terms (e.g. baba-k 'your (m) father', baba-tnɣ 'our father'). Another common used set consists of the preposition nn 'of' and the first paradigm, e.g. tigmmi-nn-m [təgəm:in:ək] 'your (f) house' (lit. house of you), aydi-nn-sn [æjdin:əsən] '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 allomorphs; 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

</small>	Independent	Direct object	Indirect object	Possessive
1s	nkk	yyi	-yyi	-ø
2sm	kyy	k	a-k	-k
2sf	kmm	km	a-m	-m
3sm	ntta	t	a-s	-s
3sf	nttat	(s)tt	a-s	-s
1p	nkkʷni	a-(n)ɣ	a-(n)ɣ	-t-nɣ
2pm	kʷnni	kʷn	a-wn	-t-un
2pf	kʷnnimti	kʷnt	a-wnt	-t-unt
3pm	n(it)tni	tn	a-sn	-t-sn
3pf	n(i)tnti	tnt	a-snt	-t-snt
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 plurality 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 loanwords and ethnonyms, prefixation of the word id or ida, (id-bllarj 'storks' < Gr. 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 and état d'annexion, 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-gʷmar 'the horse (a-gʷmar) 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 t-mɣart 'he went to the woman (ta-mɣart)'.

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), ta-ɣla (EA) 'lamb'. Other terms for the état d'annexion are construct state and

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 past tense. The intensive encodes intensive or durative aspect. A relative form of the verb, often called participle, is used in relative clauses. Stative verbs, verbs expressing qualities, are characterized by initial i- in the aorist, e.g. imɣur 'be big (aorist)'. Tashelhiyt has only few simple adjectives; the most common adjectival construction is the relative form of a stative verb, as in argaz imqquṛn (man PTC:sg:m-be.big-PTC:sg:m) 'big man'.

Derived verb forms exist: a causative s, medial m (or nasal), and passive 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)', ɣ 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'
ɣ	gi-, gig-	'in'
i	a-	'for, to'
n	nn-	'of'
nnig	nniga-	'on top of'
s	is-	'with, by means of'
zg	zgi-, zgig-	'from'
s-dar	—	'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, kraḍ, kkuẓ, smmus, sḍis, sa, ttam, tẓẓa, mraw, but these are increasingly rare. As with nouns, feminine forms are derived from the masculine: yat (irregular), snat (irregular), kraṭṭ, 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 kkuẓ wu-ssan (four EA-day.pl) 'four days' with kraḍ d mraw n wuššn (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: sin id-ɛšrin n tgʷmma (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. wiss kraḍ 'the third (m)'.

Notes and references

Notes

References

• Applegate, Joseph R. (1958) An outline of the structure of Shilḥa (Program in Oriental Languages Publications Series B—Aids—Number 11) New York : American Council of learned societies.
• Aspinion, Robert (1953) Apprenons le berbère: initiation aux dialectes chleuhs. Rabat: Moncho.
• Boogert, Nico van den (1997) Berber Literary Tradition of the Sous — with an edition and translation of 'The Ocean of Tears' by Muḥammad Awzal (d. 1749). (De Goeje Fund, Vol. XXVII) Leiden: NINO.
• Boogert, Nico van den & Harry Stroomer (2004) ‘Tashelhiyt Berber of South Morocco — a morphological survey’. Unpublished.

External links

• Ethnologue Report for Tashelhit
• Epenthetic vowels in Tashlhiyt Berber
• Tashelhit - Rosetta Project