Acoustic correlates of stress and pitch accent in Tashlhiyt Berber

Journal of Phonetics 40 (2012) 706–724

Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect

Journal of Phonetics

0095-44

http://d

n Corr

E-m

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/phonetics

Acoustic correlates of stress and pitch accent in Tashlhiyt Berber

Matthew Gordon n, Latifa Nafi

University of California, Santa Barbara, United States

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:

Received 31 December 2010

Received in revised form

10 April 2012

Accepted 12 April 2012Available online 19 June 2012

70/$ - see front matter & 2012 Elsevier Ltd. A

x.doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2012.04.003

esponding author.

ail address: [email protected] (M

a b s t r a c t

This paper reports results of a phonetic study of stress and pitch accent in Tashlhiyt Berber, an Afro-

Asiatic language that is famous for possessing words consisting of only obstruents. This study examines

evidence for word-level stress and phrase-level accent in Tashlhiyt and addresses the question of how

both prosodic properties are acoustically realized in segments, such as obstruents, that provide a

relatively impoverished backdrop for the manifestation of prominence. Results indicate that F0 is raised

in the phrase-final nucleus relative to both the penultimate nucleus of the phrase and also to word-final

nuclei that are phrase-medial. This raising of F0 is consistently observed on sonorant nuclei,

inconsistently associated with voiced obstruents, and absent from voiceless obstruents, which lack

an F0 but often trigger insertion of an epenthetic vowel to aid in the realization of F0 information. A

further result is that intensity is higher in the nucleus of a word-final syllable relative to one in the

penult of a word. We interpret the greater intensity associated with word-final syllables as a marker of

word-level stress and the raising of F0 in phrase-final syllables as a phrase-level pitch accent docking

on the final stressed syllable of a phrase.

& 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

The examination of prominence has been a productive area ofboth phonological and phonetic research for several decades.Since the pioneering work by Fry (1955, 1958) on the acousticcorrelates of stress in English, our cross-linguistic understandingof the relationship between phonological prominence and itsphonetic manifestation has increased substantially throughdetailed prosodic studies of an ever broadening number oflanguages. It has become apparent that prominence operates atmultiple prosodic levels both phonologically and phonetically.Individual words may be associated with stress on one or moresyllables, while phrases also contribute an additional layer ofprominence by promoting one or more lexical stresses to pitchaccents (see Ladd, 1996; Gussenhoven, 2004 for an overview).These pitch accents are salient intonational events, such as peaks,troughs or transitions, that have a phonological status and arecharacteristically analyzed as discrete high and low tonal targets,i.e. H*, L*, or combinations of targets, e.g. H*þL, L*þH, docking oncertain lexically stressed syllables. For example, under a seman-tically neutral pronunciation of the English phrase Mary saw an

alligator, the first syllable in alligator typically carries a H* pitchaccent by virtue of its being the primary stressed syllable in therightmost content word. Pitch accents are not defined at the

ll rights reserved.

. Gordon).

lexical level in English but rather are assigned to one or moreprominent syllables in a phrase.

There are many interesting areas of research involving thestudy of word-level stress and phrase-level pitch accent. One ofthese concerns the relationship between the phonological statusof stress and pitch accents and the phonetic realization of both. Inprinciple, the distinguishing acoustic feature associated with apitch accent is an F0 peak, trough, or transition, whereas stressmay be realized through one or more acoustic properties, includ-ing raised fundamental frequency, increased intensity, eitheracross the entire frequency range or skewed toward higherfrequencies, greater duration, and changes in vowel quality, e.g.English (Beckman, 1986; Fry, 1955, 1958), Kabardian (Gordon &Applebaum, 2010), Polish (Jassem, Morton, & Steffen-Batog,1968), Mari (Baitschura, 1976), Indonesian (Adisasmito-Smith &Cohn, 1996), Tagalog (Gonzales, 1970), Pirah~a (Everett, 1998),Chickasaw (Gordon, 2004), Turkish (Levi, 2005). Although there isstill relatively little cross-linguistic acoustic research that clearlyteases apart word-level stress from phrase-level pitch accent,work on English (Sluijter & van Heuven, 1996a) and Dutch(Sluijter & van Heuven, 1996b) shows that the manipulation ofF0 in at least these two languages is associated with pitch accents,whereas stress is signaled through other acoustic means, inparticular, a frequency-weighted measure of intensity skewedtoward higher frequencies.

Another important issue in the study of pitch accents concernstune-text alignment, the phonological association of pitch accentswith syllables and segments within syllables. Parallel to tones in

www.elsevier.com/locate/phonetics

www.elsevier.com/locate/phonetics

dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2012.04.003

dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2012.04.003

dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2012.04.003

mailto:[email protected]

dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2012.04.003

M. Gordon, L. Nafi / Journal of Phonetics 40 (2012) 706–724 707

tone languages, pitch accents dock on syllables or, in somelanguages, on certain moras within a syllable. An example ofmora-governed pitch accent placement is provided by Chickasawquestions (Gordon, 2008), in which the pitch accent falls on thepenultimate mora, where long vowels are linked to two moras,short vowels to one, and consonants are non-moraic. Because themoraic status of different segments is determined on a language-specific basis, languages with mora-governed pitch accent place-ment may vary in terms of which segments are eligible to receivea pitch accent just as tones vary in their permissible docking sitesin tone languages (Zhang, 2002).

Both the interface between word-level stress and phrasal pitchaccent and the tonal alignment of pitch accents are linked by animportant issue related to the capacity of different types ofsounds to realize acoustic properties associated with phonologicalprominence, i.e. stress or pitch accents. In virtually all languagesof the world, every syllable contains a vowel or at least a sonorantconsonant that, like a vowel, is characterized by periodic acousticenergy. In languages fitting this profile, both stress and pitchaccents have available phonological docking sites that allow fortheir salient phonetic production. Sonorant sounds, includingvowels and sonorant consonants, are characterized by a richharmonic structure well-suited to realizing any of the propertiespotentially associated with stress (e.g. increased duration, inten-sity, and/or higher F0) or pitch accent (a salient F0 event).Obstruents, on the other hand, are severely hindered in theirability to cue stress or accent. Although increased duration andintensity may still be manifested on an obstruent, fundamentalfrequency cues are less salient when associated with an obstruentand are completely unavailable if this obstruent is voiceless.Given the phonetic difficulties associated with producing a pitchaccent on an obstruent, one might hypothesize that a languagewould phonologically restrict pitch accents to sonorants, much asvirtually all tone languages limit the association of tones tosonorants (Zhang, 2002). Furthermore, because obstruents areless intense than sonorants and because listeners are perceptuallyless attuned to differences in duration associated with obstruents(Goedemans, 1998), the usefulness of intensity and duration ascues to stress is likely diminished when associated with anobstruent relative to a sonorant.

This paper examines stress and pitch accent in TashlhiytBerber, a language that is well known in the phonetic andphonological literature (e.g. Coleman, 1996, 1999, 2001; Dell &Elmedlaoui, 1985, 1988, 2002; Fougeron & Ridouane, 2008a;Ridouane, 2008a, etc.) for having words without sonorants butwhose higher level prosody has not been the subject of systematicphonetic investigation. We focus on several questions. First, weexamine the phonetic evidence for word-level stress and phrase-level pitch accent in words containing sonorant sounds, therebyadding to the extremely sparse literature on Tashlhiyt prosody.Following a suggestion by Dell and Elmedlaoui (1985) that theright edge of prosodic constituents in Tashlhiyt is impressionis-tically prominent, we adopt the working hypothesis that Tashl-hiyt possesses at least phrase-level pitch accent and possibly alsoword-level stress, realized through some combination of raisedF0 and/or increased duration and/or intensity. Second, we inves-tigate how stress and pitch accent are realized on syllablesconsisting of only obstruents, which are inherently less promi-nent than sonorants. We hypothesize that duration and/or inten-sity may be used as cues to word-level stress and possibly evenphrasal pitch accent on obstruents to compensate for the reduced

More sonorousLow V High V Liquid Nasal Vcd fricativ

Fig. 1. Tashlhiyt son

availability of F0. Third, we explore one potential strategy forrealizing prominence in obstruent-only words, vowel epenthesis,which has previously been described in the literature on Tashlhiyt(Dell & Elmedlaoui, 2002) as a phonotactically-driven rather thana prominence-driven phenomenon. Finally, we explore the tem-poral alignment of pitch accents in words containing a prenuclearepenthetic vowel in addition to a consonantal nucleus.

2. Background

Tashlhiyt is a Northern Berber (Afro-Asiatic) language spokenin the Atlas mountain region of Morocco. Tashlhiyt phonology andmorphology has been relatively well-documented largely throughthe impressively comprehensive publications of Franc-ois Dell andhis colleague, Mohamed Elmedlaoui, a native speaker of ImdlawnTashlhiyt (e.g. Dell & Elmedlaoui, 1985, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992,2002, 2008). More recently, Rachid Ridouane has authored andco-authored several papers illuminating interesting features ofthe Tashlhiyt Berber phonetic system (e.g. Fougeron & Ridouane,2008a, 2008b; Ridouane, 2007, 2008a, 2008b, 2010).

The bulk of the phonetic and phonological literature onTashlhiyt has focused on its typologically unusual phonologicalcharacteristic of permitting syllables and even words consistingentirely of obstruent consonants, e.g. tqs.sf ‘it shrunk’, sfq.qst

‘irritate him’, ts.sk.P f.tstt ‘you dried it (fem.)’ (Ridouane, 2008a,2008b, p. 332) (Note that transcriptions of Tashlhiyt used in thispaper are phonemic unless stated otherwise.) As the aforemen-tioned literature points out, the existence of words consisting ofonly obstruents presents challenges to the theory of syllables. Forexample, it is a priori unclear how obstruent-only words aresyllabified by Tashlhiyt speakers or, indeed, whether syllables area relevant construct for speakers. In their seminal research onTashlhiyt syllabification, Dell and Elmedlaoui (1985, 1988), infact, show that syllables are psychologically real entities that playa crucial organizational role in the language, both in the phonol-ogy and morphology as well as in versification. They present adetailed algorithm for syllabification that accounts both for wordscontaining sonorants as well as for words consisting only ofobstruents. According to the Dell and Elmedlaoui (1985) analysis,syllabification is sensitive to the sonority hierarchy in Fig. 1,where higher sonority sounds are preferentially selected assyllable nuclei over lower sonority sounds.

The construction of core syllables consisting of an onset and anucleus proceeds from left to right selecting the highest remain-ing unparsed sound as a nucleus and the immediately precedingsound as an onset for that nucleus. Onsetless syllables are allowedonly at the beginning of postpausal words. Any segments notparsed as nuclei or onsets are annexed as codas by the precedingsyllable. For example, in the parse of the word /:aUltn/ (Dell andElmedlaoui, 1985, p. 110) (where U stands for an underlying notyet syllabified high back vocoid), the sequence /:a/ is firstgrouped into a syllable with /a/ as the nucleus since /a/ is themost sonorous sound in the sonority hierarchy. The scan con-tinues to the right of /a/ selecting as a nucleus the next mostsonorous sound that is preceded by a sound that can function asan onset. Because the prohibition against word-internal onsetlesssyllables precludes syllabifying /U/ as a nucleus, /l/ is parsed asthe second nucleus with /U/ as its onset. Finally, the string /tn/ isparsed as a syllable with /n/, the next most sonorous sound in thehierarchy, functioning as the nucleus, yielding the final parse

Less sonorouse Vcl fricative Vcd stop Vcl stop

ority hierarchy.

M. Gordon, L. Nafi / Journal of Phonetics 40 (2012) 706–724708

:a.wl.tn. For the word /tftkt/ ‘you suffered a sprain’ (Dell andElmedlaoui, 1985, p. 113), the most sonorous segment is /f/ whichis parsed as a nucleus with the preceding /t/ serving as its onset.The parse continues to the right of /t/ choosing /k/ as the nextnucleus over the preceding /t/ since /t/ is not preceded by anunparsed segment that could function as its onset. The /t/preceding /k/ thus serves as the onset to the syllable headed by/k/. The only available option for the word-final /t/ is to be parsedas a coda of the second syllable. The final parse is thus tf.tkt.

In contrast to syllabification, one prosodic area that hasreceived very little attention in the literature on Tashlhiyt isstress and, more generally, phonological prominence. Dell andElmedlaoui (2002, p. 14) suggest that any phenomenon of stressor accent is likely a feature of prosodic units larger than the word.The hypothesis that word-level stress is not a salient feature ofTashlhiyt is consonant with our experience working with nativespeakers, who are not able to consistently pinpoint a syllable asbeing stressed either through direct inquiry or through tapping-type experiments in which speakers are asked to tap their fingerduring the production of stressed syllables.

Dell and Elmedlaoui propose that the main intonational event ina phrase occurs near its end on the final or penultimate syllablecontaining a sonorant nucleus. In the context of their work onsyllabification, Dell and Elmedlaoui (1985, p. 119) discuss one ofthese intonational events in questions expressing puzzlement,which end in a sequence of low pitch followed by a pitch rise. Theirdiscussion of this contour, which docks on the final tone-bearingunit of a phrase, raises one of the interesting issues guiding thepresent work. They formulate a rule of ‘prepausal annexation’ thatforces open syllables that would otherwise (i.e. in non-phrase finalposition or in final position of phrases associated with otherintonation contours) have a voiceless nucleus to attach to thepreceding syllable as a coda cluster and pass the pitch rise leftwardto the immediately preceding voiced nucleus. For example, irks ‘hehid’, which is characteristically syllabified as ir.ks is instead realizedprepausally under the puzzled question tune as monosyllabic irks

with the final pitch contour realized on the /i/ rather than the /s/that would be the final nucleus of the word in other contexts.

The phonetic motivation for the shifting of the terminal pitchcontour to the preceding vowel in words like irks is clear: avoiceless nucleus like /s/ is ill-suited to supporting intonationalcontours since it has no fundamental frequency. Similar issuespotentially arise more broadly in all positions where prominenceor prosodic boundaries are potentially relevant, including allphrase-final contexts not just in phrases associated with thepuzzled question tune, as well as focused elements, and evenword-level stress, to the extent that it occurs in Tashlhiyt. Thepresent paper aims to examine how phrase-level pitch accentand, to the extent that it exists, word-level stress, are phoneticallyrealized in Tashlhiyt.

3. Methodology

For the present study, a corpus of disyllabic and trisyllabicwords containing various types of syllable nuclei in both final andpenultimate syllables was constructed by the second author, anative speaker of Tashlhiyt. Dell and Elmedlaoui’s (1985) syllabi-fication algorithm was assumed, which, in short, preferentiallyconstructs syllables containing more sonorant nuclei only movingon to less sonorant nuclei after options for creating syllables withmore sonorant nuclei have been exhausted (see Section 2).Syllable nuclei in the present work were varied between vowels,sonorant consonants, and voiced and voiceless obstruents. In asubset of words, e.g. ssl.slt ‘necklace’, both the penult and the finalsyllable contained the same nucleus, thereby allowing for the

comparison of both nuclei in the same word. In other words,either the final or the penultimate nucleus was targeted formeasurement and compared with the same sound occurring inthe other position in a different word. For example, the sound /s/was compared between the penult of tr.ks.tn ‘She hides them(masc.)’ and the final syllable of tr.kst ‘She hides it (masc.)’.

Three measurements were made for each target nucleus usingPraat (Boersma & Weenink, 2010): duration, average fundamentalfrequency and average intensity. Duration was measured from awaveform with the assistance of a time-aligned spectrogram.Average fundamental frequency and average intensity were bothcalculated for the entire nucleus. Throughout the measurementprocess, any transitional vocoids (see Dell & Elmedlaoui, 2002 fordiscussion of transitional vowels in Tashlhiyt) appearing in eitherof the final two syllables of a word were tracked. The duration,average fundamental frequency and average intensity of thetransitional vowels were measured following the same procedureadopted for the syllable nuclei.

All words were either two or three syllables in order to minimizethe potential confounding effect of number of syllables on the lengthof the target segments. In order to reduce microprosodic effects onduration, intensity, and F0, the sounds adjacent to target segmentsdiffering in their location (e.g. /x/ in the penult in tf.tx.tn ‘She rolledthem (masc.)’ vs. /x/ in the ultima in tf.txt ‘She rolled it (masc.)’)were either identical or shared the same voicing features, as voicingcharacteristically exerts a greater effect than place of articulation onthe measured parameters (Lehiste, 1970).

Target words were elicited in two contexts: in isolation, wherethe word is equivalent to a phrase (the phrase-final context), andfollowed by the word Cilad ‘now’, where the target word is shieldedfrom the right edge of the phrase (the phrase-medial context). Thestimuli were not presented in any context that would trigger specialemphasis, e.g. contrastive focus, on the target word other than thatnormally associated with the position in which the word appears.The list of targeted words comprised 22 items (see Appendix A forthe corpus), which were presented to the subject to read inrandomized order five times in isolation and then five times in thephrasal context. Data were recorded by the second author onto aMarantz PMD660 solid-state recorder in.wav format at a samplingrate of 44.1 kHz via a high quality unidirectional head mountedmicrophone (Shure SM10). Six subjects (three female and threemale), all of whom were native speakers of Tashlhiyt Berber born inMorocco and currently residing in the United States, provided therecordings serving as the basis for this paper.

After analysis, data were subjected to statistical analysis. Forthe study of acoustic correlates of prominence, repeated measuresANOVAs (analyses of variance) pooled over all speakers, or, in thecase of F0, over all speakers of the same gender, were performedfor the three measured parameters (duration, average fundamen-tal frequency and average intensity) with syllable position (thefinal syllable of a phrase-final word vs. the penultimate syllable ofa phrase-final word vs. the final syllable of a phrase-medial wordvs. the penultimate syllable of a phrase-medial word) serving asthe within subjects variable. Greenhouse–Geisser correctionswere employed in cases where sphericity was violated. Bonferroniposthoc tests (corrected for multiple comparisons) were alsoperformed to compare the different conditions for a given vari-able. In the study of prominence in epenthetic vowels, t-testswere employed due to gaps in the data resulting from the cross-classification of syllable and phrasal position.

4. Results

Impressionistic evaluation of the data suggests that the mostsalient prosodic characteristic is higher F0 in the final syllable of


words uttered in isolation. The terminal F0 rise was consistentthroughout words of different shapes, both in the data that werequantitatively analyzed and in additional words elicited, even ifthe final syllable nucleus was preceded by a more sonorousnucleus in an earlier syllable. For example, in the word ib.bW.tn

‘He crushes them (masc.)’, the final sonorant consonant is asso-ciated with higher F0 than not only the voiced fricative in thepenultimate syllable but also the vowel in the initial syllable.Similarly, in tu.fi.tnt ‘You (fem.) found them (fem)’, the /n/ in thefinal syllable has higher F0 than either of the first two vowels. Nordoes syllable weight seem to impact the location of the F0 peakon the final syllable, since light final syllables routinely areassociated with an F0 peak, e.g. i.fas.sn ‘hands’, tr.cl.tn ‘She locksthem (masc.)’

The raised F0 on the final syllable of the phrase is evident inFigs. 2 and 3, which show waveforms and pitch traces for repre-sentative tokens of tsikit ‘She missed it’ uttered in isolation by twodifferent female speakers. Fig. 4 contains a representative exemplarof the phrase tsikit Cilad ‘She missed it now’ produced by the samespeaker pronouncing the isolated word tsikit shown in Fig. 2.

It is clear from all three figures that F0 is highest on the finalsyllable of the phrase, whether the phrase consists of a single

Tim

0250

420t s i k

Pitc

h (H

z)

Fig. 2. A representative waveform and pitch trace for the word t

Tim

0185

220t s i k

Pitc

h (H

z)

Fig. 3. A representative waveform and pitch trace for the word t

word or more than one. Comparison of Figs. 2 and 3 also showsthat F0 on the phrase-final syllable may either rise up to the endof the phrase as in Fig. 2 or may reach a plateau prior to the end asin Fig. 3. As we will see, the higher F0 associated with phrase-finalsyllable turns out to be quantitatively confirmed via systematicmeasurements.

In Sections 4.1–4.4, we consider results for the measuredparameters first focusing on vowels (Section 4.1) and sono-rant consonants (Section 4.2), the two sounds that are bestsuited to the salient realization of pitch accent and stress.Discussion in Section 4.3 turns to voiced obstruents, whichare relatively impoverished in their ability to manifest pitchaccent or stress. Finally, Section 4.4 addresses voicelessobstruents, which lack the capacity to bear F0 cues to phono-logical prominence.

4.1. Vowels

Fig. 5 shows mean F0, duration, and intensity values for vowelnuclei (/a, i/ in the present data) in four contexts: in the finalsyllable of a phrase, e.g. tsikit (leftmost bar within each graph), inthe penultimate syllable of a phrase, e.g. tsikit (second bar from

e (s)

0.7608

i t

sikit ‘She missed it’ uttered in isolation by a female speaker.

e (s)

0.6997

i t

sikit ‘She missed it’ uttered in isolation by a female speaker.

Phr-Fin Phr-Pen Wd-Fin Wd-Pen Phr-Fin Phr-Pen Wd-Fin Wd-Pen


N=26 N=26 N=27N=26 N=22 N=21 N=21N=22

N=48 N=51 N=51N=48 N=48 N=51 N=51N=48

275

250

225

200Mea

n F

0 (i

n H

ertz

)

175

175

150

125Mea

n F

0 (i

n H

ertz

)

100

0.120 70.00

68.00

66.00

64.00

62.00

Mea

n D

urat

ion

(in

seco

nds)

Mea

n In

tens

ity

(in

deci

bels

)

0.100

0.080

0.060

Fig. 5. Mean F0 averaged over female speakers (top left) and male speakers (top right), duration averaged over all speakers (bottom left), and intensity averaged over all

speakers (bottom right) for vowels in four contexts. Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals. The number of tokens is given above each bar.

Time (s)

0 1.177100

350

Pitc

h (H

z)

Fig. 4. A representative waveform and pitch trace for the phrase tsikit Cilad ‘She missed it now’ as produced by a female speaker.


the left within each graph), in the final syllable of a phrase-medialword, e.g. tsikit Cilad (third bar from the left within each graph),and in the penultimate syllable of a phrase-medial word, e.g. tsikit

Cilad (rightmost bar within each graph). F0 results for femalespeakers appear in the top left graph, F0 results for male speakersin the top right graph, duration data in the bottom left, andintensity results in the bottom right. Results for individual speak-ers are given in Appendix B.

As is evident from the figure, vowels in phrase-final syllablesare characterized by higher F0, longer duration, and greaterintensity than vowels in other positions. Another patternthat emerges is for vowels in word-final syllables that are not

phrase-final to have greater intensity and duration than vowels inthe penultimate syllable. A repeated measures ANOVA for thefemale speakers with F0 as the dependent variable and position(phrase-final, phrase-penultimate, word-final, or word-penulti-mate) as the within-subjects independent variable indicated asignificant effect (Greenhouse–Geisser adjusted) of context on F0for the female speakers: F(1.765, 35.294)¼10.054, po0.001.Pairwise posthoc tests (Bonferroni adjusted for multiple compar-isons) indicated that F0 was higher in phrase-final syllable nucleirelative to other syllable nuclei at po0.01. None of the otherpairwise comparisons reached significance. A separate ANOVAfor male speakers also yielded a significant result: F(2.036,


34.612)¼19.772, po0.001. Pairwise Bonferroni posthoc testsindicated that the difference between vowels in phrase-finalsyllables and vowels in both the final and penultimate syllableof phrase-medial words was robust (po0.01). However, thedifference between phrase-final syllables and the penult ofphrase-final words was not significant. F0 was higher in thepenult of phrase-final words than in both the penult and theultima of phrase-medial words.

Results were largely similar across speakers with some minorvariation. Four of the six speakers (F2, F3, M1, M2) had highest F0in the final syllable of the phrase, accounting for the overall resultseen in the figure. Speaker F1 displayed a different pattern,whereby the highest F0 values were found in the penultimatesyllable of the phrase. Speaker M3 had similar F0 values across allfour positions.

A repeated measures ANOVA with intensity as the dependentvariable and position (phrase-final, phrase-penultimate, word-final, or word-penultimate) as the within-subjects independentvariable also found that intensity was affected by position: F(3,120)¼16.637, po0.001. Bonferroni adjusted posthoc tests indi-cated a different pattern, however, from that observed for F0. Notonly the phrase-final syllable but also the word-final syllable ofphrase-medial words had greater intensity (po0.01) than thepenultimate syllable, both phrase-finally and phrase-medially.The two speakers with the largest intensity differences acrosspositions (F2 and M3) displayed the same pattern, the overall oneseen in the graph, of greater intensity on both word-final andphrase-final syllables relative to the penult. Speaker F3 had adivergent pattern whereby intensity was greater in penultimateposition. For speaker M1, vowels in word-final syllables werecharacterized by lower intensity than those in other syllables.Speaker F1 and M2 displayed little variation in intensity acrosspositions.

Duration was also shown by a repeated measures ANOVA(with position as the within-subjects variable) to be significantlyimpacted by position: F(3, 120)¼53.390, po0.001. PairwiseBonferroni adjusted posthoc tests indicated a tripartite distinction(po0.01) with duration being longest phrase-finally, somewhatshorter word-finally, and shortest in penultimate syllables. Speak-ers M1 and M3 conformed to the overall pattern according towhich duration was longest phrase-finally, intermediate word-finally, and shortest in penultimate syllables. For speakers F2 andM2, lengthening was confined to phrase-final syllables. SpeakerF3 evinced roughly equivalent lengthening in both phrase-finaland word-final syllables. Speaker F1 had quite similar durationvalues across contexts.

To summarize the results for vowels, three overall patternswere evident subject to some interspeaker variation. First, F0tended to be highest in phrase-final syllables relative to otherpositions. Second, intensity was greater in both phrase-final andword-final syllables relative to penultimate syllables. Finally,duration was longest phrase-finally, intermediate word-finally,and shortest in penultimate position.

Focusing on the dominant patterns emerging in the graphs, theasymmetric raising of F0 in the final syllable of phrases isconsistent with Dell and Elmedlaoui’s (2002) suggestion thatthe final syllable of a phrase is associated with increased promi-nence. Interestingly, this phrase-final prominence is conveyedthrough raised F0, while another type of prominence realizedthrough increased intensity is associated with word-final sylla-bles, both in phrase-final and phrase-medial words. One plausibleinterpretation of this combination of results is that all word-finalsyllables carry stress, which is cued by intensity, while word-finalsyllables that are also phrase-final are associated with a pitchaccent, which is signaled through higher F0. Under this view,which is in line with cross-linguistic patterns (see Ladd, 1996;

Gussenhoven, 2004), stress is a word-level property and pitchaccent is a phrase-level feature assigned in bottom-up fashion toselect syllables carrying word-level stress.

The relationship between duration and both stress and pitchaccent is ambiguous in the Tashlhiyt data due to the fact thatstress and pitch accent in Tashlhiyt happen to fall on finalsyllables, which are known to trigger lengthening independentof stress or accent in many languages, e.g. Arabic (De Jong andZawaydeh, 1999), Chickasaw (Gordon & Munro, 2007), Dutch(Gussenhoven & Rietveld, 1992), English (Wightman, Shattuck-Hufnagel, Ostendorf, & Price, 1992), Finnish (Oller, 1979), Green-landic Eskimo (Nagano-Madsen, 1992), Hebrew (Berkovits, 1991),Hungarian (Hockey and Fagyal, 1999), Italian (van Santen andD’Imperio, 1999), and Spanish (Oller, 1979). In fact, the Tashlhiytdata display the gradient type of lengthening characteristic offinal position, whereby lengthening is greater phrase-finally thanword-finally. It is thus unclear whether stress and/or pitch accenttriggers lengthening or whether the lengthening associated withfinal position is an independent phenomenon that happens to actsynergistically with F0 and intensity to enhance the prominenceof final syllables.

4.2. Sonorant consonants

Fig. 6 shows mean F0, duration, and intensity values forsonorant nuclei (/m, l, r/) in four contexts: in the final syllableof a phrase, e.g. sslslt (leftmost bar within each graph), in thepenultimate syllable of a phrase, e.g. sslslt (second bar from theleft within each graph), in the final syllable of a phrase-medialword, e.g. sslslt Cilad (third bar from the left within each graph),and in the penultimate syllable of a phrase-medial word, e.g. sslslt

Cilad (rightmost bar within each graph). F0 results for femalespeakers appear in the top left graph, F0 results for male speakersin the top right graph, duration data in the bottom left graph, andintensity results in the bottom right graph. Results for individualspeakers are given in Appendix B.

As the figure shows, results for sonorant consonants largelymirror those seen for vowels with a couple of minor deviations.The higher F0 characteristic of phrase-final syllables is even moreevident for sonorant consonants and the lengthening character-istic of word-final vowels in phrase-medial words is less pro-nounced in the case of sonorant consonants.

A repeated measures ANOVA for the female speaker data withF0 as the dependent variable and position (phrase-final, phrase-penultimate, word-final, or word-penultimate) as the within-subjects independent variable indicated a significant effect ofposition on F0 for sonorant consonant nuclei: F(3, 144)¼63.275,po0.001. Bonferroni posthoc tests revealed that this overallresult was attributed to a raising of F0 (po0.01) in sonorantnuclei phrase-finally relative to other positions. A similar resultobtained in a separate ANOVA (with position as the within-subjects independent variable) for male speakers: F(2.46,115.634)¼13.33, po0.001, with phrase-final sonorant nuclei alsohaving higher F0 (po0.01) than those in other positions. Twospeakers (F1 and M3) deviated from the dominant pattern ofhaving higher F0 values phrase-finally relative to other contexts.

The context in which the sonorant consonant appeared wasalso demonstrated to impact intensity according to a repeatedmeasures ANOVA: F(2.787, 295.459)¼15.109, po0.001. Pairwisecomparisons indicated that both phrase-final and word-finalsonorant consonant nuclei had greater intensity than their coun-terparts in the penultimate syllable. Phrase-final and word-finalsonorants did not, however, differ from each other in intensity.The overall intensity result was attributed primarily to thebehavior of three speakers, F1, F2, and M3, all of whom adhered



N=53 N=61 N=63N=57 N=55 N=56 N=56N=57

N=119 N=118 N=119N=120 N=119 N=118 N=119N=120

250 175

150

125

100

225

200

175

0.090

0.080

0.070

0.060

Mea

n D

urat

ion

(in

seco

nds)

Mea

n In

tens

ity

(in

deci

bels

)

0.050

0.040

Mea

n F

0 (i

n H

ertz

)

Mea

n F

0 (i

n H

ertz

)

64.00

62.00

60.00

58.00

56.00

54.00


speakers (bottom right) for sonorant consonant nuclei in four contexts. Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals. The number of tokens is given above each bar.


to the same pattern whereby intensity was greater in bothphrase-final and word-final sonorant consonants.

Duration values were also found in a repeated measuresANOVA to be affected by position: F(2.657, 281.615)¼24.942,po0.001, with posthoc tests showing that sonorant consonantnuclei in phrase-final syllables were significantly longer (po0.01)than those in other contexts. There was also a weaker lengtheningeffect (p¼0.034) seen in word-final sonorants compared to theircounterparts in the penult of phrase-medial words.

In summary, the results for sonorant consonant nuclei basicallymirror those seen for vowels and are consistent with an analysisthat posits stress on word-final syllables with the final stressedsyllable of a phrase being promoted to pitch accented status.

4.3. Voiced obstruents

Fig. 7 shows mean F0 (where the pitch trace returned values),duration, and intensity values for voiced obstruent nuclei (/W, C/ inthe present experiment) in four contexts: in the final syllable of aphrase, e.g. tstCt (leftmost bar within each graph), in the penulti-mate syllable of a phrase, e.g. tstCtn (second bar from the leftwithin each graph), in the final syllable of a phrase-medial word,e.g. tstCt Cilad (third bar from the left within each graph), and inthe penultimate syllable of a phrase-medial word, e.g. tstCtn Cilad

(rightmost bar within each graph). F0 results for female speakersappear in the top left graph, F0 results for male speakers in thetop right graph, duration data in the bottom left graph, andintensity results in the bottom right graph. Results for individualspeakers are given in Appendix B.

As the figure shows, the voiced obstruents display the sametrends as those seen for the sonorants, although the four exam-ined contexts are in general not as well distinguished for thevoiced obstruents as they were for the sonorants. F0 is somewhathigher in phrase-final syllables than in other positions in keepingwith the pattern seen for sonorants. There is also a tendency forintensity to be greater in word-final syllables, whether phrase-final or phrase-medial, compared to penultimate syllables. Final

lengthening at the phrase level, and, to a lesser degree, at theword level is also apparent, although the effect of position onduration did not emerge as significant in a repeated measuresANOVA.

Looking at the parameters that distinguished voiced obstru-ents by context, separate repeated measures ANOVA for thefemale and male speakers with F0 as the dependent variableand position (phrase-final, phrase-penultimate, word-final, orword-penultimate) as the within-subjects independent variableindicated a significant effect of position on F0 for both genders:for females, F(2.017, 42.367)¼6.705, p¼0.003; for males, F(1.621,6.484)¼8.321, p¼0.019. F0 was higher in phrase-final syllablesrelative to others, although this effect was only marginally robustin posthoc tests for female speakers: phrase-final vs. phrase-penultimate, p¼0.057; phrase-final vs. word-final, p¼0.049;phrase-final vs. word-penultimate, p¼0.013. For male speakers,the differences between phrase-final and other syllables narrowlymissed significance in posthoc tests: phrase-final vs. phrase-penultimate, p¼0.066; phrase-final vs. word-final, p¼0.110;phrase-final vs. word-penultimate, p¼0.118. Three speakers (F3,M1 and M2) display the same trend for F0 to be raised phrase-finally, with the largest effect observed for speaker F3.

A repeated measures ANOVA (with position as the indepen-dent variable) indicated a significant effect of position on inten-sity values: F(2.406, 105.857)¼6.405, p¼0.001. Although meanintensity was greater in phrase-final and word-final syllablescompared to their counterparts in the penult, the only pairwisecomparisons that emerged as statistically significant in pairwiseposthoc tests were those between the penult of phrase-finalwords and both the phrase-final (p¼0.023) and the word-finalnucleus (po0.01). Results diverged between speakers. Speaker F1and F2 both had greater intensity in both word-final and phrase-final syllables relative to the penult, while the distinguishingcharacteristic of speaker M3 was the reduced intensity of voicedobstruent nuclei in the penultimate syllable of the phrase relativeto other contexts. The other speakers showed little variation inintensity as a function of position.


N=111 N=113N=110 N=115 N=111 N=113N=110N=1150.130 55.00

54.00

53.00

52.00

51.00

50.00

0.120

0.110

0.100

0.090

0.080

Mea

n D

urat

ion

(in

seco

nds)

Mea

n In

tens

ity

(in

deci

bels

)

Fig. 8. Duration (left) and intensity (right) averaged over all speakers (bottom right) for voiceless obstruent nuclei in four contexts. Error bars represent 95% confidence

intervals. The number of tokens is given above each bar.

Phr-Fin Phr-Pen Wd-Fin Wd-Pen

Phr-Fin


Phr-Pen Wd-Fin Wd-Pen

N=27


N=29 N=26N=28 N=19 N=17 N=8N=12

N=58 N=57 N=55N=58

250

N=58 N=57 N=55N=58

200

150

125

100

75

64.00

62.00

60.00

58.00

56.00

54.00

150

100M

ean

F0

(in

Her

tz)

Mea

n D

urat

ion

(in

seco

nds)

Mea

n F

0 (i

n H

ertz

)

50

Mea

n In

tens

ity

(in

deci

bels

)

0

0.100

0.090

0.080

0.070

0.060


speakers (bottom right) for voiced obstruent nuclei in four contexts. Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals. The number of tokens is given above each bar.


In summary, evidence for a pitch accent on the final syllable ofphrases and stress on word-final syllables was less clear-cut forvoiced obstruents compared to sonorants, although none of theresults for voiced obstruents contradict the patterns observed insonorants. There was a tendency for voiced obstruents in phrase-final syllables to have the higher F0 characteristic of a pitchaccent, but this effect was not consistent across speakers.Furthermore, two speakers displayed the greater intensity in bothphrase-final and word-final syllables that is suggestive of stress inword-final syllables.

4.4. Voiceless obstruents

Fig. 8 shows mean duration and intensity values for voicelessobstruent nuclei (/f, s, x, :/ in the present experiment) in fourcontexts: in the final syllable of a phrase, e.g. trkst (leftmost barwithin each graph), in the penultimate syllable of a phrase, e.g.trkstn (second bar from the left within each graph), in the finalsyllable of a phrase-medial word, e.g. trkst Cilad (third bar fromthe left within each graph), and in the penultimate syllable of aphrase-medial word, e.g. trkstn Cilad (rightmost bar within each

graph). Duration results appear on the left side of the graph andintensity results on the right side. Results for individual speakersare given in Appendix B.

As the figure suggests, a repeated measures ANOVA withintensity as the dependent variable and position (phrase-final,phrase-penultimate, word-final, or word-penultimate) as thewithin-subjects independent variable confirmed that intensitydoes not reliably distinguish voiceless obstruents based on theirposition. This result, however, obscures considerable variation inindividual speaker results. Speakers F3 and M2 had greaterintensity on voiceless nuclei in penultimate position, both of theword and the phrase, than their counterparts in final syllables.Speakers F2 and M3, on the other hand, displayed the oppositetrend and had greater intensity on final syllables, both word- andphrase-final. Speaker M1 had reduced intensity on the finalnucleus of phrase-medial words. Speaker F1 did not reliablydistinguish voiceless obstruents in the different contexts usingintensity.

Duration was more uniform in its behavior. A repeatedmeasures ANOVA with duration as the dependent variable andposition as the independent variable revealed an effect of position

Time (s)0 0.6245

0

5000

Fre

quen

cy (

Hz)

Fig. 9. Epenthetic vowel between /k/ and /m/ in tlkmt [tlk=mt] ‘you arrived’.


on duration for voiceless obstruents: F(2.740, 249.354)¼21.189,po0.001. Posthoc tests indicated a bifurcation between all word-final syllables and all penultimate syllables, such that the formerwere lengthened relative to the latter.

In summary, voiceless obstruents display the weakest evi-dence for either stress or pitch accent. The failure of voicelessobstruents to signal pitch accent is not surprising since they lackan F0. Perhaps somewhat more surprising is the fact that intensityis not more reliably employed as a cue to word-level stress.

Voiceless obstruents are subject to final lengthening in keep-ing with results for other more sonorous nuclei. The degree oflengthening is, however, no greater in voiceless obstruents thanin other sounds suggesting that speakers do not rely on durationas a compensatory cue to stress and/or pitch accent in theabsence of F0 or intensity cues. On the one hand, the failure ofduration to signal prominence is perhaps surprising since it is aproperty that Tashlhiyt readily manipulates to serve phonologicalpurposes in contrasting singleton and geminate obstruents. Iro-nically, however, it is perhaps the existence of these lengthcontrasts that renders duration less available as a potential cueto prominence.1

The failure of stress and pitch accent to be clearly marked onvoiceless obstruents coupled with their less robust realization onvoiced obstruents relative to sonorants raise the interestingquestion of how phonological prominence is signaled, if at all,when it is linked with syllables containing an obstruent nucleus.In the next section, we explore this issue in the context of vowelepenthesis, a pervasive phenomenon in Tashlhiyt.

4.5. Epenthesis

As discussed in detail in work by Dell and Elmedlaoui (2002)(see also Fougeron & Ridouane, 2008a, 2008b for phonetic data),epenthesis occurs widely in Tashlhiyt potentially giving thecasual observer the impression of the existence of a fourthphonemic vowel in addition to /i, a, u/. The epenthetic vowel isa fairly central vowel whose precise quality varies as a function ofsurrounding consonants (see Coleman, 1999 for phonetic data).Following Dell and Elmedlaoui, however, we will transcribe this

1 We thank an anonymous reviewer for making this suggestion.

vowel as schwa consistently, since its qualitative variation is notcrucial to the analysis of stress and pitch accent.

In their analysis of epenthesis, Dell and Elmedlaoui (2002)focus on what they term voiced transitional vocoids (abbreviated‘VTV’ by them), which break up, in certain contexts, consonantclusters consisting of at least one voiced consonant. As they pointout, epenthesis is a gradient phenomenon such that the durationof epenthetic vowels varies contextually (see Coleman, 1999 forduration data) and their presence is optional in certain positions,facts that suggest that epenthesis operates at a phonetic ratherthan a phonological level. Furthermore, speakers are not typicallyaware of epenthetic vowels, an observation that is consistent forour consultants as well. The interested reader is referred to thediscussion in Dell and Elmedlaoui (2002, pp. 135–187) for furtherdetails related to epenthetic vowels, including their sensitivity tothe voicing and manner of adjacent consonants and, to a lesserextent, to the morphology. The fact that epenthesis has thehallmarks of a phonetic rather than phonological phenomenonraises interesting issues in terms of its potential relationship tostress and pitch accent. If the epenthetic vowels are the result of alow-level phonetic process rather than being truly phonological,they might not be expected to serve as the docking site for eitherstress or pitch accent.

Our data largely confirm Dell and Elmedlaoui’s observationthat VTVs are widely attested adjacent to voiced consonants.Fig. 9 illustrates an example of an epenthetic vowel between /k/and /m/ in tlkmt [tlk=mt] ‘you arrived’. However, we also found anumber of instances of epenthetic vowels, all of which werevoiced in our data, in two other contexts not adjacent to a voicedconsonant: word-medially between voiceless consonants, a con-text that also triggers epenthesis in Tashlhiyt singing (Dell, 2010;Dell & Elmedlaoui, 2008), and word-finally. Figs. 10 and 11 depicttwo docking sites for an epenthetic vowel in tf.txt [tft=xt] ‘Sherolled it (masc.)’: between voiceless consonants, i.e. [tft=xt], inFig. 10 and word-finally, i.e. [tftxt=], in Fig. 11.

Interestingly, these epenthetic vowels and, to a lesser extent,those occurring adjacent to a voiced consonant, display distribu-tional skewings dependent on whether the word in which theyappear is phrase-final or phrase-medial and, in the case of word-medial epenthesis, on the location of the syllable in which theflanking consonants appear.

There were six positions that were tracked in our data thatpotentially gave rise to epenthesis. We did not tabulate cases of

Time (s)

0 0.60010

5000

Freq

uenc

y (H

z)

Fig. 10. Epenthetic vowel between /t/ and /x/ in tf.txt [tft=xt] ‘She rolled it (masc.)’.

Time (s)

0 0.831950

5000

Freq

uenc

y (H

z)

Fig. 11. Phrase-final epenthetic vowel in tf.txt [tftxt=] ‘She rolled it (masc.)’.

Table 1Epenthesis sites in Tashlhiyt Berber.

Position of word Position of syllabic

consonant

Form

Phrase-final Penult t .t= .t

Ultima t .t= t

Final t .t .t=

Phrase-medial Penult t .t= .t Cilad

Ultima t .t= t Cilad

Final t .t .t= Cilad


epenthesis to the left of the penult. The six epenthesis sites are asfollows, where we refer to the consonant triggering epenthesis asthe actual nucleus for purposes of defining the location ofepenthesis. First, epenthesis was possible at the end of a word,whether this word was phrase-final or phrase-medial. Epenthesisalso occurred in some tokens word-medially before the conso-nantal nucleus of a syllable, whether this syllable was thepenultimate or the final one of the word. Interestingly, cases ofword-medial epenthesis in our data were limited to prenuclearposition before both sonorants and obstruents. This result shouldnot, however, be regarded as an exceptionless property ofepenthesis in the language as a whole. Dell and Elmedlaoui(2002) identify many instances of epenthesis after a nuclearsonorant, and Dell and Elmedlaoui (2008) report that in singingepenthetic schwa characteristically follows rather than precedes asonorant nucleus. Furthermore, we have also encountered epen-thetic vowels in non-prenuclear contexts in our work on thelanguage outside of the data analyzed for this paper.

The six positions in which epenthetic vowels were found inour data are summarized in Table 1 where the representative

target sound is /x/ in the words tf.txt (final syllable) ‘She rolled it(masc.)’ and tf.tx.tn (penult) ‘She rolled them (masc.)’. Syllabicconsonants in Table 1 are marked with a syllabic diacritic toindicate that they are treated in the discussion as the phonolo-gical nucleus of a syllable containing an epenthetic vowel.

There were a small number of instances (6) of ‘‘doubleepenthesis’’ involving an epenthetic vowel both word-finally


and before the consonantal nucleus in the final syllable, e.g.There were no instances of epenthesis in final position

when the target consonantal nucleus was in the penult, e.g.or This gap is likely attributed to the presence

of a final sonorant nucleus in words in our corpus containing thetarget nucleus in the penult, e.g. The distribution ofepenthetic vowels is shown graphically in Fig. 12, which plots thepercentage of tokens (scaled relative to a maximum value of 1.0)containing an epenthetic vowel in various contexts for target nucleipreceded by the same consonant in the penult and the ultima. Barsare grouped according to the target nucleus for a given word witheach bar in a group representing a different context in which thetarget nucleus appears. The leftmost bar in each group representscases in which an epenthetic vowel occurs in a phrase-final wordbefore a target consonant in the final syllable, e.g. The secondbar from the left within each group represents cases in which theepenthetic vowel occurs in a phrase-final word in which the targetconsonant occurs in the penultimate syllable, e.g. The thirdbar from the left reflects tokens with epenthesis in a phrase-medialword in which the target consonant occurs in the final syllable, e.g.

Cilad. The rightmost bar represents instances of epenthesis ina phrase-medial word with the target consonant in the penult, e.g.

Cilad. Aside from phrase-final words containing the targetconsonant in the final syllable, virtually all instances of epenthesisoccur word-medially before the target consonant. For bars that aresplit the lower portion of the bar indicates tokens with word-medial,i.e. before the target consonant, epenthesis, while the upper part ofthe bar represents cases of word-final epenthesis. With few excep-tions, instances of word-final epenthesis are limited to phrase-finalforms in which the target consonant falls in the final syllable (theleftmost bar), e.g. The small number of tokens with doubleepenthesis both before the consonantal nucleus of the final syllableand word-finally are included in the upper bar. As mentioned above,there were no cases of double epenthesis in which the targetconsonant occurred in the penult.

A number of patterns are evident in Fig. 12. First, epentheticvowels are far more common before voiced consonants. The skewingof epenthesis in favor of voiced contexts is consistent with Dell andElmedlaoui’s (2002) observation that voiced transitional vocoids arisewhen at least one of the adjacent consonants is voiced. However, theoccasional occurrence of epenthesis in voiceless contexts in our datais not consistent with their suggestion that epenthesis fails to occurwhen both of the adjacent consonants are voiceless. Second, finalvowel epenthesis is almost exclusively limited to phrase-final wordsin which the final nucleus is an obstruent, with the majority of cases

0.1

0.5

0.4

0.3

0.2

0.7

0.6

0.8

0.9

1.0

0

PFin

ultim

aPF

inpe

nult

PMed

ultim

aPM

edpe

nult

PFin

ultim

aPF

inpe

nult

PMed

ultim

a

PFin

ultim

aPF

inpe

nult

PMed

ultim

a

PFin

ultim

a

Perc

enta

ge o

f T

oken

s w

/ Epe

nthe

sis

(Max

=1)

Fig. 12. Percentage of epenthetic vowels by target consonant as a function of p

arising when this final obstruent nucleus is voiceless. Third, voicednuclei vary less than voiceless nuclei in terms of how much theirepenthesis rates are affected by syllable position and phrasal context.

The fact that final vowel epenthesis is largely confined tophrase-final words in which the final nucleus is an obstruent findsan explanation in terms of the pitch accent observed in phrase-final syllables containing a sonorant nucleus. A phrase-finalsyllable consisting of an obstruent nucleus is poorly suited tosupporting F0 information. An epenthetic vowel inserted phrase-finally after an obstruent nucleus effectively allows for a terminalF0 peak at the end of the phrase. Consistent with this account isthe fact that final vowel epenthesis is most common aftervoiceless obstruent nuclei, which are most impoverished in termsof their ability to carry F0 information. It is interesting to notethat epenthetic vowels also serve a function in carrying pitch inTashlhiyt singing (Dell, 2010; Dell & Elmedlaoui, 2008).

4.5.1. Prominence in epenthetic vowels

The occurrence of epenthetic vowels raises the question ofwhether epenthesis is employed by speakers as a strategy to aidin the phonetic realization of either the phrase-final raised F0claimed earlier to reflect a pitch accent or the word-finalincreased intensity claimed to be attributed to stress. To answerthis question, F0 and intensity were compared for epentheticvowels occurring in six different contexts: before nuclei in word-final syllables that were also phrase-final (e.g. ), beforenuclei in word-final syllables that were phrase-medial (e.g.Cilad), before nuclei in the penult of phrase-final words (e.g.

), before nuclei in the penult of phrase-medial words( Cilad), word-finally in phrase-medial words (e.g.Cilad), and phrase-finally (e.g. ).

Fig. 13 shows mean F0 data for epenthetic vowels averagedacross different consonantal nuclei, including sonorants andobstruents, in different contexts for the three female speakers(on left) and the three male speakers (on right). Results forindividual speakers are given in Appendix B. The penult conditionrefers to epenthetic vowels preceding a consonantal nucleus inthe penultimate syllable, e.g. . The ultima condition refersto epenthetic vowels before a consonantal nucleus in the finalsyllable, e.g. . The post-ultima condition refers to epentheticvowels at the end of a word, e.g. .

For both the male and female speakers, epenthetic vowelsoccurring at the end of a word have higher F0 than theircounterpart epenthetic vowels in other positions. This result is

PMed

penu

lt

PFin

ultim

aPF

inpe

nult

PMed

ultim

aPM

edpe

nult

PFin

ultim

aPF

inpe

nult

PMed

ultim

aPM

edpe

nult

PFin

ultim

aPF

inpe

nult

PMed

ultim

aPM

edpe

nult

PFin

ultim

aPF

inpe

nult

PMed

ultim

aPM

edpe

nult

hrasal context and syllable position in which the target consonant occurs.

Phrase-final Phrase-final

N=21

N=107

N=94

N=7

N=98N=81

N=25

N=66

N=67

N=61

N=51

200

175

150

125

100

Mea

n F

0 (i

n H

ertz

)

350

300

250

200

150

Mea

n F

0 (i

n H

ertz

)

Phrase-medialPhrase-medial

post-ultimaultimapenult


Fig. 13. F0 for epenthetic vowels triggered by consonantal nuclei (sonorants and obstruents) in different contexts averaged over three female speakers (on left) and three

male speakers (on right). Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals. The number of tokens is given above each bar.

Phrase-final Phrase-medial

N=46

N=173

N=161

N=7

N=159 N=132

70.00post-ultima

ultima

penult

65.00

60.00

55.00

Mea

n In

tens

ity

(in

deci

bels

)

50.00

Fig. 14. Intensity for epenthetic vowels triggered by consonantal nuclei in

different contexts averaged over six speakers. Error bars represent 95% confidence



more meaningful for phrase-final words than phrase-medialwords, since the latter displayed final epenthetic vowels in thespeech of only a single individual (F2). Epenthetic vowels occur-ring before phrase-final consonantal nuclei also had higher F0than all other non-final epenthetic vowels.

These two patterns were confirmed by t-tests conducted forthe data from the female speakers. Epenthetic vowels occurring atthe end of phrase-final words (post-ultima condition) had higherF0 than epenthetic vowels in all other contexts: phrase-final post-ultima vs. phrase-final ultima, t (116)¼7.671, po0.001; phrase-final post-ultima vs. phrase-final penult, t (113)¼10.947,po0.001; phrase-final post-ultima vs. phrase-medial ultima, t

(117)¼13.395, po0.001; phrase-final post-ultima vs. phrase-medial penult, t (23)¼11.350, po0.001; phrase-final post-ultimavs. phrase-medial post-ultima, t (26)¼4.226, po0.001. Epen-thetic vowels before phrase-final consonantal nuclei were alsoassociated with higher F0 than all non-final epenthetic vowels:phrase-final ultima vs. phrase-final penult, t (197)¼2.871p¼0.005; phrase-final ultima vs. phrase-medial ultima, t

(186)¼4.408, po0.001; phrase-final ultima vs. phrase-medialpenult, t (165)¼5.547, po0.001. Final epenthetic vowels inphrase-medial words had higher F0 than non-final epentheticvowels in phrase-medial final syllables: t (103)¼2.069, p¼0.041.Epenthetic vowels in phrase-final penults also had slightly higherF0 than those in phrase-medial penults: t (160)¼2.577, p¼0.011.

Largely similar results obtained for the male speakers, themajor difference between them and the female speaker databeing the lack of final epenthetic vowels in phrase-medial words.Word-final epenthetic vowels had higher F0 than all otherepenthetic vowels: phrase-final post-ultima vs. phrase-finalultima, t (89)¼3.148, p¼0.002; phrase-final post-ultima vs.phrase-final penult, t (90)¼7.650, po0.001; phrase-final post-ultima vs. phrase-medial ultima, t (84)¼5.186, po0.001; phrase-final post-ultima vs. phrase-medial penult, t (74)¼7.640,po0.001. In addition, epenthetic vowels before phrase-finalconsonantal nuclei had higher F0 than non-final epentheticvowels: phrase-final ultima vs. phrase-final penult, t (112)¼3.788, po0.001; phrase-final ultima vs. phrase-medial penult, t

(110)¼3.856, po0.001, though there was only a trend towardsignificance in the t-test comparing epenthetic vowels in phrase-final ultimas and those in phrase-medial ultimas. There was alsoslightly higher F0 associated with epenthetic vowels in phrase-medial ultimas compared to phrase-final penults (t (120)¼2.548,p¼0.012) and to phrase-medial penults (t (110)¼2.607, p¼0.010).

It is also worth noting that in the few tokens (6) with anepenthetic vowel before both the final consonantal nucleus and atthe end of the phrase, i.e. double epenthesis, F0 was higher in the

phrase-final epenthetic vowel than in the epenthetic vowel beforethe final nucleus. For the five tokens with double epenthesisproduced by female speakers, F0 on the phrase-final vowelaveraged 272 Hz compared to 223 Hz for the prenuclear vowel.For the single example with two epenthetic vowels produced by amale speaker, the final vowel measured 159 Hz compared to117 Hz for the prenuclear vowel.

Unlike F0, intensity did not prove to be useful in distinguishingepenthetic vowels based on context. Fig. 14 depicts intensityvalues pooled over all speakers (see Appendix B for individualspeaker results). Intensity was elevated for epenthetic vowels inall syllables in phrase-final words rather than being raised inword- and phrase-final syllables.

t-Tests pooled over all speakers indicated that all epentheticvowels appearing in phrase-final syllables had greater intensitythan those in phrase-medial words: phrase-final ultima vs. phrase-medial ultima, t (336)¼3.960, po0.001; phrase-final ultima vs.phrase-medial penult, t (315)¼4.030, po0.001; phrase-finalultima vs. phrase-medial post-ultima, t (182)¼4.026, po0.001;phrase-final penult vs. phrase-medial ultima t (325)¼2.384,


p¼0.018; phrase-final penult vs. phrase-medial penult, t (304)¼2.436, p¼0.015; phrase-final penult vs. phrase-medial post-ultima,t (171)¼3.872, po0.001; phrase-final post-ultima vs. phrase-medialpost-ultima, t (56)¼5.232, p¼o0.001; phrase-final post-ultima vs.phrase-medial ultima, t (210)¼3.685, po0.001; phrase-final post-ultima vs. phrase-medial penult, t (189)¼4.003, po0.001. In addi-tion, epenthetic vowels had greater intensity in absolute final positionof the phrase compared to the penultimate syllable of phrase-finalwords: t (215)¼2.744, p¼0.007. Phrase-medially, word-final epen-thetic vowels had less intensity than vowels either before the finalconsonantal nucleus or the penultimate consonantal nucleus: phrase-medial post-ultima vs. phrase-medial ultima, t (166)¼2.300, p¼

0.023; phrase-medial post-ultima vs. phrase-medial penult, t (145)¼2.591, p¼0.011.

4.5.2. Epenthetic vowels triggered by Voiced obstruent nuclei

Fig. 15 shows mean F0 values for epenthetic vowels occurringbefore voiced obstruent nuclei and word-finally following asyllable containing a voiced obstruent nucleus for female speak-ers (on left) and male speakers (on right). Results for individualspeakers are given in Appendix B.

For both female and male speakers, epenthetic vowels inserted atthe end of words have higher F0 than epenthetic vowels occurring inother contexts. t-Tests conducted over the data from female speakersshows that final epenthetic vowels have higher F0 than those in non-final contexts: phrase-final post-ultima vs. phrase-final ultima, t

(29)¼3.502, p¼0.002; phrase-final post-ultima vs. phrase-medialultima, t (5)¼3.881 p¼0.010; phrase-final post-ultima vs. phrase-final penult, t (6)¼3.463, p¼0.015; phrase-final post-ultima vs.phrase-medial penult, t (5)¼4.071, p¼0.008. This result should beregarded with caution, however, since there are relatively fewinstances of final epenthetic vowels phrase-finally and only a singlecase (from female speaker F2) of a word-final epenthetic vowel in aphrase-medial word. A more robust comparison is possible forepenthetic vowels in the ultima as compared with those in thepenult. It is evident for the female speakers that epenthetic vowelsbefore phrase-final voiced obstruent nuclei have higher F0 than othernon-final epenthetic vowels, though this difference reaches signifi-cance only in the comparison with phrase-medial cases: phrase-finalultima vs. phrase-medial ultima, t (39)¼2.484, p¼0.017; phrase-finalultima vs. phrase-medial penult, t (37)¼2.992, p¼0.005. The moregeneral pattern is for epenthetic vowels in phrase-final words,whether in the ultima or the penult, to have higher F0 than thosein phrase-medial words. One speaker (F3) displays asymmetrically


N=7

N=25

N=21

N=1

N=23N=20

350post-ultimaultimapenult

300

250

Mea

n F

0 (i

n H

ertz

)

200

150

Fig. 15. F0 for epenthetic vowels triggered by voiced obstruent nuclei in different con

right). Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals. The number of tokens is given ab

higher F0 in phrase-final ultimas relative to phrase-final penults andboth the ultima and penult in phrase-medial words.

For the male speakers, only M1 has higher F0 values in theultima of phrase-final words compared to epenthetic vowels inother contexts. For the other two male speakers, epentheticvowels before phrase-final obstruent nuclei do not have higherF0 than non-final epenthetic vowels in phrase-medial words. It isconceivable that the jump in phrase-final words from the penultto the ultima enhances the prominence of the final syllable. Itshould be borne in mind, though, that these generalizations,particularly those involving the male speakers, are based on arelatively small data set.

4.5.3. Epenthetic vowels triggered by voiceless obstruent nuclei

Fig. 16 shows mean F0 values for epenthetic vowels occurringbefore voiceless obstruent nuclei and word-finally following asyllable containing a voiceless obstruent nucleus for femalespeakers (on left) and male speakers (on right). Individual speakervalues are given in Appendix B.

Female and male speakers diverge in their results. For thefemales speakers displaying epenthesis before voiceless obstruentnuclei (speakers F2 and F3), F0 values are highest for word-finalepenthetic vowels in phrase-final words, slightly lower for epen-thetic vowels preceding voiceless obstruent nuclei in the finalsyllable of phrase-final words and lowest in other contexts. Thisresult is consistent with the view that a pitch accent is associatedwith the final syllable of a phrase and was confirmed in t-tests:phrase-final post-ultima vs. phrase-final ultima, t (27)¼2.764,p¼0.010; phrase-final post-ultima vs. phrase-final penult, t

(18)¼4.293, po0.001; phrase-final post-ultima vs. phrase-med-ial ultima, t (25)¼63.352, po0.001; phrase-final post-ultima vs.phrase-medial penult, t (16)¼6.749, po0.001; phrase-final post-ultima vs. phrase-medial post-ultima, t (14)¼4.917, po0.001;phrase-final ultima vs. phrase-medial post-ultima, t (19)¼2.711,p¼0.014; phrase-final ultima vs. phrase-final penult, t (23)¼2.617, p¼0.015; phrase-final ultima vs. phrase-medial ultima,t (30)¼3.372, p¼0.002; phrase-final ultima vs. phrase-medialpenult, t (21)¼3.406, p¼0.003.

For the male speakers, there are fewer tokens containingepenthetic vowels. Neither phrase-final epenthetic vowels norepenthetic vowels before voiceless obstruent nuclei in the ultimahave higher F0 than their counterparts in the penultimatesyllable. This result, however, is somewhat misleading since onlya single speaker (M1) has epenthetic vowels in more than twocontexts, while another speaker (M3) has a single token


N=6

N=11

N=7

N=12

N=3


250

200

150

150

100

Mea

n F

0 (i

n H

ertz

)

texts averaged over three female speakers (on left) and three male speakers (on

ove each bar.

N=89 N=99 N=85 N=105

60.00

55.00

50.00

Inte

nsit

y (i

n de

cibe

ls)

N=12

N=17

N=8 N=4

N=15N=6

N=18

N=9N=4

N=10

N=2

Phrase-final Phrase-medial Phrase-final Phrase-medial

350post-ultimaultimapenult


225

200

175

150

125

100

300

Mea

n F

0 (i

n H

ertz

)

Mea

n F

0 (i

n H

ertz

)

250

200

150

Fig. 16. F0 for epenthetic vowels triggered by voiceless obstruent nuclei in different contexts averaged over three female speakers (on left) and three male speakers (on

right). Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals. The number of tokens is given above each bar.


containing an epenthetic vowel in two contexts, and a thirdspeaker (M2) only displays epenthetic vowels in final position.For the speaker with the most complete data set (M1), F0 valuesare slightly higher in both the post-ultima (206 Hz) and ultima(199 Hz) conditions than in the penult (190 Hz). t-Tests con-ducted using this speaker’s data indicate that F0 in epentheticvowels in phrase-final ultimas is higher than F0 in epentheticvowels in phrase-medial penults (t (16)¼4.095, p¼0.001) andthat F0 in phrase-final penults is higher than F0 in phrase-medialpenults (t (12)¼2.249, p¼0.044).


N=89 N=99 N=85 N=105

0.175

0.150

0.125

Mea

n D

urat

ion

(in

seco

nds)

0.100

0.075

0.050

Fig. 18. Duration values for voiceless obstruent nuclei in tokens without an

epenthetic vowel averaged over six speakers. Error bars represent 95% confidence



45.00

Mea

n

40.00

Fig. 17. Intensity values for voiceless obstruent nuclei in tokens without an

epenthetic vowel averaged over six speakers. Error bars represent 95% confidence


4.5.4. Prominence in epenthetic vowels: summary

There is a strong trend in the data for epenthetic vowels to beassociated with higher F0 in two positions: word-finally inphrase-final words (e.g. ) and before the final consonantalnucleus in phrase-final words (e.g. ). Although this patternis not completely consistent across the data, it is consistent withan interpretation of epenthesis as a prominence enhancingstrategy to aid in the realization of a pitch accent in phrase-finalposition. It is also in line with the role of schwa as a bearer ofmusical notes in singing in Tashlhiyt Berber (Dell & Elmedlaoui,2008). In the case of phrase-final sonorants, raised F0 in theepenthetic vowel is redundant since the sonorant itself is able torealize an increase in F0 effectively. In the case of obstruentnuclei, however, an epenthetic vowel presumably plays a morecrucial role in supporting the phrase-final F0 rise.

However, although epenthesis is common in tokens containingcertain phrase-final obstruent nuclei, notably /x, W, C/, epenthesis isonly observed in a minority of cases for other phrase-final obstruentnuclei in our data. Thus, epenthesis occurs in fewer than 40% oftokens containing a phrase-final nucleus of /s/ or /:/. There is also noevidence for a compensatory relationship between epenthesis andintensity such that one or both of these properties is a more robustmarker of prominence in tokens lacking an epenthetic vowel. Fig. 17shows intensity values for voiceless obstruents only in tokenslacking an epenthetic vowel. Individual speaker means appear inAppendix B. It is clear that intensity is not systematically greater ineither phrase-final or word-final voiceless obstruent nuclei relativeto their counterparts in the penultimate syllable. It is thus not thecase that intensity is used as a marker of prominence preferentiallyin syllables lacking an epenthetic vowel.

There is some evidence that duration more reliably differenti-ates phrase-final obstruent nuclei from others in tokens lackingan epenthetic vowel. Fig. 18 plots duration for voiceless obstruentnuclei in tokens without epenthesis. Results for individual speak-ers are given in Appendix B.

Duration is much greater in final position of the phrase relativeto other contexts. This differs somewhat from the aggregate datafor voiceless obstruents including those triggering epenthesis(Section 4.3), which showed greater duration in both word-finaland phrase-final voiceless obstruents. It is conceivable that


duration is enhanced phrase-finally in the absence of an epen-thetic vowel as a partial substitute for the raised F0 characteristicof the pitch accent associated with phrase-final sonorants. How-ever, an alternative interpretation is that the voiceless obstruentnucleus is simply shorter when there is an epenthetic vowel, aninstantiation of the cross-linguistic tendency for the duration ofindividual segments to inversely correlate with the number ofsegments.

5. Discussion

5.1. Pitch accent and stress in Tashlhiyt

Phrase-final syllables in Tashlhiyt have been shown to beassociated with higher F0 than their counterparts in othersyllables suggesting that a phonological pitch accent, H* in anautosegmental metrical approach (Pierrehumbert, 1980), dockson the final syllable of a large intonational unit, the IntonationalPhrase. This pitch accent is most consistently present in phrase-final sonorant nuclei and is variably associated with voicedobstruent nuclei. A virtue of assuming a phrase-final pitch accentin Tashlhiyt is that it is consistent with standard assumptions thateach Intonational Phrase contains at least one metrically promi-nent syllable. Cross-linguistic studies have shown that phrasalpitch accents characteristically dock on syllables that are metri-cally prominent at the word level. Based on the data examinedhere, Tashlhiyt appears to conform to the English-type (and cross-linguistically common) pattern whereby the rightmost stress inthe Intonational Phrase is promoted to pitch accent status underneutral semantic conditions. Further research on the intonationalsystem of Tashlhiyt is needed to determine whether this general-ization holds under different conditions, e.g. different intonationalcontours, other pitch accents, different focus conditions, etc.

The data presented here are also insufficient to rule out thepossibility that the heightened F0 on phrase-final syllables is at leastpartially attributed to a H% boundary tone associated with the rightedge of an Intonational Phrase. It is also conceivable that the raisedF0 seen in final syllables could be a property of a smaller domainthan the Intonational Phrase, such as the Accentual Phrase, as inFrench (Jun and Fougeron, 1995) or Korean (Jun, 1993).

One possible analysis that seems less compelling, however, inlight of the present data is one that assumes only a boundary tonewithout an accompanying H* pitch accent. Since intensity indepen-dently argues for stress on word-final syllables, assuming anadditional layer of phrase-level prominence in the form of a pitchaccent is consistent with standard assumptions about the hierarch-ical nature of prominence relations. The rising F0 profile within thefinal syllable observed in Figs. 2 and 3 could be attributed to a laterealization of H* possibly coupled with an upward movement toreach a high boundary tone, if one is present.

Despite the compelling evidence from sonorants for a phrase-final pitch accent, the role of pitch accents is more ambiguous inthe case of obstruents. Although the raised F0 observed in phrase-final sonorants exists as a weaker effect in voiced obstruentnuclei, voiceless obstruents did not show any evidence for specialprominence on either phrase-final or word-final syllables beyondthe general pattern of final lengthening that also characterizessonorants and voiced obstruents and is plausibly independent ofstress. This raises the question of whether a pitch accent isphonologically associated with a syllable containing a phrase-final voiceless obstruent nucleus and no epenthetic vowel.Assuming that all phrase-final syllables are accented, this accentappears based on the present experiment to be phoneticallyvacuous when associated with a voiceless obstruent and realizedonly in tokens containing an epenthetic vowel. Alternatively, it is

conceivable that the pitch accent fails to associate with voicelessobstruents, a situation that would represent the intonationalanalog to tone languages that restrict tones to more sonorantnuclei (Zhang, 2002). Yet another possibility that cannot bedefinitively rejected is that the pitch accent has an alternativeas yet undiscovered phonetic realization when associated withvoiceless obstruents.

In any event, whether one assumes that voiceless obstruentsmay bear a pitch accent or not, the lengthening of phrase-finalsyllables likely provides crucial perceptual evidence to thelistener that the speaker has reached the end of an IntonationalPhrase. When the final syllable nucleus of the IntonationalPhrase contains a sonorant or, to a lesser extent, a voicedobstruent, the phrase boundary is reinforced by the pitch accent.When the final syllable nucleus of the Intonational Phrase con-sists of a voiceless obstruent, on the other hand, final lengtheningpresumably plays a decisive demarcative role in cuing the rightedge of the phrase.

Sonorant nuclei also provided evidence for word-level stress. Inword-final syllables, whether phrase-final or phrase-medial, sonor-ants are realized with greater intensity than sonorants in penulti-mate syllables suggesting the presence of stress on the finalsyllable of a word. The reliance on intensity to cue word-levelstress is consistent with data from English and Dutch (Sluijter &van Heuven, 1996a, 1996b), although Tashlhiyt appears to differfrom these languages in marking stress through an increase inoverall intensity rather than an increase in intensity localized tohigher frequencies.

There are, however, a number of facts that suggest that stresshas a more minor role in the prosodic system of Tashlhiyt thanpitch accents. First, greater intensity was observed in sonorants inword-final syllables but not in obstruents, which did display someevidence for pitch accents when voiced. Furthermore, the distribu-tion and the phonetic realization of epenthetic vowels in Tashlhiytsuggest that pitch accents have a privileged status relative tostress. Epenthetic vowels are far less prevalent in word-finalsyllables that are not pitch accented, i.e. those in phrase-medialposition. Furthermore, epenthetic vowels in word-final syllables,both phrase-medial and phrase-final, do not have reliably greaterintensity than those in other positions. These facts, coupled withthe less pervasive nature of word-final lengthening relative tophrase-final lengthening, are consistent with the view that F0 andlarge intonational boundaries perform more salient communicativefunctions than intensity and word boundaries. The importance ofphrasal constituents in the present experiment is also in line withDell and Elmedlaoui’s (2002) observation that phrasal boundariesare prosodically more conspicuous than word boundaries inTashlhiyt.

5.2. Epenthesis as a phonological vs. phonetic phenomenon

Epenthetic vowels inserted either before or after a phrase-finalconsonantal nucleus are characteristically realized with raised F0,suggesting that they may also bear pitch accents parallel toconsonantal nuclei. This raises interesting issues about thephonological status of epenthetic vowels. On the one hand, theybehave as if they are not truly phonological but rather are theresult of a phonetic implementation process operating on asurface level. Epenthetic vowels are thus prosodically invisibleto syllabification and the metrical system, speakers are typicallyunaware of their existence, and they are characterized by thetemporal and qualitative gradience one would expect from avowel that is not phonologically present. These characteristics areconsistent with the type of inserted vowels that Hall (2006)classifies as ‘‘intrusive’’, as opposed to true ‘‘epenthetic’’ vowels,which interact with other phonological processes. Hall, in fact,


referring to Dell & Elmedlaoui’s work on the language, citesTashlhiyt as a language instantiating the intrusive class ofinserted vowels.

However, if the vowels added in pitch accented positions inTashlhiyt are truly intrusive rather than epenthetic in a phono-logical sense, they would not be expected to serve as the dockingsite for a phonological pitch accent. One possible approach thatwould maintain an analysis of the inserted vowels as phoneticrather than phonological would be to assume that the pitchaccent docks on the consonantal nucleus rather than the epen-thetic vowel itself, which is merely present to enhance thephonetic realization of the accent. This assumption is defensiblein the case of epenthetic vowels before voiced consonants sinceboth the epenthetic vowels and the voiced consonant are phone-tically associated with higher F0 when pitch accented. Interest-ingly, our data displayed interspeaker variation in whether F0 ishigher in a nuclear voiced consonant or a preceding epentheticvowel in pitch accented syllables. Table 2 shows mean F0 valuesin sequences of an epenthetic vowel plus nuclear consonant, bothsonorant and obstruent, in pitch accented syllables, i.e. phrase-final ones, for the six speakers.

Individual speaker t-tests show that, in the case of vowel plussonorant sequences, three speakers (F2, F3, M1) have higher F0values on the sonorant, one (M3) has higher F0 on the epentheticvowel, and one (F1) has virtually identical values on bothsegments. In vowel plus voiced obstruent strings, t-tests showedthat the only reliable differences in F0 were found for speakers F1and M1, both of whom had higher F0 on the epenthetic vowelthan the obstruent. Given the variation between speakers, it is notentirely clear whether the pitch accent is phonologically asso-ciated with an epenthetic vowel or the following consonantalnucleus.

In the case of a voiceless consonant preceded by an epentheticvowel, adopting an approach whereby the pitch accent phonolo-gically docks on the consonant itself but is realized phoneticallyon a preceding epenthetic vowel would clearly entail a degree ofabstraction. Furthermore, in all cases of absolute phrase-finalepenthesis, whether triggered by a voiced or a voiceless con-sonant, the epenthetic vowel would not be adjacent to thevoiceless consonant phonologically bearing the pitch accent.These facts suggest that inserted vowels that are phoneticallypitch accented are also phonologically associated with an accent,i.e. are true epenthetic vowels in Hall’s (2006) sense. Furthermore,the fact that epenthesis triggered by voiceless consonants isheavily skewed in favor of phrase-final contexts suggests anawareness by speakers of epenthesis as a strategy for enhancingthe manifestation of the pitch accent. This relationship betweenthe pitch accent and epenthesis in Tashlhiyt has an analog inJapanese, in which high vowel devoicing is inhibited in pitchaccented syllables in isolated words (see Nagano-Madsen, 1994for an overview). The Japanese case differs from Tashlhiyt in that

Table 2F0 values (in Hertz) for the epenthetic vowel and an immediately following voiced

consonantal nucleus in pitch accented syllables for six speakers (three female and

three male).

VþSonorant VþVoiced obstruent

Speaker Epenthetic V Sonorant Epenthetic V Voiced obstruent

F1 206 211 187 164

F2 250 299 237 257

F3 215 250 230 233

M1 171 190 183 154

M2 154 154 120 147

M3 132 116 112 103

the pitch accent in Japanese is lexical as opposed to phrasal inTashlhiyt. In both languages, however, the importance of signal-ing F0 information impacts the likelihood of a vowel surfacing,either by encouraging epenthesis as in Tashlhiyt or by discoura-ging syncope as in Japanese. The crucial role of epenthetic vowelsin cuing F0 information is not confined to the spoken language inTashlhiyt. Dell and Elmedlaoui (2008) and Dell (2010) show thatepenthetic vowels often serve as the docking site for notes inTashlhiyt singing, a genre in which the importance of pitchinformation is further underscored by the triggering of epenthesisby voiceless consonants.

In summary, the most plausible approach to vowel insertion inTashlhiyt would appear to assume that there are two types ofnon-underlying vowels that surface. One type, described by Delland Elmedlaoui and triggered by voiced consonants, falls underthe rubric of an ‘‘intrusive’’ vowel that is inserted at the phoneticlevel and is transparent to the phonology. The other type,employed in pitch accented contexts, is a true ‘‘epenthetic vowel’’that has a deeper phonological role in the prosodic system even ifit eludes native speaker intuitions. Assuming two types ofepenthetic vowels in the same language would not be unique toTashlhiyt. Hall (2006) discusses two languages, Mono and theCoban dialect of Kekchi, in which both intrusive and epentheticvowels co-exist, with the former being a low-level phoneticphenomenon and the latter playing a more central role in thephonology.

6. Summary

Investigation of three potential acoustic correlates of phono-logical prominence (F0, intensity, and duration) found thatphrase-final syllables were associated with higher F0 than othersyllables, suggesting the presence of a H* pitch accent phrase-finally. The pitch accent is phonetically more salient whenassociated with sonorant nuclei than voiced obstruent nuclei.Voiceless obstruent nuclei in phrase-final syllables failed to dis-play any phonetic evidence for a pitch accent, although they oftentriggered vowel epenthesis, which allowed for the realization ofthe accent. In addition to the raised F0 characteristic of phrase-level pitch accent, word-final syllables were characterized bygreater intensity than their counterparts in the penultimatesyllable of a word, a finding that is consistent with an interpreta-tion of stress on final syllables. Phrase-final and, to a lesserdegree, word-final nuclei were consistently lengthened whethera sonorant or an obstruent and whether voiced or voiceless. Thisfinal lengthening likely plays a role, in fact a crucial role in thecase of phrases with a voiceless nucleus in the final syllable, insignaling prosodic boundaries.

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank three anonymous reviewers andKen de Jong for their many helpful comments and suggestions onearlier drafts of this paper. We are also grateful to members of the2009–2010 Field Methods class at UC Santa Barbara and anaudience at the UCLA Phonology Seminar for their feedback onthis research. A special debt of gratitude is owed to the speakerswho generously contributed the data analyzed in this paper.

Appendix A

See Table A1.

Table B1F0 (in Hertz), duration (in seconds), and intensity (in decibels) values for vocalic nucle

Speaker F0 Duration

Phrase-final Phrase-med Phrase-final

Ult Pen Ult Pen Ult Pen

F1 202 213 187 197 0.085 0.076

F2 278 206 253 228 0.112 0.087

F3 216 209 204 205 0.129 0.075

M1 162 143 127 129 0.127 0.070

M2 154 146 131 129 0.095 0.068

M3 125 130 129 122 0.089 0.063

Table B2F0 (in Hertz), duration (in seconds), and intensity (in decibels) values for sonorant con

Speaker F0 Duration



F1 210 208 191 202 0.089 0.078

F2 299 213 246 219 0.109 0.096

F3 243 206 208 210 0.125 0.073

M1 182 151 139 147 0.074 0.056

M2 153 143 144 135 0.091 0.072

M3 115 123 128 126 0.083 0.073

Table B3F0 (in Hertz), duration (in seconds), and intensity (in decibels) values for voiced obstr

Speaker F0 Duration



F1 164 161 166 161 0.078 0.092

F2 217 204 229 213 0.148 0.133

F3 233 187 192 190 0.101 0.083

M1 157 135 108 141 0.090 0.063

M2 139 114 109 122 0.078 0.083

M3 101 103 110 107 0.125 0.111

Table A1Corpus (target sounds in bold).

tf.tkt She sprained it (masc.)

tn.Pft She scraped it (masc.)

tr.cl.tn She locks them (masc.)

tr.clt She locks it (masc.)

tl.km.tnt She comes to them (fem.)

tl.kmt You arrived

2t.qh_

.tn I saved them (masc.)

2t.qh_

t I saved it (masc.)

t.zm.zm She squeezed

tW.dr.tn She burns them (masc.)

tW.drt She burns it (masc.)

tr.ks.tn She hides them (masc.)

tr.kst She hides it (masc.)

tf.tx.tn She rolled them (masc.)

tf.txt She rolled it (masc.)

ts.tCC.tn She splits them (masc.)

ts.tCCt She splits it (masc.)

ssl.slt necklace

ib.b .tn He crushes them (masc.)

tb.b t You crushed

ba.lak Get out of the way

tsi.kit She missed it (masc.)


Appendix B. Individual speaker results

See Tables B1–B10.

i for six speakers (three female and three male).

Intensity

Phrase-med Phrase-final Phrase-med


0.084 0.090 62.42 62.11 64.28 63.67

0.073 0.068 67.75 54.21 66.51 55.85

0.132 0.086 70.09 72.72 70.06 72.23

0.106 0.093 68.03 69.11 65.76 68.82

0.080 0.076 69.39 70.78 68.67 69.85

0.075 0.062 66.53 57.77 63.77 56.82

sonant nuclei for six speakers (three female and three male).

Intensity



0.074 0.076 57.65 55.17 58.07 55.20

0.095 0.091 61.85 52.29 58.88 52.97

0.101 0.081 66.73 67.22 66.04 67.32

0.057 0.053 58.67 58.38 57.32 57.74

0.086 0.072 63.58 64.00 63.21 64.59

0.067 0.067 60.23 56.16 61.28 57.80

uent nuclei for six speakers (three female and three male).

Intensity



0.088 0.081 50.36 48.54 50.66 48.81

0.125 0.134 56.86 49.48 57.79 52.71

0.079 0.079 63.03 62.76 61.17 62.96

0.083 0.069 58.60 59.36 56.56 58.04

0.090 0.070 58.61 58.03 58.59 58.24

0.131 0.112 59.81 53.96 62.94 59.84

Table B4F0 (in Hertz), duration (in seconds), and intensity (in decibels) values for voiceless

obstruent nuclei for six speakers (three female and three male).

Speaker Duration Intensity

Phrase-final Phrase-med Phrase-final Phrase-med

Ult Pen Ult Pen Ult Pen Ult Pen

F1 0.112 0.102 0.108 0.096 46.97 47.12 48.82 46.99

F2 0.144 0.122 0.128 0.113 50.19 46.73 51.47 48.73

F3 0.151 0.122 0.154 0.133 56.49 60.93 56.76 59.06

M1 0.117 0.097 0.106 0.093 53.34 54.04 51.81 54.07

M2 0.105 0.092 0.098 0.098 50.48 54.63 51.37 54.95

M3 0.124 0.098 0.134 0.118 53.30 50.78 53.99 50.32

Table B6Intensity values (in decibels) for epenthetic vowels for six speakers (three female and

three male).

Speaker Phrase-final Phrase-medial

Post-ultima Ultima Penult Post-ultima Ultima Penult

F1 – 61.76 61.08 – 61.61 60.41

F2 66.96 64.36 65.60 57.43 54.77 56.35

F3 66.88 68.99 67.42 – 69.79 68.57

M1 62.67 64.48 62.06 – 63.21 61.06

M2 67.49 63.58 64.32 – 66.90 64.05

M3 62.93 65.64 62.67 – 59.90 60.06

Table B7F0 values (in Hertz) for epenthetic vowels occurring before voiced obstruent

nuclei in different contexts. The number of tokens belonging to each category is

given in parentheses.



F1 – 187 (10) 188 (9) – 182 (9) 179(11)

F2 301 (4) 237 (6) 239 (3) 263 (1) 194 (6) 214 (1)

F3 218 (2) 230 (9) 204 (9) – 209 (8) 206 (8)

M1 193 (1) 183 (4) 126 (2) – 166 (6) 152 (1)

M2 159 (1) 120 (5) 125 (2) – 125 (5) 138 (2)

M3 140 (1) 112 (2) 107 (3) – 120 (1) –

Table B8F0 values (in Hertz) for epenthetic vowels occurring before voiceless obstruent

nuclei in different contexts. The number of tokens belonging to each category is

given in parentheses.



F1 – – – – – –

F2 310 (10) 297 (7) 263 (3) 223 (4) 233 (6) 224 (2)

F3 264 (2) 253 (10) 206 (5) – 237 (9) 226 (4)

M1 206 (4) 199 (8) 190 (4) – 167 (10) 182 (2)

M2 170 (13) – – – – –

M3 120 (1) 123 (1) – – – –

Table B9Intensity values (in decibels) for voiceless obstruent nuclei in tokens without an

epenthetic vowel for six speakers (three female and three male).

Speaker Phrase-final Phrase-media

Ultima Penult Ultima Penult

F1 46.58 48.10 46.73 47.11

F2 56.41 53.85 51.10 49.65

F3 62.20 61.62 64.96 62.15

M1 53.50 51.69 51.35 53.81

M2 53.95 54.07 56.06 56.04

M3 56.11 56.39 52.73 53.77

Table B10Duration values (in seconds) for voiceless obstruent nuclei in tokens without an

epenthetic vowel for six speakers (three female and three male).


Ultima Penult Ultima Penult

F1 0.110 0.118 0.097 0.094

F2 0.202 0.151 0.163 0.199

F3 0.160 0.142 0.140 0.135

M1 0.106 0.111 0.099 0.081

M2 0.138 0.097 0.103 0.093

M3 0.137 0.122 0.097 0.108

Table B5F0 values (in Hertz) for epenthetic vowels occurring before consonantal nuclei in differ-

ent contexts. The number of tokens belonging to each category is given in parentheses.



F1 – 199 (30) 194(29) – 202 (29) 197 (31)

F2 304 (16) 253 (36) 243 (27) 228 (7) 206 (32) 207 (16)

F3 258 (5) 223 (41) 206 (38) – 213 (37) 208 (34)

M1 203 (8) 179 (32) 150 (28) – 166 (31) 152 (23)

M2 169 (15) 140 (12) 135 (14) – 134 (14) 126 (13)

M3 130 (2) 130 (22) 129 (25) – 128 (16) 127 (15)


References

Adisasmito-Smith, N., & Cohn, A. C. (1996). Phonetic correlates of primary andsecondary stress in Indonesian: A preliminary study. Working Papers of theCornell Phonetics Laboratory, 11, 1–16.

Baitschura, U. (1976). Instrumental phonetische Beitrage zur Untersuchung derSprachmelodie und des Wortakzentes im Tscheremissischen. Etudes Finno-Ougriennes, XIII, 109–122.

Beckman, M. (1986). Stress and non-stress accent. Dordrecht: Foris.Berkovits, R. (1991). The effect of speaking rate on evidence for utterance-final

lengthening. Phonetica, 48, 57–66.Boersma, P., & Weenink, D. (2010). Praat: Doing phonetics by computer (version

5.1.42) /www.praat.orgS.Coleman, J. (1996). Declarative syllabification in Tashlhit Berber. In: J. Durand, &

B. Laks (Eds.), Current trends in phonology: Models and methods, Vol. 1 (pp. 177–218). Salford: European Studies Research Institute, University of Salford.

Coleman, J. (1999). The nature of vocoids associated with syllabic consonants inTashlhiyt Berber. In J. J. Ohala, Y. Hasegawa, M. Ohala, D. Granville, & A. C.Bailey (Eds.), Proceedings of the XIVth international congress of phonetic sciences(pp. 735–738).

Coleman, J. (2001). The phonetics and phonology of Tashlhiyt Berber syllabicconsonants. Transactions of the Philological Society, 99, 29–64.

De Jong, K., & Zawaydeh, B. A. (1999). Stress, duration, and intonation in Arabicword-level prosody. Journal of Phonetics, 27, 3–22.

Dell, F. (2010). Singing in Tashlhiyt Berber, a language that allows vowel-lesssyllables. In: C. E. Cairns, & Raimy E. (Eds.), Handbook of the syllable. Brill.

Dell, F., & Elmedlaoui, M. (1985). Syllabic consonants and syllabification in ImdlawnTashlhiyt Berber. Journal of African Languages and Linguistics, 7, 105–130.

Dell, F., & Elmedlaoui, M. (1988). Syllabic consonants in Berber: Some newevidence. Journal of African Languages and Linguistics, 10, 1–17.

Dell, F., & Elmedlaoui, M. (1989). Clitic ordering, morphology and phonology in theverbal complex of Imdalwn Tashlhiyt Berber. Part I. Langues OrientalesAnciennes Philologie et Linguistique, 2, 165–194.

Dell, F., & Elmedlaoui, M. (1991). Clitic ordering, morphology and phonology in theverbal complex of Imdlawn Tashlhiyt Berber, Part II. Langues OrientalesAnciennes Philologie et Linguistique, 3, 77–104.

Dell, F., & Elmedlaoui, M. (1992). Quantitative transfer in the nonconcatenativemorphology of Imdlawn Tashlhiyt Berber. Journal of Afroasiatic Languages, 3,89–125.

Dell, F., & Elmedlaoui, M. (2002). Syllables in Tashlhiyt Berber and in MoroccanArabic. Kluwer Academic Publications.

Dell, F., & Elmedlaoui, M. (2008). Poetic meter and musical form in Tashlhiyt Berbersongs. Cologne: Rudiger Koppe Verlag.

Everett, K. (1998). Acoustic correlates of stress in Pirah~a. Journal of AmazonianLanguages, 1, 104–162.

Fougeron, C., & Ridouane, R. (2008a). On the phonetic implementation of syllabicconsonants and vowel-less syllables in Tashlhiyt. Estudios de Fonetica Experi-mental, 18, 139–175.

Fougeron, C., & Ridouane, R. (2008b). On the nature of schwa-like vocalic elementswithin some Berber clusters. In Proceedings of the eighth international seminaron speech production (pp. 441–444).

Fry, D. B. (1955). Duration and intensity as physical correlates of linguistic stress.Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 27, 765–768.

Fry, D. B. (1958). Experiments in the perception of stress. Language and Speech, 1,120–152.

Goedemans, R. (1998). Weightless segments. The Hague: Holland AcademicGraphics.

Gonzales, A. (1970). Acoustic correlates of accent, rhythm, and intonation inTagalog. Phonetica, 22, 11–44.

Gordon, M. (2004). A phonological and phonetic study of word-level stress inChickasaw. International Journal of American Linguistics, 70, 1–32.

Gordon, M. (2008). Pitch accent timing and scaling in Chickasaw. Journal ofPhonetics, 36, 521–535.

Gordon, M., & Applebaum, A. (2010). Acoustic correlates of stress in TurkishKabardian. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 40, 35–58.

Gordon, M., & Munro, P. (2007). A phonetic study of final vowel lengthening inChickasaw. International Journal of American Linguistics, 73, 293–330.

www.praat.org


Gussenhoven, C., & Rietveld, A. C. M. (1992). Intonation contours, prosodicstructure and preboundary lengthening. Journal of Phonetics, 20, 283–303.

Gussenhoven, C. (2004). The phonology of tone and intonation. Cambridge: Cam-

bridge University Press.Hall, N. (2006). Cross-linguistic patterns of vowel intrusion. Phonology, 23,

387–429.Hockey, B. A., & Fagyal, Z. (1999). Phonemic length and pre-boundary lengthening:

An experimental investigation on the use of durational cues in Hungarian. In

Proceedings of the XIVth international congress of phonetic sciences (pp. 313–316).Jassem, W., Morton, J., & Steffen-Batog, M. (1968). The perception of stress in

synthetic speech-like stimuli by Polish listeners. Speech analysis and synthesis I,

289–308.Jun, S.-A., & Fougeron, C. (1995). The accentual phrase and the prosodic structure

of French. In Proceedings of the 13th international congress of phonetic sciences

(pp. 722–725).Jun, S.-A. (1993). The phonetics and phonology of Korean prosody. Ph.D. Dissertation.

The Ohio State University.Ladd, D. R. (1996). Intonational phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Lehiste, I. (1970). Suprasegmentals. Cambridge, MA. MIT Press.Levi, S. V. (2005). Acoustic correlate of lexical accent in Turkish. Journal of the

International Phonetic Association, 35, 73–97.Nagano-Madsen, Y. (1992). Mora and prosodic coordination: A Phonetic study of

Japanese, Eskimo, and Yoruba. Lund: Lund University Press.Nagano-Madsen, Y. (1994). Influence of accent and tone on the realization of

vowel devoicing in Japanese—Analysis of a sentence database. Phonetik, 94

(Working Papers 43, Department of Linguistics and Phonetics, Lund University,Sweden).

Oller, D. (1979). Syllable timing in Spanish, English and Finnish. In: H., & P. Hollien(Eds.), Current issues in the phonetic sciences (pp. 331–343). Amsterdam: JohnBenjamins.

Pierrehumbert, J. (1980). The phonology and phonetics of English intonation. Ph.D.Dissertation. MIT (Distributed by Indiana University Linguistics Club).

Ridouane, R. (2007). Gemination in Tashlhiyt Berber: An acoustic and articulatorystudy. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 37, 119–142.

Ridouane, R. (2008a). Syllables without vowels: Phonetic and phonologicalevidence from Tashlhiyt Berber. Phonology, 25, 1–39.

Ridouane, R. (2008b). Les activites du larynx en berb�ere. Langues et linguistique, 17,1–28.

Ridouane, R. (2010). Geminates at the junction of phonetics and phonology. In:C. Fougeron, B. Kuhnert, M. D’Impero, & N. Vallee (Eds.), Laboratory phonology,Vol. 10 (pp. 61–90). New York: Walter de Gruyter.

Sluijter, A. M. C., & van Heuven, V. J. (1996a). Spectral balance as an acousticcorrelate of linguistic stress. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 100,2471–2485.

Sluijter, A. M. C., & van Heuven, V. J. (1996b). Acoustic correlates of linguistic stressand accent in Dutch and American English. In Proceedings of the 4th interna-tional conference on spoken language processing (pp. 630–633).

van Santen, J., & D’Imperio, M. (1999). Positional effects on stressed vowelduration in Standard Italian. In Proceedings of the XIVth international congressof phonetic sciences (pp. 241–244).

Wightman, C. W., Shattuck-Hufnagel, S., Ostendorf, M., & Price, P. J. (1992).Segmental durations in the vicinity of prosodic phrase boundaries. Journal ofthe Acoustical Society of America, 92, 1707–1717.

Zhang, J. (2002). The effects of duration and sonority on contour tone distribution:Typological survey and formal analysis. New York: Routledge.

Acoustic correlates of stress and pitch accent in Tashlhiyt Berber

Documents

Transcript of Acoustic correlates of stress and pitch accent in Tashlhiyt Berber