Templates, markers and syntactic structure in Tashlhiyt Berber

Abstract

International audienceOne of the puzzling aspects of the Berber languages is the nature of the construct state and the cooccurrence restrictions it undergoes with certain grammatical morphemes. In particular, the reason why the construct state marker w- never occurs with the gender marker t- remains unclear, despite of several studies mostly syntactic. This paper argues that the construct state marker w- and the feminine marker t- compete for the same templatic position. Within the standard DP projection, it is proposed that a templatic CV site hosts gender t- under the nP. When raised to D, this site has no C position available for the construct state w-, yielding forms where only the feminine marker is realized. The same reasoning holds in the causative imperfective formations. The association of the causative prefix with the templatic site under the vP explains the absence of aspect markers in the verb. Extended to the case of Classical Arabic verb conjugation, the competition hypothesis allows us to explain why reflexive n- never co-occurs with medial consonant gemination; though semantically viable, nkassara 'it shuttered' is ruled out because reflexive n-, generated lower in the structure than intensive gemination, fills the only C position provided by the derivational CV. The advocated analysis has implications for the way syntax, morphology and phonology interact: templates are indeed argued to mediate the interaction between components of Grammar. Handled in syntactic structure, templates allow unifying standard phonological, morphological and syntactic accounts of the co-occurrence restrictions examined in this paper

La voyelle initiale des noms et l’état d'annexion en kabyle (berbère)

“…J'ajoute qu'il y a un certain nombre de noms masculins qui montrent les glides w/j à l'état d'annexion sans la chute de la voyelle initiale. Ce type de noms est considéré dans la littérature comme des noms à voyelle initiale radicale ou stable (VIS) par opposition aux noms qui perdent la voyelle initiale à l'EA, cas où celle-ci serait préfixale, ou VII 1 Parmi les travaux sur l'opposition entre l'EL et l'EA, on pourra se référer à Basset (1945); Vycichl (1957); Guerssel (1983Guerssel ( , 1987Guerssel ( , 1992; Bader et Kenstowicz (1987); Chaker (1988); Brugnatelli (1997;1998); Achab (2003); Bendjaballah (2011); Lahrouchi (2013); El Hankari (2014).…”

“… 1 Parmi les travaux sur l'opposition entre l'EL et l'EA, on pourra se référer à Basset (1945); Vycichl (1957); Guerssel (1983, 1987, 1992); Bader et Kenstowicz (1987); Chaker (1988); Brugnatelli (1997; 1998); Achab (2003); Bendjaballah (2011); Lahrouchi (2013); El Hankari (2014). …”

“… 9 Voir Guerssel (1983, 1987); Bader (1984); Dell et Jebbour (1991); Ouhalla (1996); Idrissi (2000); Ennaji (2001); Achab (2003); Lahrouchi (2013); El Hankari (2014). …”

Gender and Number Marking in Amazigh Language

“…The crucial observation for the purpose of our analysis is that the nature of the initial vowel is not clear. Scholars (Vycishl, (1957) ;Ouhalla, (1996) ;Guerssel, (1992) ;Idrissi, (2000); Lahrouchi, (2013); among others) do not really agree about gender marking in Berber nouns. However, there is kind of consensus about the fact that the initial vowel is a nominal marker rather than a gender marker.…”

The competitive tier model – Element subtraction in German and Pomeranian

“…For an interesting Berber case of morpheme competition by phonological template satisfaction, cf Lahrouchi (2013)…”