Rachid Ridouane

• PhD
• Researcher at French National Centre for Scientific Research

This study investigated the implementation of pharyngealization in Tashlhiyt, across various linguistic contexts VCV, VCCV, VCCV, and VCCCV. We analyzed articulatory and acoustic data from six male speakers who produced real words containing these sequences with both plain ([d, z]) and pharyngealized target consonants ([dˤ, zˤ]). The investigation...

Typological research shows that across languages, trilled [r] sounds are more common in adjectives describing rough as opposed to smooth surfaces. In this study, this lexical research is built on with an experiment with speakers of 28 different languages from 12 different families. Participants were presented with images of a jagged and a straight...

Cross-linguistic perception of Tashlhiyt singleton-geminate contrasts

We extend our previous work which examined the effect of first language (L1) on the perception of Tashlhiyt gemination by adding three groups of participants from Korean, Mandarin, and Mongolian backgrounds. Tashlhiyt permits gemination for all consonants in all word positions, whereas the incidence of gemination differs in the participants' L1s: t...

Deux expériences sur la désambiguïsation syntaxique par prosodie sont exposées dans cette étude. Dans l’expérience perceptive, nous avons demandé à 20 francophones natifs de compléter des phrases localement ambiguës afin de déterminer leur capacité à assigner correctement les mots cibles à leurs fonctions syntaxiques sur la base des indices prosodi...

Typological research shows that across languages, trilled [r] sounds are more common in adjectives describing rough as opposed to smooth surfaces. Here, we follow up on this lexical research with an experiment with speakers of 28 different spoken languages from 12 different families. Participants were presented with pictures of a jagged line and a...

Berber languages present a wealth of intricate phonological alternations involving glides and high vowels, some of which still resist standard phonological analyses. Glides typically appear in the immediate vicinity of a vowel, in complementary distribution with the corresponding high vowels: e.g. Tashlhiyt Berber gru ‘pick up’ vs agraw ‘assembly’,...

This study examines rhythmic patterns in French sentences read by 10 native French speakers and 21 Chinese learners of French (with different levels of proficiency). We used 9 metrics, both normalized and non-normalized, to compare the rhythmic patterns between natives and learners, and between the 3 groups of learners. Overall, results from normal...

Chinese languages have a set of segments known as apical vowels, which have been analysed in previous studies as either genuine vowels, fricative vowels, fricative consonants, or approximants. This study is concerned with the apical vowel attested in Jixi-Hui Chinese. We examine this segment from acoustic and articulatory perspectives and argue tha...

The bouba/kiki effect—the association of the nonce word bouba with a round shape and kiki with a spiky shape—is a type of correspondence between speech sounds and visual properties with potentially deep implications for the evolution of spoken language. However, there is debate over the robustness of the effect across cultures and the influence of...

Linguistic communication requires speakers to mutually agree on the meanings of words, but how does such a system first get off the ground? One solution is to rely on iconic gestures: visual signs whose form directly resembles or otherwise cues their meaning without any previously established correspondence. However, it is debated whether vocalizat...

In this study, we aim to gain insights into whether there exists an invariant durational property which can uniquely distinguish between singletons and geminates, both across languages and across speech rates. We collected acoustic data from four typologically distinct languages (Tashlhiyt, Japanese, Italian and Finnish) and so far, recorded one sp...

In addition to durational differences between singletons and geminates, the phonetic implementation of gemination may have implications for most, if not all of a form’s phonetic shape, including temporal differences in adjacent vowels (Engstrand & Krull 1994, Payne 2005, Ridouane 2007). Variation in speech rate may have dramatic influence on these...

Consonant gemination is predominantly arranged in two levels of length distinctions. Three-way length contrast is extremely rare, and languages with a four-way system are probably non-existent. The rarity of more than two-level distinctions may be related to phonetic implementation patterns which restrict speakers’ ability to produce such distincti...

The present study compares the perceptual categorization of four CV syllables /ta, da, ka, ga/ in two different speech registers - modal speech and whistled speech - of Tashlhiyt Berber used in the Moroccan High Atlas. Whistled speech in a non-tonal language such as Tashlhiyt is a special speech register used for long distance dialogues that consis...

In this study, we analyze mid-sagittal and coronal ultrasound data from four subjects in order to investigate the articulatory properties of the apical vowel /z/ in Jixi-Hui Chinese (JHC). We seek to determine whether this unique segment, particularly well studied in Standard Chinese (SC), has articulatory characteristics of a vowel or a fricative...

What is the status of schwa in Tashlhiyt? How does it pattern at the segmental and suprasegmental levels? This paper studies these questions by examining the frequencies with which schwa is inserted in different segmental contexts, and by exploring the nature of the interaction between schwa insertion and prosodic prominence. The results show the c...

At the phonological level, Tashlhiyt Berber features remarkably long strings of consonants with no intervening vowels. Past research on the topic has investigated the structure of syllabic constituents, suggesting that in spite of its acknowledged complexity, the language favours syllable structure with simple onsets. In this preliminary work, we u...

Abstract The main thrust of this investigation is to examine timing of gemination in Tarifit Berber (spoken in Northern Morocco) in order to find out if spatiotemporal phonetic characteristics underlying the production of Tarifit geminates may be captured from a phonological standpoint by a structural representation of these segments as two consecu...

Ejective fricatives are extremely rare cross-linguistically. This infrequency is generally attributed to the incompatibility of two aerodynamic requirements: airflow to create noise frication and a high intraoral air pressure to implement ejectivity. Seeking to determine how this incompatibility is solved, this study presents an acoustic investigat...

Ejective fricatives are extremely rare cross-linguistically. This infrequency is generally attributed to the incompatibility of two aerodynamic requirements: Airflow to create noise frication and a high intraoral air pressure to implement ejectivity. Seeking to determine how this incompatibility is solved, this study presents an acoustic investigat...

Different approaches to assigning syllable structure have in common the fact that there is a high degree of correlation between the distribution of nuclear and non-nuclear syllable constituents on the one hand and the difference between vowels and consonants on the other. Tashlhiyt, an Amazigh language spoken in Morocco, is a notable exception to t...

L’objectif principal de cette étude est de présenter les méthodes instrumentales acoustique et articulatoire que nous utilisons dans le domaine de la phonologie de laboratoire pour l’étude de la gémination en tarifit. Cette étude repose sur des données acoustiques pour six locuteurs natifs et sur des données cinéradiographiques pour deux locuteurs...

A growing body of research has been conducted on the phonology of Tashlhiyt over the last few decades. This article offers a general overview into this research. It provides a concise summary of how the mental representation and the computation of some specific Tashlhiyt speech sounds have been accounted for, and it highlights the important implica...

In Moroccan Arabic, like in many other Afroasiatic languages, certain nouns may have more than one plural form. For instance, tʕəsʕwera ‘photo’ has plurals tʕsʕawər and tʕəsʕwerat. However, their diminutive systematically resorts to –at suffixation in the plural. The aim of this study is twofold. First, it presents an interface approach which aims...

In a discrimination experiment on several Tashlhiyt Berber singleton-geminate contrasts, we find that French listeners encounter substantial difficulty compared to native speakers. Native listeners of Tashlhiyt perform near ceiling level on all contrasts. French listeners perform better on final contrasts such as fit-fitt than initial contrasts suc...

Ejective consonants are not very common cross-linguistically. Even less common is the occurrence of ejective fricatives. This infrequency is generally attributed to the incompatibility of two aerodynamic requirements: a continuing flow of air to create noise frication and an increasing intraoral air pressure to implement ejectivity. This study repo...

This paper reports the results of a pilot phonetic study of whistled Moroccan Tamazight. Whistled speech is an ancient traditional and natural practice that consists in a phonetic emulation and transformation of the spoken signal into a simple melodic line made up of frequency and amplitude modulations of a whistled signal. It is primarily used for...

The placement of F0 peaks in polar questions and contrastive statements in Tashlhiyt Berber is subject to within speaker and across speaker variation, even across repetitions of the same target sentence. In a production study we show that the placement of these F0 peaks is determined by a number of competing factors, leading to a probabilistic dist...

In this survey, we analyze acoustic and ultrasound data from two subjects in order to characterize a secondary articulation generally analyzed as labialization in Moroccan Arabic. Our results show that the so-called labialized consonants are rather labiovelarized. They also show that the vowel [a] adjacent to the labiovelarized consonants is velari...

This book intends to place Nick Clements' contribution to Feature Theory in a historical and contemporary context and to introduce some of his unpublished manuscripts as well as new work with colleagues collected in this book.

Berber (or Tamazight) is an Afro-Asiatic language spoken by an estimated 15-25 million in North Africa. It is mainly spoken in Morocco, Algeria, and by the Touareg population in Niger and Mali. Berber is also a native language of populations living in Libya, Tunisia and Egypt, though their numbers are less significant. Large Berber communities also...

This investigation, based on acoustic data for six native speakers, and on X-ray data for two native speakers, reports on gemination in Tarifit Berber (spoken in Northern Morocco). It presents results of articulatory and acoustic investigations of singleton and geminate voiced and voiceless consonants, produced in word initial, word medial, and wor...

Tashlhiyt is famous for its particularly marked syllable structure. Unlike the majority of world languages, including some related Berber varieties, Tashlhiyt allows not only vowels but all consonants – including voiceless stops /t/, /k/ or /q/ – to be nuclei of a syllable (e.g., [tkmi] `she smoked' is analyzed as bisyllabic where the sequence [tk]...

Previous production studies on Tashlhiyt Berber have demonstrated that questions and statements have similar intonation contours, i.e., a final rise to a F0 peak and subsequent fall. The contours tended to differ in overall pitch register and peak location: questions (a) revealed a stronger tendency to be realized with the F0 peak on the final syll...

Ce travail s'intègre dans un projet plus large visant à examiner les transferts phonologiques des dialectes arabes dans les productions des locuteurs arabophones natifs lorsqu'ils s'expriment en arabe standard. Nous étudions ici la production des voyelles et fricatives inter-dentales produites par 11 locuteurs du dialecte tunisien sur un corpus lu...

Lule Saami presents a phonological three-way consonantal quantity system -a typologically rare phenomenon. This study examines the acoustic implementation of this contrast based on acoustic data from 7 native speakers, recorded in Divtasvuodna (Tysfjord) in Norway. Results show that the difference between three degrees of phonological quantity is p...

Perceptual Evidence Tashlhiyt is claimed to allow any segment to be syllable peak (Dell & Elmedlaoui 1985, 2002; Boukous 1987; Ridouane2008): [l.sit] "putiton" [b.nu] "construct" [ʃʃt] "eatit" [tk.kst] "youtookoff" Twobasicconstraints: • S o n o r i t y -­‐‑ b a s e d c o n s t r a i n t s : hierarchize the types of segments thatmaybesyllablenuclei...

Although Tashlhiyt Berber uses intonation to mark sentence modality, the location of f0 events is severely constrained by its notorious predominance of consonantal nuclei (cf. (1) where syllable nuclei are underlined) (1) [ts.sk.ʃ f.tstt] "you dried it (fem.)" Here we report on the alignment of f0 peaks in disyllabic target words in polar questions...

We investigated the alignment of F0 peaks in disyllabic target words in polar questions and contrastive statements in Tashlhiyt Berber, concentrating on cases where both syllables contained a sonorant nucleus. Peak location, interpreted as H tone association, is not only determined by the communicative function of the utterance, but also by sonorit...

RESUME Les ajustements laryngaux en français sont examinés à partir de données acquises par photoglottographie externe (ePGG) non invasive sur deux locuteurs. L'objectif est de déterminer comment l'amplitude d'ouverture glottale et le timing entre les gestes glottaux et supraglottaux varient selon la nature des obstruantes sourdes. Il s'agit plus...

In spite of the fundamental role that phonological features play in current linguistics, current research continues to raise many basic questions concerning the relation these representational categories of phonology have to measurable physical properties. This paper addresses the question of how [spread glottis] segments are phonetically implement...

In this survey, we analyze acoustic and ultrasound data from two subjects in order to characterize a secondary articulation generally analyzed as labialization in Moroccan Arabic. Our results show that the so-called labialized consonants are rather labiovelarized. They also show that the vowel [a] adjacent to the labiovelarized consonants is velari...

Acoustic and X-ray data have been collected for gemination in Tarifit Berber. The acoustic data show that consonantal closure of geminates is significantly longer than that of corresponding singletons, for all consonants examined (alveolars, velars and uvulars), in both voiced and voiceless contexts, for two subjects, in two speech rate conditions:...

In this study we investigate the nature and distribution of an Intonation Phrase medial H tone in Tashlhiyt Berber. We analyse it as a right edge tone of an Accentual Phrase with a secondary association to a syllable with a sonorant nucleus. In the absence of such a syllable in the target word, H may align with a transitional vocoid, although its l...

This volume offers a timely reconsideration of the function, content, and origin of phonological features, in a set of papers that is theoretically diverse yet thematically strongly coherent. Most of the papers were originally presented at the International Conference "Where Do Features Come From?" held at the Sorbonne University, Paris, October 4-...

This volume offers a timely reconsideration of the function, content, and origin of phonological features, in a set of papers that is theoretically diverse yet thematically strongly coherent. Most of the papers were originally presented at the International Conference "Where Do Features Come From?" held at the Sorbonne University, Paris, October 4-...

This study provides evidence from the coordination of articulatory gestures, using electromagnetic articulography (EMMA), in favour of a heterosyllabic analysis of word initial clusters in Tashlhiyt. Evidence from calculations of C-center and Rightmost C to a following anchor in the syllable as well as the stability index consistently supports the...

In this study we investigated the coordination of consonantal and vocalic gestures in Tashlhiyt Berber as a function of their subsyllabic constituency. The aim was to determine whether the syllabification proposed of word initial clusters is reflected in the coordination of articulatory gestures. Two main results were obtained: (1) The timing of co...

This paper deals with schwa elements that sometimes occur between consonants in Tashlhiyt Berber and seeks to determine where they come from. Based on acoustic data on word-initial C1C2 clusters, we examine how laryngeal specifications, manner of articulation and ordering of the place of articulation of the consonants in the cluster may govern thei...

In a discrimination experiment on Tashlhiyt Berber singleton-geminate contrasts (i.e., duration contrasts), we find that French listeners are more sensitive to silent closure duration in word-final /t/ than to voiced murmur, or even, frication duration in initial position. Native listeners of Tashlhiyt perform near-ceiling on all these contrasts. W...

Cet article traite de la syllabe comme unité théorique et comme objet physique à travers un état des lieux des travaux en phonologie et en phonétique la concernant. Malgré l’abondance des travaux sur la syllabe1 - de loin le constituant prosodique le plus étudié - les recherches actuelles continuent de soulever plusieurs questions sur sa nature exa...

This investigation reports on gemination in Tarifit Berber. It presents results of an acoustic investigation of singleton and geminate voiceless stops, produced in intervocalic position at a normal and fast speaking rate. They show that geminates are systematically produced with longer closure durations compared to singletons. Gemination, however,...

Within CV phonology, geminates, including post-lexical ones, are represented as single melodic units associated to two prosodic positions. This study examines the way these autosegmental representations are reflected in the phonetic details of speech production and questions the phonological relevance of these correlates. In particular, it investig...

L'objectif de cet article est d'illustrer l'intérêt de combiner la phonétique et la phonologie dans une même démarche d'analyse linguistique. En particulier, il s'agira de montrer comment des données émanant de la phonétique expérimentale peuvent renforcer les bases scientifiques des analyses phonologiques dites « traditionnelles ». Historiquement,...

In spite of the fundamental role that distinctive features play in phonology and phonetics, current research continues to raise basic questions concerning how features can be defined in terms of measurable language-independent physical properties in the articulatory and acousticauditory domains. It has been proposed that for a feature to be recover...

It has been proposed that Tashlhiyt is a language which allows any segment, including obstruents, to be a syllable nucleus. The most striking and controversial examples taken as arguments in favour of this analysis involve series of words claimed to contain only obstruents. This claim is disputed in some recent work, where it is argued that these c...

Quantity contrasts (i.e., singleton vs geminate consonants, short vs long vowels) are common in the languages of the world. Yet, most singleton-geminate contrasts occur in word-medial position. Languages that allow gemination in other than word-medial position (word-initially or word-finally) are quite few. Even less frequent is the occurrence in t...

Cet article traite du comportement des géminées vis-à-vis de la spirantisation en berbère chleuh de Haha (PCH) et de la façon dont le cadre de la Phonologie CV rend compte de ce comportement.

In Tashlhiyt Berber, phonetic implementation creates what looks like a schwa vowel but in fact is not, at least of the phonological sort. We present various arguments against the interpretation of these elements as epenthetic segments introduced by the phonological component. In addition to the fact that they do not interact with phonology, our aco...

This investigation reports on gemination in Tarifit, a variety of Berber language spoken in the North Eastern region of Morocco. It presents results of a simultaneous X-ray and acoustic investigation of singleton and geminate voiced and voiceless stops in three different word positions (initial, intervocalic, and final.) The acoustic parameters exa...

Ce présent travail traite des ajustements glottaux et supraglottaux pendant la production des obstruentes sourdes simples et géminées berbères en utilisant la méthode de la photoélectroglottographie (transillumination) combinée avec la fibroscopie. L'objet de l'étude concerne plus particulièrement les obstruentes intervocaliques et examine l'effet...

This paper presents an acoustic and electropalatographic study of how vowel-less syllables and their constituents are phonetically implemented in Tashlhiyt Berber. Three issues are addressed. First, we determine whether the acoustic and articulatory make-up of a consonant changes as a function of its position within a syllable (C-nucleus vs. C-onse...

Tashlhiyt Berber contrasts singletons and geminates in intervocalic as well as in initial and final positions. This study presents results of an investigation of the phonetic correlates that distinguish these types of segments in these three positions. A claim has been made that Tashlhiyt Berber geminates are simple segments that are distinguished...

Tashlhiyt Berber has been proposed as a language in which any consonant can be syllabic, even a voiceless stop. This analysis has been challenged by different authors who argue that the so-called consonant-only syllables are produced with epenthetic schwa vowels. This study aims to determine whether voiceless schwa is a segment at the level of phon...

This paper reviews some of the basic premises of Quantal-Enhancement Theory as developed by K.N. Stevens and his colleagues. Quantal theory seeks to explain why some articulatory and acoustic dimensions are favored over others in distinctive feature contrasts across languages. In this paper, after a review of basic concepts, a protocol for quantal...

In this study, we examine consonants sequences in Tashlhiyt Berber in order to demonstrate that their syllabic organization can surface in their phonetic properties. Two types of three consonants sequences varying according to the degree of sonority of C1 are considered. Following syllabification principles of the language, these two types are cons...

We continue the review of some of the basic premises of Quantal- Enhancement Theory (Stevens 1972, 1989, etc.) initiated in Clements and Ridouane (2006). While Quantal Theory proposes to account for similarities in feature realisation across speakers and languages, Enhancement Theory proposes to account for regular patterns of cross-linguis tic var...

Laryngeal adjustments in voiceless obstruent clusters in Tashlhiyt Berber were examined by means of simultaneous transillumination, fibre-optic films and acoustic recordings. This language allows a rich variety of voiceless clusters naturally. Several combinations of /s/ and /k/ clusters including singleton and geminate consonants were examined. We...

This article deals with Chleuh Berber spoken in the southern part of Morocco. In this dialect, words may consist entirely of consonants without vowels and sometimes of only voiceless obstruents. In this study we have carried out fiberscopic and photoglottographic analyses to determine the glottal adjustments during the production of voiceless words...