Books by Karim Bensoukas
Translated book by Karim Bensoukas
Edited collections (Book & Journal papers) by Karim Bensoukas
The Handbook of Berber Linguistics (Springer), 2024
https://link.springer.com/referencework/10.1007/978-981-99-5690-6
This handbook is the largest... more https://link.springer.com/referencework/10.1007/978-981-99-5690-6
This handbook is the largest and most comprehensive publication on Berber linguistics to date, covering the variety of Berber dialects and related linguistics trends. Extensive and diverse at thematic and theoretical levels, with the aim of deepening students and scholars' understanding of the workings of Berber as a linguistic phenomenon, it explores a multitude of angles through which the diachronic and synchronic intricacies of Berber varieties can be examined. It enables a better understanding of the issues in the various components of North African languages, as well as their theoretical and typological significance and implications. The work covers phonology and phonetics, morphology and syntax, semantics and pragmatics, socio-linguistics and dialectology, language teaching and psycholinguistics, lexicology, language contact and comparative linguistics, historical linguistics and etymology. Sub-themes explored include prosody, ideophones (and expressive language in general), morpho-syntactic categories, sociolinguistic variation and several other seminal interdisciplinary explorations. The chapters reflect the diversity of Berber varieties and include up-to-date scholarship by leading Berberists, with varieties including Figuig, Kabyle, Senhaja, Siwa, Standard Moroccan Amazigh, Tamazight, Tarifit, Tashlhit, Touareg, Tunisian Berber, Znaga, as well as Proto-Berber. A large geographical territory is covered, including Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia. With contributions from these Berber-speaking countries and their diaspora, there are also chapters from prominent Berber scholars from America, Australia and Europe. To this end, the volume includes perspectives and theories from different schools of linguistics. In including original French contributions and English translations of research from top scholars in the field, the book includes another vital dimension in terms ofthe resources, and sources. As a comprehensive reference, this work is of interest to North Africanists from various disciplines, including anthropologists, linguists, and sociologists, but particularly linguists interested in endangered languages, and those working on the historical and comparative study of the Afroasiatic language phylum.
Asinag 13, 2018
Asinag 13 is a publication of the Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture (Rabat, Morocco). This colle... more Asinag 13 is a publication of the Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture (Rabat, Morocco). This collection contains papers on the nature and functions of the root in Afro-Asiatic languages. The papers deal with various issues relating to the adequacy of the consonantal root and the word-based vs. root-based approaches to morphology, with various applications to morphological/lexicographic issues in Amazigh (Berber), Hebrew, and Moroccan Arabic.
By bringing together works on various specific aspects of Amazigh-Arabic language
contact, focus ... more By bringing together works on various specific aspects of Amazigh-Arabic language
contact, focus being more on the impact of Amazigh on Arabic, this special issue of the International Journal of Arabic Linguistics (IJAL) is meant both to fill in the gap in the literature and to take the analysis to the next level as far as specific aspects of Amazigh-Arabic contact are concerned. As such, the seven papers herein, mostly devoted to the effects of Amazigh on Maghrebi (North African) Arabic, as well as Maltese Arabic, deal with phenomena ranging over phonology, morphology, syntax, sociolinguistic reconstruction, toponymy and etymology, with data coming from various dialects of Amazigh- Algerian, Egyptian, Moroccan, and Tunisian. As to the Arabic dialects studied, MA is the main variety showing the impact of Amazigh. More
specifically, the reader will find herein aspects of labiovelarization, labial/round dissimilation, sibilant harmony, vowel reduction, as far as phonology is concerned; morphological aspects relating to id-and at-plurals, agentive nouns, participles, and circumfixation; syntactic developments relating to topic specification; ajt/oulad, imi/foum, tizi/fəʒʒ and tiṭṭ /ʕin parallel toponyms; and the etymology of a number of Amazigh words in Maltese Arabic.
Collection of papers on Amazigh from the perspective of Optimality Theory.
Journal papers by Karim Bensoukas
Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 8(1). , 2024
This study examines the perceptual mechanisms involved in the processing of words without vowels,... more This study examines the perceptual mechanisms involved in the processing of words without vowels, a lexical form that is common in Tashlhiyt but highly dispreferred cross-linguistically. In Experiment 1, native Tashlhiyt and non-native (English-speaking) listeners completed a paired discrimination task where the middle segment of the different-pair was either a vowel (e.g., fan vs. fin), consonant (e.g., ʁbr vs. ʁdr), or vowelless vs. voweled contrast (e.g., tlf vs. tuf). Experiment 2 was a word-likeness ratings task of tri-segmental nonwords constructed to vary in the sonority of the middle segment. We find that vowelless words containing different types of sonority profiles were generally highly discriminable by both native and non-native listeners. This can be explained by the phonetic and acoustic properties of vowelless words: Since Tashlhiyt exhibits low consonant-to-consonant coarticulation, the presence of robust consonantal cues in the speech signal means that the internal phonological structure of vowelless words is recoverable by listeners. At the same time, word-likeness ratings of nonwords indicated that listeners relied on their native-language experience to judge the wellformedness of new words: Tashlhiyt listeners were most likely to accept obstruent-centered vowelless words; meanwhile, English listeners’ preferences increased with higher sonority values of the word center. Across both experiments, speech style variation provided further evidence as to how the phonetic implementation of vowelless words makes them perceptually stable. Thus, our findings provide an overview of the low-level acoustic-phonetic and higher-level phonological processing mechanisms involved in the perception of vowelless words. Our results can inform understandings of the relationship between language-specific phonetic variation and phonotactic patterns, as well as how auditory processing mechanisms shape phonological typology.
International Journal of Berber/Amazigh Research 1, 2024
En rifain, un parler de l'amazighe marocain, une géminée latérale /ll/est délatéralisée en affriq... more En rifain, un parler de l'amazighe marocain, une géminée latérale /ll/est délatéralisée en affriquée ʤ. Les structures /lt/ et /ld/ quant à elles s'affriquent respectivement en ʤ et ʧ et gardent le voisement initial de l'obstruante. Nous nous inspirerons de l'assimilation à laquelle participent les séquences nt et nd dans le parler pour expliquer le comportement énigmatique mais uniforme des géminées et des séquences lt et ld vis-à-vis de l'affrication. Nous défendrons l'hypothèse selon laquelle les géminées et les séquences nt/nd et lt/ld ont des structures branchantes analogues dans leur géométrie des traits, et c'est ce qui explique leur comportement uniforme vis-à-vis de la spirantisation et de l'affrication.
Asinag 18, 2023
Baba ʕli, a recent Tashlhit TV show, is replete with charactonyms, which the present paper purpor... more Baba ʕli, a recent Tashlhit TV show, is replete with charactonyms, which the present paper purports to describe and analyze. Once the veracity of the charactonyms is established, the TV show emerges as a good source of first names (including hypocoristics), family names, patronyms and reverse teknonyms, nicknames , 'animal' names, and occupational names. By the same token, the significance of the enterprise for the linguistics and onomastics of the language is discussed. The paper points out the purely linguistic aspects of onomastics, including the structural, sociolinguistic, historical linguistic aspects, as well as more general onomastic ones, like onomastic documentation and dissemination and the need to further research into Tashlhit/Amazigh literary onomastics.
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 152, 2022
Tashlhiyt Berber is known for having typologically unusual word-initial phonological contrasts, s... more Tashlhiyt Berber is known for having typologically unusual word-initial phonological contrasts, specifically, wordinitial singleton-geminate minimal pairs (e.g., sin vs ssin) and sequences of consonants that violate the sonority sequencing principle (e.g., non-rising sonority sequences: fsin). The current study investigates the role of a listeneroriented speaking style on the perceptual enhancement of these rarer phonological contrasts. It examines the perception of word-initial singleton, geminate, and complex onsets in Tashlhiyt Berber across clear and casual speaking styles by native and naive listeners. While clear speech boosts the discriminability of pairs containing singletoninitial words for both listener groups, only native listeners performed better in discriminating between initial singleton-geminate contrasts in clear speech. Clear speech did not improve perception for lexical contrasts containing a non-rising-sonority consonant cluster for either listener group. These results are discussed in terms of how clear speech can inform phonological typology and the role of phonetic enhancement in language-universal vs languagespecific speech perception. V
Asinag 15, 2020
This paper deals with a progressive, total assimilation process in the Tamazight dialect of Ayt S... more This paper deals with a progressive, total assimilation process in the Tamazight dialect of Ayt Sgougou. Two aspects of the process, which involves coronal consonants only, are examined within Optimality Theory: sonorant-stop assimilation, triggered by l and n and sonorant-sonorant assimilation, triggered by r and l. Various faithfulness constraints are at play, most of which are dominated by ASSIM(ilation). The process interacts closely with ə-epenthesis and spirantization. Underapplication of ə-epenthesis feeds assimilation, and underapplication of assimilation feeds spirantization, which creates a certain degree of opacity.
Le présent article avance des arguments contre la racine consonantique en tachelhite tout en prop... more Le présent article avance des arguments contre la racine consonantique en tachelhite tout en proposant une approche morphologique qui s'appuie sur des mots phonologiquement possibles comme bases de dérivation. Des phénomènes sensibles aux voyelles appellent à l'inclusion de celles-ci dans les bases de dérivation, et partant, nous distinguons fondamentalement entre bases à consonne finale et celles à voyelle finale. Cette distinction prescrit une nouvelle conception des bases de dérivation que soutiennent diverses applications à la morphologie du tachelhit. Ces applications montrent que notre conception permet un meilleur traitement des procédés morphologiques ayant jusqu'ici résisté à une analyse unifiante et appropriée.
Lesser studied Moroccan Amazigh and Arabic plurals are id-plurals and at-plurals, respectively, w... more Lesser studied Moroccan Amazigh and Arabic plurals are id-plurals and at-plurals, respectively, which include morphologically simple/complex words, items with expressive morphology, and borrowings. These are quite distinct from Afro-Asiatic concatenative and non-concatenative ones. The paper aims first at establishing commonalities between them, specifically focusing on Arabic masculine at-plurals. The further goal is to check whether at-pluralization is cognate to id-pluralization or substratal thereof. The paper claims that the specifics of at-plurals which differ from those of cognate Arabic varieties are the result of contact and are probably a shift-induced interference.
This article provides a description as well as a first evaluation of our experience with Flipped ... more This article provides a description as well as a first evaluation of our experience with Flipped Learning (Flip) in teaching phonetics to undergraduate students at a Moroccan university. We developed screencast video lectures to deliver direct content and devoted class time for one-on-one activities. Viewing lectures before class sessions, students have better opportunities to (i) learn at their individual paces at home, and (ii) collaborate and devote more time to classroom activities, including tasks traditionally assigned as homework. The expected outcome is that integrating ICT in teaching phonetics coupled with Flip will yield better learning results. The method comes with a challenge, though: it requires teachers skilled in developing digital learning resources (DLRs).Three lessons can be learnt from the experience, however: (i) in developing DLRs for Flip, expenses can indeed be kept to a minimum; (ii) Flip saves valuable class time for hands-on activities; and (iii) students' very positive reactions to Flipped phonetics are an indication of its success.
This paper provides an Optimality-theoretic account of Amazigh negative verb morphology. With ver... more This paper provides an Optimality-theoretic account of Amazigh negative verb morphology. With very few exceptions, previous accounts focused more on particles than on the morphology proper. The infixation vs. final ablaut allomorphy and the correspondence between negative and affirmative paradigms have remained so far without proper treatment. Also, by assigning verbs to four paradigms, general descriptions of Amazigh overlook the neutralization of negative verb morphology in some three-paradigm Tashlhit dialects, treated in this paper as an identity avoidance effect, as well as the concomitant variation other Tashlhit dialects exhibit, which shows that Partial Rankings are at play. Also overlooked are the five paradigms of Tarifiyt, Iznassen and Figuig and the use of discontinuous negation due to the Jespersen’s cycle. The latter dialects not only show an extended negative morphology by overtly marking both the preterite and the intensive aorist but they also reinforce negation syntactically. Comparison with non-Moroccan dialects reveals various patterns pertaining to these aspects of negation.
En tachelhite, bu(tgmmi) et bab (n tgmmi) expriment le sens de 'propriétaire de (la maison)' resp... more En tachelhite, bu(tgmmi) et bab (n tgmmi) expriment le sens de 'propriétaire de (la maison)' respectivement par affixation et par périphrase. Ces noms n'ayant pas reçu de traitement adéquat dans la littérature sur l'amazighe, nous nous attèlerons aux détails de leur morpho-syntaxe, tout en accentuant l'existence d'affixe syntagmatique et de mot lié dans la langue. Nous passons également en exergue les défis que pose ce type de formation pour l'hypothèse de l'intégrité lexicale ainsi que pour la contrainte qui bannit les syntagmes à l'intérieur des mots. D'un point de vue typologique, nous postulerons ultimement que ce mode de formation nominale révèle l'existence d'une morphologie légèrement polysynthétique en tachelhite.
This paper presents a corpus of Tashlhit bu-nouns, in which bu generally expresses the possessor ... more This paper presents a corpus of Tashlhit bu-nouns, in which bu generally expresses the possessor of what the inner noun refers to. Comparison with other dialects of Amazigh is undertaken, revealing the cross-dialectal complexity of this type of nominal formation. Notwithstanding their morphosyntactic intricacy, which challenges Greenberg’s Universal 28, the Lexical Integrity Hypothesis and the No Phrase Constraint, bu-nouns have been dealt with only sporadically and have at times even been overlooked. The presentation will shed light on the inflectional alternations inner bu-nouns exhibit, the existence of an alternative periphrastic expression, the pluralization pattern of these nouns, their alienable vs. inalienable possession patterns, as well as the possible recursion of the bu-noun affixes.
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Books by Karim Bensoukas
Translated book by Karim Bensoukas
Edited collections (Book & Journal papers) by Karim Bensoukas
This handbook is the largest and most comprehensive publication on Berber linguistics to date, covering the variety of Berber dialects and related linguistics trends. Extensive and diverse at thematic and theoretical levels, with the aim of deepening students and scholars' understanding of the workings of Berber as a linguistic phenomenon, it explores a multitude of angles through which the diachronic and synchronic intricacies of Berber varieties can be examined. It enables a better understanding of the issues in the various components of North African languages, as well as their theoretical and typological significance and implications. The work covers phonology and phonetics, morphology and syntax, semantics and pragmatics, socio-linguistics and dialectology, language teaching and psycholinguistics, lexicology, language contact and comparative linguistics, historical linguistics and etymology. Sub-themes explored include prosody, ideophones (and expressive language in general), morpho-syntactic categories, sociolinguistic variation and several other seminal interdisciplinary explorations. The chapters reflect the diversity of Berber varieties and include up-to-date scholarship by leading Berberists, with varieties including Figuig, Kabyle, Senhaja, Siwa, Standard Moroccan Amazigh, Tamazight, Tarifit, Tashlhit, Touareg, Tunisian Berber, Znaga, as well as Proto-Berber. A large geographical territory is covered, including Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia. With contributions from these Berber-speaking countries and their diaspora, there are also chapters from prominent Berber scholars from America, Australia and Europe. To this end, the volume includes perspectives and theories from different schools of linguistics. In including original French contributions and English translations of research from top scholars in the field, the book includes another vital dimension in terms ofthe resources, and sources. As a comprehensive reference, this work is of interest to North Africanists from various disciplines, including anthropologists, linguists, and sociologists, but particularly linguists interested in endangered languages, and those working on the historical and comparative study of the Afroasiatic language phylum.
contact, focus being more on the impact of Amazigh on Arabic, this special issue of the International Journal of Arabic Linguistics (IJAL) is meant both to fill in the gap in the literature and to take the analysis to the next level as far as specific aspects of Amazigh-Arabic contact are concerned. As such, the seven papers herein, mostly devoted to the effects of Amazigh on Maghrebi (North African) Arabic, as well as Maltese Arabic, deal with phenomena ranging over phonology, morphology, syntax, sociolinguistic reconstruction, toponymy and etymology, with data coming from various dialects of Amazigh- Algerian, Egyptian, Moroccan, and Tunisian. As to the Arabic dialects studied, MA is the main variety showing the impact of Amazigh. More
specifically, the reader will find herein aspects of labiovelarization, labial/round dissimilation, sibilant harmony, vowel reduction, as far as phonology is concerned; morphological aspects relating to id-and at-plurals, agentive nouns, participles, and circumfixation; syntactic developments relating to topic specification; ajt/oulad, imi/foum, tizi/fəʒʒ and tiṭṭ /ʕin parallel toponyms; and the etymology of a number of Amazigh words in Maltese Arabic.
Journal papers by Karim Bensoukas
This handbook is the largest and most comprehensive publication on Berber linguistics to date, covering the variety of Berber dialects and related linguistics trends. Extensive and diverse at thematic and theoretical levels, with the aim of deepening students and scholars' understanding of the workings of Berber as a linguistic phenomenon, it explores a multitude of angles through which the diachronic and synchronic intricacies of Berber varieties can be examined. It enables a better understanding of the issues in the various components of North African languages, as well as their theoretical and typological significance and implications. The work covers phonology and phonetics, morphology and syntax, semantics and pragmatics, socio-linguistics and dialectology, language teaching and psycholinguistics, lexicology, language contact and comparative linguistics, historical linguistics and etymology. Sub-themes explored include prosody, ideophones (and expressive language in general), morpho-syntactic categories, sociolinguistic variation and several other seminal interdisciplinary explorations. The chapters reflect the diversity of Berber varieties and include up-to-date scholarship by leading Berberists, with varieties including Figuig, Kabyle, Senhaja, Siwa, Standard Moroccan Amazigh, Tamazight, Tarifit, Tashlhit, Touareg, Tunisian Berber, Znaga, as well as Proto-Berber. A large geographical territory is covered, including Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia. With contributions from these Berber-speaking countries and their diaspora, there are also chapters from prominent Berber scholars from America, Australia and Europe. To this end, the volume includes perspectives and theories from different schools of linguistics. In including original French contributions and English translations of research from top scholars in the field, the book includes another vital dimension in terms ofthe resources, and sources. As a comprehensive reference, this work is of interest to North Africanists from various disciplines, including anthropologists, linguists, and sociologists, but particularly linguists interested in endangered languages, and those working on the historical and comparative study of the Afroasiatic language phylum.
contact, focus being more on the impact of Amazigh on Arabic, this special issue of the International Journal of Arabic Linguistics (IJAL) is meant both to fill in the gap in the literature and to take the analysis to the next level as far as specific aspects of Amazigh-Arabic contact are concerned. As such, the seven papers herein, mostly devoted to the effects of Amazigh on Maghrebi (North African) Arabic, as well as Maltese Arabic, deal with phenomena ranging over phonology, morphology, syntax, sociolinguistic reconstruction, toponymy and etymology, with data coming from various dialects of Amazigh- Algerian, Egyptian, Moroccan, and Tunisian. As to the Arabic dialects studied, MA is the main variety showing the impact of Amazigh. More
specifically, the reader will find herein aspects of labiovelarization, labial/round dissimilation, sibilant harmony, vowel reduction, as far as phonology is concerned; morphological aspects relating to id-and at-plurals, agentive nouns, participles, and circumfixation; syntactic developments relating to topic specification; ajt/oulad, imi/foum, tizi/fəʒʒ and tiṭṭ /ʕin parallel toponyms; and the etymology of a number of Amazigh words in Maltese Arabic.
same difficulties in the educational system, as shown in Eddakhch (2017), which presents a detailed study of Italian from the same perspective as the one we adopt. We will show that this stratification, which is more the product of local conceptions of FLs than it is the result of an independent ranking, is consolidated by official documents and published literature, as well as by the perceptions of officials and the students of these 2nd FLs.