The timing of geminate consonants in Tarifit Berber

Fayssal Bouarourou (1) , Béatrice Vaxelaire (1) , Yves Laprie (2) , Rachid Ridouane (3) , Rudolph Sock (1)

1 LILPA - Linguistique, Langues et Parole
2 MULTISPEECH - Speech Modeling for Facilitating Oral-Based Communication
3 LPP - LPP - Laboratoire de Phonétique et Phonologie - UMR 7018

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 consecutive timing units associated with one simultaneous segmental slot. The investigation is based on acoustic data for six native speakers and on X-ray data for two native speakers. It presents results of singleton and geminate voiced and voiceless consonants, produced in word-initial, word-medial, and word-final positions, at a normal and at a fast speaking rate. Speech rate is varied in order to evaluate the robustness of the phonological contrast. Special attention is paid to the timing of tongue gestures in producing this phonological contrast.

Mots clés: Key-words: gemination; tarifit berber; acoustic study; articulatory study; X-ray data

Domaines: Linguistique

Fayssal Bouarourou, Béatrice Vaxelaire, Yves Laprie, Rachid Ridouane, Rudolph Sock. The timing of geminate consonants in Tarifit Berber. 1st International Conference on Natural Language and Speech Processing, Oct 2015, Algiers, Algeria. ⟨halshs-01258309⟩