Ait Seghrouchen Berber, or Seghroucheni (Seghrusheni), is a Zenati Berber language of the Eastern Middle Atlas Berber cluster. It is spoken by the Ait Seghrouchen tribe inhabiting east-central Morocco.
Classification Ait Seghrouchen Berber is commonly classed as Central Atlas Tamazight. It is reported to be mutually intelligible with the neighbouring Berber dialect of Ait Ayache. Genetically, however, it belongs to the Zenati subgroup of Northern Berber, rather than to the Atlas subgroup to which the rest of Central Atlas Tamazight belongs,Edmond Destaing, "Essai de classification des dialectes berbères du Maroc", Études et Documents Berbères, 19-20, 2001-2002 (1915) and are therefore excluded by some sources from Central Atlas Tamazight.Augustin Bernard and Paul Moussard, Arabophones et berbérophones au Maroc, Annales de Géographie 1924, Volume 33 Numéro 183, pp. 267-282.
Ait Seghrouchen is part of the Eastern Middle Atlas Berber cluster of Zenati dialects, which is spoken in the eastern Middle Atlas.
Phonology
Consonants Ayt Seghrouchen is notable for having the lateral fricative as an allophone of the sequence . /k, g/ are pronounced as stops, unlike the closely related Ayt Ayache dialect in which they are fricatives.
In the table below, when consonants appear in pairs, the one on the left is voiceless.
+Ayt Seghrouchen consonants (Ayt Ayache) Labial Dental/Alveolar Palatal Velar Uvular Pharyn-geal Glottal Nasal Plosive Fricative () Approximant Rhotic
Vowels Ait Seghrouchen Berber has a typical phonemic three-vowel system, similarly to Classical Arabic:
+ Tamazight vowel phonemesFrontBackClose Open
These phonemes have numerous allophones, conditioned by the following environments:
(# denotes word boundary, X denotes C[−flat − −], C̣ denotes C[+flat], G denotes C, , and )
+ Tamazight vowel allophony Phoneme Realization Environment Example Gloss #_X 'to exist' #_Xː / Xː_ 'he went' _G / G_ 'to burst out' X_# 'he made me happy' #_X / X(ː)_X 'I painted' _G / G_ 'he turned' X(ː)_# 'to begin' _ / _ 'he goes' #_X(ː) / X(ː)_X 'to send' X(ː)_# 'here' _C̣ / C̣_ 'to be present'
Phonetic Schwa
There is a predictable non-phonemic vowel inserted into consonant clusters, realized as before front consonants (e.g. ) and before back consonants (e.g. . These are some of the rules governing the occurrence of :
(# denotes word boundary, L denotes , H denotes )
+ Tamazight schwa epenthesis Environment Realization Example Pronunciation Gloss #C(ː)# əC(ː) 'to be, to do'#LC# əLC or LəC 'to spend the night'#CC# CəC 'to laugh' #CːC# əCːəC 'to hide' #CCC# CCəC / C1C2 are not {L H} 'to work' 'to get mad' #CCC# əCCəC or #CəCəC# / {C1 C3} is {L H} 'to demolish' #CCC# CəCəC / C2C3 = {L H} 'to guarantee'
Stress Word stress is non-contrastive and predictable — it falls on the last vowel in a word (including schwa).
References
Bibliography