The X…XəyyuC Family of Moroccan Secret Languages

Nasser Berjaoui
Ibn Tofail University, Kénitra, Morocco

LSAAL 27: The X…XəyyuC Family of Moroccan Secret Languages Nasser Berjaoui Ibn Tofail University, Kénitra, Morocco This book, which is the tenth of a series of works on Moroccan Arabic secret languages, proposes an extremely detailed account of the "ġuş", a secret language of one region in the south-east of Morocco, the Tafilalet. The language in question contains a rich number of varieties. This work, which addresses linguistic areas of main concern to graduate and post-graduate students, linguists, phonologists, morphologists, sociolinguists, dialectologists, arabicists and sociologists, focuses on the secretising of a multitude of words, prepositions, verbs, phrases, clauses and sentences, for instance. For descriptive convenience, this study proposes eight chapters and a detailed bibliography. Chapter one is concerned with major previous works related to secret languages worldwide, for instance. Chapter two introduces major sociolinguistic notions of the "ġuş". Chapter three investigates the encoding of prefixless words. Chapter four analyses the encoding of prefixed items. Chapter five scrutinizes the secretising of prepositions. Chapter six aims at a description of the encoding of syntactic structures. Chapter seven illustrates the use of the "ġuş" in everyday-like conversations. Chapter eight presents a detailed account of the rules governing all the varieties of the x…xəyyuC family with reference to all MA words, phrases, clauses and sentences and a detailed account of the data. In one variety of the x….xəyyuC "ġuş" a consonant of the word is substituted by the consonant of the operating variety (x). Then the new word is followed by the disguise element "xəyyuC", that is another copy of the substituting consonant (x), the disyllabic "əyyu" and the substituted consonant of the word (C). In this respect, the word “kla” (eat), for instance, is encoded in one variety of the x….xəyyuC "ġuş" as "sla səyyuk".

ISBN 9783895861307. Moroccan Arabic Secret Languages 10. LINCOM Studies in Afroasiatic Linguistics 27. 182pp. 2008.

The Origin of Amharic

Girma Awgichew Demeke
Addis Ababa University

There are basically two hypotheses on the origin of Amharic: it may be a descendent of a common Proto-Ethiosemitic language or it may have evolved as a Semitic-based pidgin, which became a creole and eventually developed into a full-fledged language. While the first hypothesis is commonly accepted in Semitic Studies, the second hypothesis, first proposed in the beginning of the 1980s, became quite popular very recently and even entered Amharic textbooks.

Girma A. Demeke’s present work thoroughly examines the arguments that seem to suppose the origin of Amharic as a pidgin. Based on chronological, historical, geographical, and linguistic grounds, Girma clearly demonstrates that the pidgin hypothesis is blatantly implausible. Not only the linguistic data on Amharic provide strong arguments against the pidgin hypothesis but also the relationship between Amharic and the remaining Ethiosemitic languages in general, and Argobba in particular, do not support it.

Girma A. Demeke’s study on the origin of Amharic also discusses controversial issues about the origin of the Ethiosemitic language group, which is of particular interest for Semitic Studies, History and Anthropology. The book incorporates most of the accessible historical documents with regard to Amharic and the language situation in former Ethiopia, which also shed some light on the Ethiopian history in general. The book is very recommendable for all readers interested in the history of Ethiosemitic languages and their speakers. (Dr. Ronny Meyer, Associate Professor, Department of Ethiopian Languages and Literature Addis Ababa University).

ISBN 9783895866890 (Hardbound). LINCOM Studies in Afroasiatic Linguistics 28. 356pp. 2009.

The Stress System of Berber

An Optimality-theoretic Approach

Youcef Hdouch
Ibn Tofail University, Kenitra

The objective of this book is to enrich the research on Berber stress by applying the OT principles to account for stress assignment in AWTB prosodic words. In fact, our aim is to show that the assumptions laid out in the non-linear metrical analyses are not completely wrong, but at the same time, they do not provide an adequate account of the surface facts of AWTB nouns and verbs. The interaction of different constraints is sufficient to account for the location of stress in these grammatical categories. Our focus will be placed on the prosodic status of the extraprosodic affixes and clitics. Actually, one of the least studied linguistic phenomena in Berber phonology is stress. Apart from the impressionistic and linear treatments conducted by scholars who investigated the metrics of different varieties of Berber (cf. Laoust (1918 –1939), Apllegate (1958), Abdel- Massih (1968), Prasse (1972), Chami (1979), Bounfour (1985) … etc.), recent studies of Berber phonology conducted within the non-linear metrical framework include Adnor (1995), Marouane (1997) and Faizi (2002).

Two notions lie at the heart of the last three metrical accounts. The first one concerns syllable weight, a decisive factor in a number of stress systems. In this respect, Marouane (op-cit.) and Faizi (op-cit.) draw a distinction between syllables headed by the epenthetic schwa, and those headed by full vowels. The second notion involves extraprosodicity. Only Adnor and Marouane make use of this concept. However, while Adnor argues that the feminine suffix /t/ and the agentive morphemes /m/ or /n/ is extrametrical, Marouane attributes this feature to all prosodic words’ final consonants. In the literature, three features function as cues for the identification of stress. These are pitch, loudness and duration. However, the presence of these correlates either individually or collectively depends on the language under study. In AWTB, the examination of the native speakers’ realisations shows that stressed syllables tend to be lengthier and louder than the unstressed ones. As a result, duration and loudness are the phonetic correlates of stress in this variety. The remainder of this book is organised as follows. Chapter I reviews the three metrical treatments mentioned above. Inherent deficiencies are pointed out. Chapter II presents a description of the stress facts of AWTB nouns and verbs. Finally, chapter III consists of an OT account of the main issues raised by the facts of AWTB.

ISBN 9783929075656. LINCOM Studies in Afro-Asiatic Linguistics 29. 118pp. 2010.

Tempus, Aspekt und Modalität im tunesischen Arabisch und die Entwicklung der Kategorie Auxiliare

Karim Jemni
Universität Bielfeld

Die vorliegende Arbeit verfolgt das Ziel anhand der Analyse eines Korpus, welches das konzeptionelle Kontinuum zwischen Nähe- und Distanz-Sprache annähernd abdeckt, das tunesische Verbalsystem mit seinen Kategorien Tempus, Modus und Aspekt darzustellen und deren Zusammenspiel zu untersuchen, wobei die Auxiliarisierung einiger tunesischer Verben unter dem Blickwinkel der Grammatikalisierungstheorie einen besonderen Schwerpunkt einnimmt. Methodisch verbindet die Arbeit eine grammatisch-semantische Funktionsbeschreibung für den gesamten Tempus-Modus-Aspektbereich des tunesischen Arabisch (TA), mit einer empirischen Auswertung natürlicher Sprachdaten und mit der Erklärungsperspektive des Grammatikalisierungsansatzes.

Bei der Behandlung der Frage der Auxiliarisierung tunesischer Verben bestand das Anliegen darin, zu begründen, inwiefern tunesische Auxiliare mit dem Phänomen der Grammatikalisierung in Verbindung gebracht werden können. Im Verlauf ihrer Entwicklung verlieren solche Verben allmählich ihre semantischen Merkmale und werden in zunehmendem Maß abstrakter, was sich daran zeigt, dass sie nunmehr mit vielen anderen Verben kombiniert werden können. Dadurch erweitert sich ihr pragmatischer Gebrauch, so dass sie dann in verschiedenen Kontexten und mit unterschiedlichen Nebenbedeutungen vorkommen können. Am Ende der vorliegenden Studie wurde das Ergebnis erbracht, dass sich die Applikation des Lehmannschen Grammatikalisierungsmodells als leistungsfähig erwiesen hat und die von ihm entworfenen Grammatikalisierungsparameter sich auf die in der vorliegenden Arbeit vorgestellten Auxiliarisierungsfälle zum größten Teil problemlos übertragen lassen.



Au moyen de l’analyse d'un corpus qui embrasse presque toute la gamme du continuum conceptionnel entre immédiat et distance communicatifs, le présent travail poursuit l'objectif de présenter le système verbal tunisien avec ses catégories de temps, mode et aspect et d'examiner l'interaction existant entre ces catégories ; cette présentation met l’accent sur les processus d´auxiliarisation de quelques verbes tunisiens considérée dans le cadre de la théorie de la grammaticalisation. Du point de vue méthodique le présent travail combine une description du fonctionnement grammatico-sémantique qui englobe tout le domaine du temps, mode et aspect de l'arabe tunisien (AT), une évaluation empirique de données linguistiques et la perspective explicative qui est propre à la théorie de la grammaticalisation.

ISBN 9783862880713. LINCOM Studies in Afroasiatic Linguistics 30. 275pp. 2011.

Actes / Proceedings - 2ème Symposium International sur le Traitement Automatique de la Culture Amazighe - SITACAM’11

Ali Rachidi (ed.)
Président - Organisateur de la conférence ENCG-Agadir, Maroc

La 2ème Edition du Symposium International sur le Traitement Automatique de la Culture Amazighe qui est organisée à l’Ecole Nationale de Commerce et de Gestion d’Agadir, Maroc les 06-07 Mai 2011 a pour thème : « Informatisation de l’Amazighe : Théories, Applications et Perspectives ».

En effet, l'intégration des technologies de l'information et de communication (TIC) au traitement de la langue Amazighe est absolument nécessaire dans l’apprentissage et le traitement des données exprimées en langue naturelle amazighe. Ce symposium s’articule autour de quatre principaux axes :

Le premier axe traite les techniques de traduction et la translittération automatique entre l’Amazighe et le latin et l’arabe.

Le deuxième axe présente les différentes approches et systèmes de reconnaissance automatique de caractère Amazighe (Tifinaghe) tout en utilisant des bases de caractères développées localement.

Le troisième axe s’intéresse aux aspects lexicaux, grammaticaux et sémantiques ainsi que la construction de corpus Amazighes. Enfin, le dernier axe traite l’ontologie amazighe dans le web 3.0 et dans le domaine d’informatisation de tourisme marocain tout en mettant l’accent sur la culture amazighe.

Table des matières:

Convertisseur pour la langue amazighe : script arabe - latin – tifinaghe
Ataa Allah Fadoua & Boulaknadel Siham, Centre d’Etude Informatique, Systèmes d’Information et de Communication, Institut Royal de la Culture Amazighe

Amazighe Transliteration
M. EDDAHIBI, S. Mouhim, C. Cherkaoui, D. Mammass, Laboratoire IRF-SIC, Faculté des sciences & ENCG, B.P.28/S – Agadir – Maroc.

POS tagging in Amazighe using tokenization and n-gram character feature set, Mohamed Outahajala (1, 4)
Yassine Benajiba (2), Paolo Rosso (3), Lahbib Zenkouar (4)
1) Royal Institut for Amazighe Culture, Morocco,
2) Philips Research North America, Briacliff Manor, USA,
3) Natural Language Engineering Lab – EliRF, DSIC, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Spain,
4) Ecole Mohammadia d’Ingénieurs, Morocco.

Utilisation des réseaux de neurones et le modèle de Markov pour la reconnaissance des caractères Tifinagh manuscrits
B.EL KESSAB, C. DAOUI, B. BOUIKHALENE, M. FAKIR, Equipe de Traitement de l’Information et Télécommunications, Faculty of Science and Technology, PB 523, Béni Mellal, Morocco

Transformation de fourier et moments invariants appliques a la reconnaissance des caracteres tifinaghe
R. El Ayachi, M. Fakir & B. Bouikhalene, equipe de traitement de l'information et de télécommunications (tit), facultés des sciences et techniques, Béni Mellal, Maroc

Intégration de l’amazighe dans un OCR OpenSource Ocropus comme modèle
Ait Ouguengay Youssef, Institut Royal de la Culture Amazighe, Rabat-Maroc

Reconnaissance automatique de la parole Amazigh à base de la transcription en alphabet Tifinaghe
A. EL GHAZI, C. DAOUI, M. FAKIR, B. BOUIKHALENE, N. IDRISSI, facultés des sciences et techniques, Béni Mellal, Maroc

Some Aspects of Berber Clause Structure, Naima Omari, Al Quaraouiyine University, Agadir Lexical development of bilingual Moroccan children in the Netherlands: analysis of mother-child interactions
Mohammadi Laghzaoui (1) & Esmah Lahlah (2), Faculty of Humanities – Tilburg University, LE Tilburg – Netherlands, (2) Faculty of Law–Tilburg University LE Tilburg – Netherlands Technologies de Recherche Sémantiques Appliquées au Tourisme : Cas de la Culture Amazighe, S.Mouhim, A. El Aoufi, M. Eddahibi, C. Cherkaoui, El. Megder, D. Mammass, Laboratoire IRF-SIC, Faculté des sciences & ENCG, Agadir – Maroc.

Étude contrastive des locutions en amazighe et en français en vue de la constitution d'une base de données lexicale
CHAKIRI Malika, Paris-Descartes-Sorbonne

L’apport fondamental des ontologies pour le Web intelligent : Web 3.0
Hammou Fadili, Laboratoire CEDRIC du Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers de Paris cedex 3, France

Sur la constitution de corpus de deux langues à tradition orale (le berbère tamazight et l’arabe marocain) parlées à Orléans
Samira MOUKRIM, LLL-Université d’Orléans Le projet OLPC (One Laptop Per Child): développements récents et prochains (2010 - 2011), Jean M. Thiéry, ModLibre.info, EGUILLES, France

Contribution à la reconnaissance des caractères Tifinagh par utilisation des réseaux de neurones et la squelettisation
K. MORO, B. EL KESSAB, M. FAKIR, B. BOUIKHALENE, S. SAFI, Equipe de traitement de l’information et télécommunication, Faculté des Sciences et Techniques, Université Sultan Moulay Slimane, Béni Mellal, Maroc

Tifinagh characters recognition using Self Organizing Map and Fuzzy k-Nearest Neighbor
Mohamed FAKIR, Belaid BOUIKHALENE and Said GOUNANE, Information Processing & Telecommunication Team, Dep. Of Computer Sciences – FST SMS, Beni Mellal, Morocco

Contributions à la Reconnaissance Hors Ligne de l’Ecriture Amazighe
1Y. Es Saady, 2A. Rachidi, 1M. El Yassa, 1D. Mammass, 1IRF – SIC, Faculté des Sciences, B.P. 8106, Hay Dakhla, Université Ibn Zohr, Agadir, Maroc, 2Ecole nationale de Commerce et de Gestion, B. P. 37/S Hay Salam, IRF – SIC, Faculté des sciences, Université Ibn Zohr, Agadir, Maroc

Application de la géométrie riemannienne à la reconnaissance des caractères Tifinaghe
O. BENCHAREF, M. FAKIR, B. BOUIKHALEN, B. MINAOUI, Université Sultan Moulay Slimane, Faculté des Sciences et Techniques, Département d’Informatique, Equipe de Traitement de l’Information et Télécommunication TIT, Beni Mellal - Maroc

ISBN 9783862880737. LINCOM Studies in Afroasian Linguistics 32. 198pp. 2011.

The “-ĂNNĂŖG-” Pseudo-Infixation Arabic "ġāwş" of El-Jadida, Morocco

Nasser Berjaoui
Université Ibn Tofail, Kénitra

The “ġāwş” (a “secret language” of El-Jadida, Morocco) has not been thoroughly investigated. In this book, scrutiny is on the major mechanisms of the “language”. Focus is on the overall details that show the multi-faceted manipulations of single words, phrases, clauses and sentences (of all types and lengths), taking into account the important idiosyncratic aspects of the Moroccan Arabic variety of El-Jadida, with its rather longer vowels, among other things. The “secret language” works on the modifications of the word-to-encode through a major, and rather context-bound, “pseudo-infixation” of a disguise item that blurs all the common linguistic boundaries in relation to syllables, affixes, particles, clitics, words, phrases, clauses, sentences and even discourse fragments.

ISBN 9783862883097. LINCOM Studies in Afroasiatic Languages 33. 132pp. 2012.

The Arabic Permutation “şāwġ” of El-Jadida, Morocco

Nasser Berjaoui
Université Ibn Tofail, Kénitra

The numerous and detailed operations at work in the “Inversion”/“Backward” “secret language” (“SL”) of El-Jadida, Morocco, known as “ş-şāwġ”, are scrutinized in this investigation. The manipulating changes affecting individual sounds, syllables, words and structures (of all types, categories and lengths) will be studied, with a consideration of the rich and interesting phonetic, phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic and discursive effects of the “SLs” on the MA variety of El-Jadida, generally and most commonly referred to, in the relevant literature, as the “Aroubi” (villager)/“Doukkali” variety.

ISBN 9783862883295. LINCOM Studies in Afroasiatic Languages 34. 126pp. 2012.

One Moroccan Amazigh/Berber Secret Language: the “sīn” Variety

Nasser Berjaoui
Ibn Tofail University

This book (which is one among a series of future works on Moroccan Amazigh/Berber “secret languages”) is the first research project, to the best of our knowledge, that studies and provides a detailed description and analysis of one Amazigh/Berber “secret language” of the south-east of Morocco.

The present book contains ten chapters. These respectively propose the following: general backgrounds, the basic encoding procedures of individual words in the “secret language”, the secretizing of various speech parts, the manipulation of miscellaneous verbal forms, the changing of defined nouns, the distortion of multi-consonantal short speech parts, the encrypting of miscellaneous one-segmental words, the converting of syntactic structures, the manipulation of semantic aspects of the Tamazight, and the delivery rates of the messages in the “secret language”. Last, but not least, the study provides a detailed presentation of all the rules that govern the “secret language” in question. This language is called the “sin” variety, since it makes use of this consonant (the “s” consonant) in the secretization operations.

ISBN 9783862884711. LINCOM Studies in Afroasiatic Linguistics 35. 204pp. 2013.