Glide: High Vowel Alternation at the Syntax–Phonology Interface

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: for example, Tashlhiyt Berber gru “pick up” vs. agraw “assembly,” bri “crush” vs. abraj “crushed seeds.” Based on this kind of observations, standard theories analyze glides and high vowels as phonetic reflexes of the same underlying segments. The problem arises with the corresponding dative forms grujas “pick to him” and brijas “crush seeds to him.” Followed by a vowel-initial morpheme –as, U and I should normally surface as glides, leading to *grwas and *brjas. The key to understanding this paradox lies, we argue, in the morpho-syntactic structure of dative formations. We show that vP corresponds to a phase where U and I are spelled-out as high vowels before the enclitic –as is added. The resulting hiatus is then resolved by means of j-epenthesis, leading to grujas and brijas. External evidence is drawn from emphasis spread. We show that the projections of category-forming heads, including vP and nP, are the maximal domain of emphasis spread in Tashlhiyt Berber.