Whistled Moroccan Tamazight: phonetics and phonology

Overview & Synopsis

This paper reports the results of a pilot phonetic study of whistled Moroccan Tamazight. Whistled speech is an ancient traditional and natural practice that consists in a phonetic emulation and transformation of the spoken signal into a simple melodic line made up of frequency and amplitude modulations of a whistled signal. It is primarily used for long distance communication. We recorded four Moroccan Tamazight speakers in the High Atlas producing this special speech register. Given its particular characteristics, namely the extensive presence of words and syllables without vowels, the opportunity Tamazight affords for the execution of whistling may be particularly challenging. We show how speakers whistle a selected set of words and sentences and discuss the preliminary results from phonetic and phonological perspectives.