The present study investigates the intonational marking of question words (qwords) in Tashlhiyt Berber. The first part of the study identifies a number of possible prosodic patterns on qwords as employed in conversational contexts. When they occur in a direct interrogative, qwords are marked with a rise in pitch towards a H(igh) target and a subsequent fall. By contrast, when the qword is embedded, no tonal targets occur on it. The second part consists of a detailed investigation of the alignment and scaling of qwords in utterance-initial position and in narrow focus. While the H target is consistently present somewhere on the qword, neither a local F0 maximum nor a high plateau region is characterized by stable alignment with any specific position in the segmental string. Scaling of the starting point (%L) and endpoint (H) of the rise characteristic of the qword exhibited a dependency on alignment: The rise is somewhat truncated if the peak is aligned early in the word. This study’s results shed more light on the intonation system of Tashlhiyt and support earlier findings suggesting that tonal placement in this language is prone to a typologically unusual degree of variability.

中文翻译：

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塔什希特柏柏尔语中的疑问词语调：“高”足够了吗？

本研究调查了 Tashliyt Berber 中疑问词 (qwords) 的语调标记。研究的第一部分确定了会话上下文中使用的 qwords 上的一些可能的韵律模式。当它们出现在直接疑问句中时，qwords 被标记为朝着 H(igh) 目标的音高上升，随后下降。相比之下，当嵌入 qword 时，不会出现音调目标。第二部分包括对话语初始位置和窄焦点中 qwords 对齐和缩放的详细研究。虽然 H 目标始终存在于 qword 的某处，但局部 F0 最大值和高原区域都没有以与分段字符串中任何特定位置的稳定对齐为特征。qword 的上升特征的起点 (%L) 和终点 (H) 的缩放表现出对对齐的依赖性：如果峰值在单词中较早对齐，则上升在某种程度上被截断。这项研究的结果进一步阐明了 Tashlhiyt 的语调系统，并支持了早期的研究结果，即这种语言中的声调位置容易出现类型学上不寻常的变异程度。