Shilha language

Tashelhiyt or Tachelhit, or also known as Shilha is a Berber language spoken in southern Morocco. When referring to the language, anthropologists and historians prefer the name Shilha, which is in the Oxford English Dictionary. Linguists writing in English prefer Tashelhit. In French sources the language is called tachelhit, chelha or chleuh.
As of the 2024 Moroccan census, Shilha is spoken by 14.2% of the population, or approximately 5.2 million people. The area comprises the western part of the High Atlas mountains and the regions to the south up to the Draa River, including the Anti-Atlas and the alluvial basin of the Sous River. The largest urban centres in the area are the coastal city of Agadir and the towns of Guelmim, Taroudant, Oulad Teima, Tiznit and Ouarzazate.
In the north and to the south, Shilha borders Arabic-speaking areas. In the northeast, roughly along the line Demnate-Zagora, there is a dialect continuum with Central Atlas Tamazight. Within the Shilha-speaking area, there are several Arabic-speaking enclaves, notably the town of Taroudant and its surroundings. Substantial Shilha-speaking migrant communities are found in most of the larger towns and cities of northern Morocco and outside Morocco in Belgium, France, Germany, Canada, the United States and Israel.
Shilha possesses a distinct and substantial literary tradition that can be traced back several centuries before the protectorate era. Many texts, written in Arabic script and dating from the late 16th century to the present, are preserved in manuscripts. A modern printed literature in Shilha has developed since the 1970s.

Name

Shilha speakers usually refer to their language as Taclḥiyt. This name is morphologically a feminine noun, derived from masculine Aclḥiy "male speaker of Shilha". Shilha names of other languages are formed in the same way, for example Aɛṛab "an Arab", Taɛṛabt "the Arabic language".
The origin of the names Aclḥiy and Taclḥiyt has recently become a subject of debate. The presence of the consonant ḥ in the name suggests an originally exonymic origin. The first appearance of the name in a western printed source is found in Mármol Carvajal|Mármol]'s Descripcion general de Affrica, which mentions the "indigenous Africans called Xilohes or Berbers".
The initial A- in Aclḥiy is a Shilha nominal prefix. The ending -iy forms denominal nouns and adjectives. There are also variant forms Aclḥay and Taclḥayt, with -ay instead of -iy under the influence of the preceding consonant ḥ. The plural of Aclḥiy is Iclḥiyn; a single female speaker is a Taclḥiyt, plural Ticlḥiyin.
In Moroccan colloquial Arabic, a male speaker is called a, plural, and the language is, a feminine derivation calqued on Taclḥiyt. The Moroccan Arabic names have been borrowed into English as a Shilh, the Shluh, and Shilha, and into French as un Chleuh, les Chleuhs, and chelha or, more commonly, le chleuh.
The now-usual names Taclḥiyt and Iclḥiyn in their endonymic use seem to have gained the upper hand relatively recently, as they are attested only in those manuscript texts which date from the 19th and 20th centuries. In older texts, the language is still referred to as Tamaziɣt or Tamazixt "Tamazight". For example, the author Awzal speaks of nnaḍm n Tmazixt ann ifulkin "a composition in that beautiful Tamazight".
Because Souss is the most heavily populated part of the language area, the name Tasusiyt is now often used as a pars pro toto for the entire language. A speaker of Tasusiyt is an Asusiy, plural Isusiyn, feminine Tasusiyt, plural Tisusiyin.

Number of speakers

With 4.7 million speakers or 14% of Morocco's population, Tachelhit is the most widely spoken Amazigh language in the Kingdom, ahead of Tamazight and Tarifit. Its speakers represent more than half of the 8.8 million Amazighophones.
It is also the Amazigh language that has the greatest geographical extension in the country. Its speakers are present in 1512 of the 1538 municipalities in the kingdom. This distribution is notably the result of a large diaspora of small traders who have settled throughout the country, but also of workers in search of employment opportunities.
Five Moroccan regions have a rate of Tachelhit speakers higher than the national average: Souss-Massa, Guelmim-Oued Noun, Marrakesh-Safi and Drâa-Tafilalet and Béni Mellal-Khénifra. However, only one of them has a majority of Tachelhit speakers: Souss–Massa with 63.2% of its population. This rate drops to 48.1% for Guelmin-Oued Noun, 25.8% for Drâa-Tafilalet, 24.5% for Marrakesh–Safi, and 14.4% in Béni Mellal-Khénifra.
Like the high concentration of Tachelhit-speaking speakers in Dakhla, Tachelhit is spoken significantly by many inhabitants, in Moroccan municipalities outside the area where the language historically originated. With 49% of its speakers living in cities, Tachelhit has become highly urbanized. Thus, 10% of Casablancais speak Tachelhit, i.e. more than 334,000 people. Casablanca is therefore the first Tachelhit city in Morocco, ahead of Agadir. Similarly, 9.2% of Rbatis speak Tachelhit, i.e. more than 52,000 people, or 4% of Tangiers and Oujdis. Finally, there are singular cases of very outlying municipalities such as the fishing village of Imlili, south of Dakhla or the rural municipality of Moulay Ahmed Cherif, 60 km west of the city of Al Hoceima. These situations are reminiscent of the historical migrations that have followed one another over the long term and especially the massive rural exodus that began in the 20th century towards the economic metropolises.

Dialects

Dialect differentiation within Shilha, such as it is, has not been the subject of any targeted research, but several scholars have noted that all varieties of Shilha are mutually intelligible. The first was Stumme, who observed that all speakers can understand each other, "because the individual dialects of their language are not very different." This was later confirmed by Ahmed Boukous, a Moroccan linguist and himself a native speaker of Shilha, who stated: "Shilha is endowed with a profound unity which permits the Shluh to communicate without problem, from the Ihahan in the northwest to the Aït Baamran in the southwest, from the Achtouken in the west to the Iznagen in the east, and from Aqqa in the desert to Tassaout in the plain of Marrakesh."
There exists no sharply defined boundary between Shilha dialects and the dialects of Central Atlas Tamazight. The dividing line is generally put somewhere along the line Marrakesh-Zagora, with the speech of the Ighoujdamen, Iglioua and Aït Ouaouzguite ethnic groups belonging to Shilha, and that of the neighboring Inoultan, Infedouak and Imeghran ethnic groups counted as CAT.

Writing systems

Though Tashelhit has historically been an oral language, manuscripts of mostly religious texts have been written in Tashelhit using the Arabic script since at least the 16th century. Today, Tashelhit is most commonly written in the Arabic script, although Neo-Tifinagh is also used.

Literature

Shilha has an extensive body of oral literature in a wide variety of genres. A large number of oral texts and ethnographic texts on customs and traditions have been recorded and published since the end of the 19th century, mainly by European linguists.
Shilha possesses an old literary tradition. Numerous texts written in Arabic script are preserved in manuscripts dating from the 16th century. The earliest datable text is a compendium of lectures on the "religious sciences" composed in metrical verses by Brahim u Ɛbdllah Aẓnag, who died in 1597. The best known writer in this tradition is Mḥmmd u Ɛli Awzal, author of al-Ḥawḍ "The Cistern", Baḥr al-Dumūʿ "The Ocean of Tears" and other texts.
Modern Tashelhit literature has been developing since the end of the 20th century.

Research

The first attempt at a grammatical description of Shilha is the work of the German linguist Hans Stumme, who in 1899 published his Handbuch des Schilḥischen von Tazerwalt. Stumme's grammar remained the richest source of grammatical information on Shilha for half a century. A problem with the work is its use of an over-elaborate, phonetic transcription which, while designed to be precise, generally fails to provide a transparent representation of spoken forms. Stumme also published a collection of Shilha fairy tales.
The next author to grapple with Shilha is Saïd Cid Kaoui, a native speaker of Kabyle from Algeria. Having published a dictionary of Tuareg, he then turned his attention to the Berber languages of Morocco. His Dictionnaire français-tachelh’it et tamazir’t contains extensive vocabularies in both Shilha and Central Atlas Tamazight, in addition to some 20 pages of useful phrases. The work seems to have been put together in some haste and must be consulted with caution.
On the eve of the First World War there appeared a small, practical booklet composed by Captain Léopold Justinard, entitled Manuel de berbère marocain. It contains a short grammatical sketch, a collection of stories, poems and songs, and some interesting dialogues, all with translations. The work was written while the author was overseeing military operations in the region of Fez, shortly after the imposition of the French protectorate. Justinard also wrote several works on the history of the Souss.
Emile Laoust, prolific author of books and articles about Berber languages, in 1921 published his Cours de berbère marocain, a teaching grammar with graded lessons and thematic vocabularies, some good ethnographic texts and a wordlist.
Edmond Destaing greatly advanced knowledge of the Shilha lexicon with his Etude sur la tachelḥît du Soûs. Vocabulaire français-berbère and his Textes berbères en parler des Chleuhs du Sous . Destaing also planned a grammar which was to complete the trilogy, but this was never published.
Lieutenant-interpreter Robert Aspinion is the author of Apprenons le berbère: initiation aux dialectes chleuhs, an informative though somewhat disorganized teaching grammar. Aspinion's simple but accurate transcriptions did away with earlier phonetic and French-based systems.
The first attempted description in English is Outline of the Structure of Shilha by American linguist Joseph Applegate. Based on work with native speakers from Ifni, the work is written in a dense, inaccessible style, without a single clearly presented paradigm. Transcriptions, apart from being unconventional, are unreliable throughout.
The only available accessible grammatical sketch written in a modern linguistic frame is "Le Berbère" by Lionel Galand, a French linguist and berberologist. The sketch is mainly based on the speech of the Ighchan ethnic group of the Anti-Atlas, with comparative notes on Kabyle of Algeria and Tuareg of Niger.
More recent, book-length studies include Jouad, Dell & Elmedlaoui, El Mountassir, Roettger and the many text editions by Stroomer.

Phonology

Stress and intonation

There is currently no evidence of word stress in Tashlhiyt.

Vowels

Shilha has three phonemic vowels, with length not a distinctive feature. The vowels show a fairly wide range of allophones. The vowel /a/ is most often realized as or , and /u/ is pronounced without any noticeable rounding except when adjacent to w. The presence of a pharyngealized consonant invites a more centralized realization of the vowel, as in kraḍ "three", kkuẓ "four", sḍis "six".

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Additional phonemic vowels occur sporadically in recent loanwords, for example as in rristora "restaurant".

Transitional vowels and "schwa"

In addition to the three phonemic vowels, there are non-phonemic transitional vowels, often collectively referred to as "schwa". Typically, a transitional vowel is audible following the onset of a vowelless syllable CC or CCC, if either of the flanking consonants, or both, are voiced, for example tigmmi "house", amḥḍar "schoolboy". In the phonetic transcriptions of Stumme and Destaing, many such transitional vowels are indicated.
Later authors such as Aspinion, use the symbol to mark the place where a transitional vowel may be heard, irrespective of its quality, and they also write where in reality no vowel, however short, is heard, for example "owner of livestock", "he's eating". The symbol, often referred to as "schwa", as used by Aspinion and others, thus becomes a purely graphical device employed to indicate that the preceding consonant is a syllable onset: , . As Galand has observed, the notation of "schwa" in fact results from "habits which are alien to Shilha". And, as conclusively shown by Ridouane, transitional vowels or "intrusive vocoids" cannot even be accorded the status of epenthetic vowels. It is therefore preferable not to write transitional vowels or "schwa", and to transcribe the vowels in a strictly phonemic manner, as in Galand and all recent text editions.

Consonants

The chart below represents Tashlhiyt consonants in IPA, with orthographical representations added between angled brackets when different:
Additional phonemic consonants occur sporadically in recent loanwords, for example as in bb°a " father", and as in laplaj "beach".
Like other Berber languages and Arabic, Tashlhiyt has both pharyngealized and plain dental consonants. There is also a distinction between labialized and plain dorsal obstruents. Consonant gemination or length is contrastive.

Semivowels

The semivowels and have vocalic allophones and between consonants and between consonant and pause. Similarly, the high vowels and can have consonantal allophones and in order to avoid a hiatus. In most dialects, the semivowels are thus in complementary distribution with the high vowels, with the semivowels occurring as onset or coda, and the high vowels as nucleus in a syllable. This surface distribution of the semivowels and the high vowels has tended to obscure their status as four distinct phonemes, with some linguists denying phonemic status to /w/ and /j/.
Positing four distinct phonemes is necessitated by the fact that semivowels and high vowels can occur in sequence, in lexically determined order, for example tazdwit "bee", tahruyt "ewe". In addition, semivowels and, like other consonants, occur long, as in afawwu "wrap", tayyu "camel's hump". The assumption of four phonemes also results in a more efficient description of morphology.
In the examples below, w and y are transcribed phonemically in some citation forms, but always phonetically in context, for example ysti- "the daughters of", dars snat istis "he has two daughters".

Gemination and length

Any consonant in Tashlhiyt, in any position within a word, may be simple or geminate. There may be up to two geminates in a stem, and up to three in a word.
The role of gemination varies:
Gemination also may occur due to phonological assimilation. For example, the following phrase would be realized as :
Some consonants are realized differently during morphological gemination; ḍḍ as ṭṭ, ww as gg°, ɣɣ as qq, and ɣɣ° as qq°.

Syllable structure

Shilha syllable structure has been the subject of a detailed and highly technical discussion by phoneticians. The issue was whether Shilha does or does not have vowelless syllables. According to John Coleman, syllables which are vowelless on the phonemic level have "schwa" serving as vocalic nucleus on the phonetic level. According to Rachid Ridouane on the other hand, Shilha's apparently vowelless syllables are truly vowelless, with all phonemes, vowels as well as consonants, capable of serving as nucleus. The discussion is summed up in Ridouane, where he conclusively demonstrates that a perfectly ordinary Shilha phrase such as tkkst stt "you took it away" indeed consists of three vowelless syllables , each made up of voiceless consonants only, and with voiceless consonants serving as nucleus. Many definitions of the syllable that have been put forward do not cover the syllables of Shilha.

Syllable types

The syllable structure of Shilha was first investigated by Dell and Elmedlaoui in a seminal article. They describe how syllable boundaries can be established through what they call "core syllabification". This works by associating a nucleus with an onset, to form a core syllable CV or CC. Segments that are higher on the sonority scale have precedence over those lower on the scale in forming the nucleus in a core syllable, with vowels and semivowels highest on the scale, followed by liquids and nasals, voiced fricatives, voiceless fricatives, voiced stops and voiceless stops. When no more segments are available as onsets, the remaining single consonants are assigned as coda to the preceding core syllable, but if a remaining consonant is identical to the consonant that is the onset of the following syllable, it merges with it to become a long consonant. A morpheme boundary does not necessarily constitute a syllable boundary.

دان سياو ورتي كشمن إيس اد شين تازارت د وضيل
Core syllabification
Coda assignment:

Comparative diagram of the following:
Application of core syllabification produces the following Shilha syllable types:

C V	C: V
C V C	C: V C	C V C:	C: V C:
C C	C: C	C C:	C: C:
C C C	C: C C	C C C:	C: C C:

Shilha syllable structure can be represented succinctly by the formula, in which C is any consonant, and X is any vowel or consonant and with the restriction that in a syllable CXC the X, if it is a consonant, cannot be higher on the resonance scale than the syllable-final consonant, that is, syllables such as and are possible, but not * and *.
Exceptional syllables of the types X and occur in utterance-initial position:
Another exceptional syllable type, described by Dell and Elmedlaoui, occurs in utterance-final position, when a syllable of the type CC or CC: is "annexed" to a preceding syllable of the type CV or C:V, for example fssamt فسامت"be silent!" is not *.
Since any syllable type may precede or follow any other type, and since any consonant can occur in syllable-initial or final position, there are no phonotactical restrictions on consonant sequences. This also means that the concept of the consonant cluster is not applicable in Shilha phonology, as any number of consonants may occur in sequence:
فرحغس لمعرفت أنك

Metrics

The metrics of traditional Shilha poems, as composed and recited by itinerant bards, was first described and analyzed by Hassan Jouad. The traditional metrical system confirms the existence of vowelless syllables in Shilha, and Jouad's data have been used by Dell and Elmedlaoui, and by Ridouane to support their conclusions.
The metrical system imposes the following restrictions:

each line in a poem contains the same number of syllables as all the other lines
each syllable in a line contains the same number of segments as its counterpart in other lines
each line contains one particular syllable that must begin or end with a voiced consonant
each line is divided into feet, with the last syllable in each foot stressed in recitation

Within these restrictions, the poet is free to devise his own metrical form. This can be recorded in a meaningless formula called talalayt which shows the number and the length of the syllables, as well as the place of the obligatory voiced consonant.
The system is illustrated here with a quatrain ascribed to the semi-legendary Shilha poet Sidi Ḥammu and published by Amarir :
Application of Dell and Elmedlaoui's core syllabification reveals a regular mosaic of syllables:

Line 1

t í t

b i

r i

n a

t ú m

l i

n a

t í

m g

r á ḍ

Line 2

b: á h

r a

w r

t a

k: á m

t i

l x

l a

h á

n: l

b á z

Line 3

g á n

b u

t a

s: r

w á l

t i

g l

x a

t ḿ

ɣ u

ḍ á ḍ

Line 4

k°: ń t

y u

t u

k a

n í ɣ

l i

d i

g n

w á

n i

z ú g

The poem is composed in a metre listed by Jouad and exemplified by the formula a láy, la li la láy, la li la lá, li lád.

Grammar

Nouns

On the basis of their morphology, three types of Shilha nouns can be distinguished, two indigenous types and one type of external origin:

inflected nouns
uninflected nouns
unincorporated loans

The relevant morpho-syntactic categories are gender, number and state.

Inflected nouns

Inflected nouns are by far the most numerous type. These nouns can be easily recognised from their outward shape: they begin with a nominal prefix which has the form :
Inflected nouns distinguish two genders, masculine and feminine; two numbers, singular and plural; and two states, conventionally referred to by their French names as état libre and état d'annexion and glossed as EL and EA. Gender and number are all explicitly marked, but historical and synchronic sound changes have in some cases resulted in the neutralization of the difference between EL and EA.
The nominal prefix has no semantic content, i.e. it is not a sort of definite article, although it is probably demonstrative in origin. It is made up of one or both of two elements, a gender prefix and a vocalic prefix. Singular feminine nouns may also have a gender suffix. For example, the noun tazdwit "bee" has the feminine prefix t-, the vocalic prefix a- and the feminine singular suffix -t added to the nominal stem zdwi. While feminine inflected nouns always have the feminine prefix, masculine nouns do not have a gender prefix in the free state ; for example abaɣuɣ "fox" has no gender prefix, but only a vocalic prefix a- added to the nominal stem baɣuɣ.
Gender is thus marked unambiguously, albeit asymmetrically. In just a handful of nouns, the morphological gender does not conform to the grammatical gender : ulli "sheep and goats" is morphologically masculine singular, but takes feminine plural agreement; alln "eyes" is morphologically masculine plural, but takes feminine plural agreement; tarwa " children, offspring" is morphologically feminine singular, but takes masculine plural agreement.
The annexed state is regularly formed by reducing the vocalic prefix to zero and, with masculine nouns, adding the masculine gender prefix w-:
With some nouns, the original vocalic prefix has fused with a stem-initial vowel, to produce an inseparable vowel:
With feminine nouns that have an inseparable vocalic prefix, the difference between EL and EA is thus neutralized.
While most inflected nouns have a vocalic prefix a-, some have i-, and a few have u-. When a masculine noun has the vocalic prefix i-, the masculine gender prefix w- changes to y-. The table below presents an overview :
The EA is not predictable from the shape of the noun, compare:
The phonological rules on the realization of /w/ and /j/ apply to the EA as well. For example, the EA of a-mɣar "chief" is /w-mɣar/, realized as wmɣar after a vowel, umɣar after a consonant:
Inflected nouns show a great variety of plural formations, applying one or more of the following processes:

suffixation
vowel change
consonant gemination or degemination
stem extension

There are also irregular and suppletive plurals. The feminine singular suffix -t is naturally lost in the plural.
Independent from these processes, the separable vocalic prefix a- is always replaced with i-. An inseparable vocalic prefix either remains unchanged, or changes as part of vowel change.
Below is a sample of nouns, illustrating various plural formations.

	Singular	Plural	Process
"mountain"	a-drar	i-drar-n	suffixation
"dune"	aduz	i-dazz-n	vowel change, gemination, suffixation
"head"	a-gayyu	i-guyya	vowel change
"ear"	a-mẓẓuɣ	i-mzga-n
"waterhole"	anu	una	vowel change
"document"	arra	arra+t-n	stem extension, suffixation
"day"	ass	ussa-n	vowel change, suffixation
"dog"	a-ydi	iḍa-n
"forehead"	i-gnzi	i-gnzi+t-n	stem extension, suffixation
"forearm"	i-ɣil	i-ɣall-n	vowel change, gemination, suffixation
"scorpion"	iɣirdm	iɣardm+iw-n	vowel change, stem extension, suffixation
"witness"	i-nigi	i-naga-n	vowel change, suffixation
"slave"	i-smg	i-smga-n	vowel change, suffixation
"face"	udm	udm+aw-n	stem extension, suffixation
"song"	urar	urar-n	suffixation
"jackal"	uccn	uccan-n	vowel change, suffixation
"egg"	t-a-glay-t	t-i-glay
"thing"	t-a-ɣawsa	t-i-ɣaws+iw-in	stem extension, suffixation
"mouse"	t-a-ɣrday-t	t-i-ɣrday-in	suffixation
"churn"	t-a-gccul-t	t-i-g°cl-in	vowel change, suffixation, degemination
"fireplace"	t-aka-t	t-aka+t-in	stem extension, suffixation
"woman"	t-a-mɣar-t	t-u-mɣar-in	suffixation
"porcupine"	t-aruc-t	t-urac	vowel change
"key"	t-a-saru-t	t-i-sura	vowel change
"house"	t-i-gmmi	t-i-g°mma	vowel change
"ewe"	t-ili	t-att-n
"meal"	t-irm-t	t-iram	vowel change
"eye"	t-iṭṭ	all-n
"mountain pass"	t-izi	t-izza	vowel change, gemination
"lioness"	t-izm-t	t-izm+aw-in	suffixation, stem extension
"light"	t-ifaw-t	t-ifaw-in	suffixation

The plural is generally not predictable from the shape of the singular, compare:
Many nouns have more than one plural, for example a-jnwiy "knife", plural i-jnway or i-jnwiy-n.
Many Shilha place-names are morphologically inflected nouns:
The same is the case with Shilha ethnic names:
Among the inflected nouns are found many incorporated loans. Examples include:

Uninflected nouns

This is the least common type, which also includes some loans. Examples:
It is probable that all uninflected nouns were originally masculine. The few that now take feminine agreement contain elements that have been reanalyzed as marking feminine gender, for example ttjdmnni "kind of spider", hlima "bat".
Many uninflected nouns are collectives or non-count nouns which do not have a separate plural form. Those that have a plural make it by preposing the pluralizer id, for example id lagar "stations".
The uninflected noun mddn or middn "people, humans" is morphologically masculine singular but takes masculine plural agreement.
Names of people and foreign place-names can be seen as a subtype of uninflected nouns, for example Musa, Muna, Fas "Fès", Brdqqiz "Portugal". Gender is not transparently marked on these names, but those referring to humans take gender agreement according to the natural sex of the referent.

Unincorporated loans

These are nouns of Arabic origin which have largely retained their Arabic morphology. They distinguish two genders and two numbers. A notable feature of these nouns is that they are borrowed with the Arabic definite article, which is semantically neutralized in Shilha:
The Arabic feminine ending is often replaced with the Shilha feminine singular suffix -t:
Arabic loans usually retain their gender in Shilha. The exception are Arabic masculine nouns which end in ; these change their gender to feminine in Shilha, with the final t reanalyzed as the Shilha feminine singular suffix -t:
Arabic plurals are usually borrowed with the singulars. If the borrowed plural is not explicitly marked for gender it has the same gender as the singular:
Loanwords whose singular is masculine may have a plural which is feminine, and marked as such, for example lɛlam "flag", plural lɛlum-at.

Use of the annexed state

The annexed state of an inflected noun is used in a number of clearly defined syntactical contexts:

when the noun occurs as subject in postverbal position:
after most prepositions :
after numerals 1 to 10 and after the indefinite numeral :
after some elements which require a following noun phrase :
after wan "like, such as"

Outside these contexts, the EL is used. Uninflected nouns and unincorporated loans, which do not distinguish state, remain unchanged in these contexts.

Semantics of feminine nouns

The formation of feminine nouns from masculine nouns is a productive process. A feminine noun is formed by adding both the feminine nominal prefix t-, and the feminine singular suffix -t to a masculine noun. The semantic value of the feminine derivation is variable.
For many nouns referring to male and female humans or animals, matching masculine and feminine forms exist with the same nominal stem, reflecting the sex of the referent:
In a few cases there are suppletive forms:
Feminine nouns derived from masculine nouns with inanimate reference have diminutive meaning:
Conversely, a masculine noun derived from a feminine noun has augmentative meaning:
Feminine nouns derived from masculine collective nouns have singulative meaning:
Feminine derivations are also used as names of languages, professions and activities:
There is an overlap here with feminine nouns denoting females:

Nominal deictic clitics

There are three deictic clitics which can follow a noun: proximal a-d "this, these", distal a-nn "that, those" and anaphoric lli "the aforementioned":

Personal pronouns

There are three basic sets of personal pronouns:

independent
direct object clitics
suffixes

In addition, there are two derived sets which contain the suffixed pronouns :

indirect object clitics
possessive complements

Gender is consistently marked on 2nd singular, and on 2nd and 3rd plural. Gender is not consistently marked on 3rd singular and 1st plural. Gender is never marked on 1st singular.
The independent pronouns are used to topicalize the subject or the object.
They are also used with certain pseudo-prepositions such as zund "like", abla "except":
The direct object clitics are used with transitive verbs:
The 3rd singular feminine variant stt is used after a dental stop, compare:
The direct object clitics are also used to indicate the subject with pseudo-verbs, and with the presentative particle ha "here is, voici":
The pronominal suffixes are used with prepositions to indicate the object, and with a closed set of necessarily possessed kinship terms to indicate possession. The plural forms add an infix -t- before the suffix with kinship terms, for example baba-t-nɣ "our father" ; this infix also occurs with some prepositions as a free or dialectal variant of the form without the -t-:
The indirect object clitics convey both benefactive and detrimental meaning:
The possessive complements follow the noun.

Prepositions

Prepositions can have up to three different forms, depending on the context in which they are used:

before a noun or demonstrative pronoun
with a pronominal suffix
independent in relative clause

The form before nouns and demonstrative pronouns and the independent form are identical for most prepositions, the exception being the dative preposition i.
Most prepositions require a following inflected noun to be in the annexed state . Exceptions are ar "until", s "toward" and prepositions borrowed from Arabic such as bɛd "after" and qbl "before".
The instrumental and allative prepositions s "by means of" and s "toward" were still consistently kept apart in premodern manuscript texts. In most modern dialects they have been amalgamated, with both now requiring the EA, and with the pre-pronominal forms each occurring with both meanings: sr-s "toward it", is-s "with it".
The use of the different forms is illustrated here with the preposition ɣ "in":
Two prepositions can be combined:
Spatial relations are also expressed with phrases of the type "on top of":
The preposition gi- "in" with pronominal suffixes, with all its free and dialectal variants, is presented below. The other prepositions display a much smaller variety of forms.

	gig-	gi-	with -t-	irregular
1 sg.	gig-i	gi-Ø	gi-t-i
2 sg.m.	gik-k	gi-k		-
2 sg.f.	gig-m	gi-m
3 sg.		gi-s		giz, gid, git
1 pl.	gig-nɣ	gi-ɣ	gi-t-nɣ
2 pl.m.	gig-un	gi-wn	gi-t-un
2 pl.f.	gig-unt	gi-wnt	gi-t-unt
3 pl.m.		gi-sn	gi-t-sn	gizn, gidsn
3 pl.f.		gi-snt	gi-t-snt	giznt, gidsnt

Numerals

The inherited cardinal numeral system consists of ten numerals and three numeral nouns for "a tensome", "a hundred" and "a thousand". There is also an indefinite numeral meaning "several, many" or "how many?" which morphologically and syntactically patterns with the numerals 1 to 10. For numbers of 20 and over, Arabic numerals are commonly used.

Numerals 1 to 10, indefinite numeral

These are listed below. The formation of feminine "one" and "two" is irregular.

	Masculine	Feminine
"one"	ya-n	ya-t
"two"	sin	sna-t
"three"	kraḍ	kraṭ-ṭ
"four"	kkuẓ	kkuẓ-t
"five"	smmus	smmus-t
"six"	sḍis	sḍis-t
"seven"	sa	sa-t
"eight"	tam	tam-t
"nine"	tẓa	tẓa-t
"ten"	mraw	mraw-t
indefinite	mnnaw	mnnaw-t

The numerals 1 to 10 are constructed with nouns, the gender of the numeral agreeing with that of the noun:
The same obtains with the indefinite numeral:
Numerals yan, yat "one" also serve as indefinite article, for example yan urumiy "one Westerner, a Westerner", and they are used independently with the meaning "anyone", "anything" :
The final n of masculine yan "one" and sin "two" is often assimilated or fused to a following w, y or l:

Teens

The teens are made by connecting the numerals 1 to 9 to the numeral 10 with the preposition d "with". In the premodern language, both numerals took the gender of the counted noun, with the following noun in the plural :
In the modern language, fused forms have developed in which the first numeral is always masculine, while the following noun is in the singular, and connected with the preposition n "of":

Tens, hundreds, thousands

There are three inherited nouns to denote "a tensome", "a hundred" and "a thousand". These now seem to be obsolete, but they are well attested in the premodern manuscripts. Morphologically, they are ordinary inflected nouns.
The tens, hundreds and thousand were formed by combining the numerals 1 to 10 with the numeral nouns:
The numeral nouns are connected with the preposition n "of" to a noun, which is most often in the singular:
In the modern language the Arabic tens are used, which have developed a separate feminine form:
The numerals between the tens are most frequently made with the Arabic numerals 1 to 10:
The Arabic hundreds and thousands are used in the modern language, taking the places of the original numeral nouns while the original syntax is maintained:
There is also a vigesimal system built on the Arabic numeral ɛcrin "twenty, score", for example:

Ordinal numerals

First and last are usually expressed with relative forms of the verbs izwur "to be first" and ggru "to be last":
There are also agent nouns derived from these verbs which are apposed to a noun or used independently:
The other ordinals are formed by prefixing masc. wis-, fem. tis- to a cardinal numeral, which is then constructed with a plural noun in the usual manner:
The ordinal prefixes is also used with Arabic numerals and with the indefinite numeral:
Because four of the numerals 1 to 10 begin with s, the geminated ss that results from the prefixation of wis-, tis- is often generalized to the other numerals: wissin, wisskraḍ, wisskkuẓ, etc.

Verbs

A Shilha verb form is basically a combination of a person-number-gender affix and a mood-aspect-negation stem.

Sample verb

The workings of this system are illustrated here with the full conjugation of the verb fk "to give". The perfective negative goes with the negation wr "not". The imperfective goes with the preverbal particle ar.

	Aorist	Perfective	Perfective negative	Imperfective

MAN stem→	fk	fki/a	fki	akka

1 sg.	fk-ɣ	fki-ɣ	ur fki-ɣ	ar akka-ɣ
2 sg.	t-fk-t	t-fki-t	ur t-fki-t	ar t-akka-t
3 sg.m.	i-fk	i-fka	ur i-fki	ar y-akka
3 sg.f.	t-fk	t-fka	ur t-fki	ar t-akka
1 pl.	n-fk	n-fka	ur n-fki	ar n-akka
2 pl.m.	t-fki-m	t-fka-m	ur t-fki-m	ar t-akka-m
2 pl.f.	t-fki-mt	t-fka-mt	ur t-fki-mt	ar t-akka-mt
3 pl.m.	fki-n	fka-n	ur fki-n	ar akka-n
3 pl.f.	fki-nt	fka-nt	ur fki-nt	ar akka-nt

Imperative
2 sg.	fk			akka
2 pl.m.	fk-at			akka-y-at
2 pl.f.	fk-amt			akka-y-amt

Relative
sg.		i-fka-n	ur i-fki-n	y-akka-n
pl.		fka-n-in	ur fki-n-in	akka-n-in

The verb fk "give" has the full complement of four different MAN stems:

Aorist fk ― fk in 1st, 2nd and 3rd singular, 1st plural, and the imperatives, but fki in 2nd and 3rd plural
Perfective fki/a ― fki in 1st and 2nd singular, but fka with the other forms
Perfective negative fki ― all forms
Imperfective akka ― all forms

Person-number-gender affixes

There are two basic sets of PNG affixes, one set marking the subject of ordinary verb forms, and another set marking the subject of imperatives.
Two suffixes are added to the 3rd singular and masculine 3rd plural masculine verb forms respectively to make relative forms, as in i-fka-n "who gives", fka-n-in "who give".

1 sg		…	-ɣ
2 sg.	t-	…	-t
3 sg.m.	y-	…
3 sg.f.	t-	…
1 pl.	n-	…
2 pl.m.	t-	…	-m
2 pl.f.	t-	…	-mt
3 pl.m.		…	-n
3 pl.f.		…	-nt

Imperative
2 sg.		…	-Ø
2 pl.m.		…	-at
2 pl.f.		…	-amt

Relative
3 sg.	y-	…	-n
3 pl.		…	-n-in

Mood-aspect-negation stems

A few verbs have just one MAN stem. The majority of verbs have two, three or four different MAN stems. The Aorist stem serves as the citation form of a verb. The list below offers an overview of MAN stem paradigms. Around 15 paradigms of non-derived verbs can be recognized, based on the formation of the Perfective and the Perfective negative. Further subdivisions could be made on the basis of the formations of the Imperfective. All sections in the list contain a selection of verbs, except sections 12, 14, and 15, which contain a full listing.

		Aorist	Perfective	Perfective negative	Imperfective
1	"laugh"	ḍssa	ḍssa	ḍssa	ḍssa
	"bark"	ttaɣ	ttaɣ	ttaɣ	ttaɣ
2	"accompany"	mun	mun	mun	tt-mun
	"sit"	skkiws	skkiws	skkiws	skkiwis, tt-skiwis
	"be crazy"	nufl	nufl	nufl	tt-nuful
3	"enter"	kcm	kcm	kcim	kccm
	"graze"	frd	frd	frid	ffrd
	"mention"	bdr	bdr	bdir	addr, tt-bdar
	"ascend, climb"	ɣly	ɣly	ɣliy	aqqlay
	"open, be open"	rẓm	rẓm	rẓim	tt-nurẓum
4	"fall"	ḍr	ḍr	ḍir	ṭṭar
	"hit"	wt	wt	wit	kkat
5	"break, be broken"	rẓ	rẓi/a	rẓi	rẓẓa
	"eat"	cc	cci/a	cci	ctta
	"give"	fk	fki/a	fki	akka
	"show, explain"	ml	mli/a	mli	mmal
	"drink"	sw	swi/a	swi	ssa
	"call"	ɣr	ɣri/a	ɣri	aqqra
	"be; put"	g	gi/a	gi	tt-gga
6	"sew"	gnu	gni/a	gni	gnna, gnnu, tt-gnu
	"go"	ftu	fti/a	fti	fttu, tt-ftu
	"go"	ddu	ddi/a	ddi	tt-dda, tt-ddu, tt-udu
	"divide"	bḍu	bḍi/a	bḍi	aṭṭa
7	"be better"	af	uf	uf	tt-afa
	"fly"	ayll	uyll	uyll	tt-aylal
	"give back"	rar	rur	rur	tt-rara
	"inherit"	kkas	kkus	kkus	tt-kasa
8	"take"	amẓ	umẓ	umiẓ	tt-amẓ
	"steal"	ak°r	ukr	ukir	tt-ak°r
	"help"	aws	iws	iwis	tt-aws
	"run"	azzl	uzzl	uzzil	tt-azzal
9	"find"	af	ufi/a	ufi	tt-afa
	"come"	ack	ucki/a	ucki	tt-acka
10	"flay"	azu	uzi/a	uzi	tt-azu
	"contain"	amu	umi/a	umi	tt-amu
11	"hold, possess"	ṭṭf, ṭṭaf	ṭṭf, ṭṭaf	ṭṭif	tt-ṭṭf, tt-ṭṭaf
	"take away"	kks, kkis	kks, kkis	kkis	tt-kks, tt-kkis
	"go out"	ffɣ, ffuɣ	ffɣ, ffuɣ	ffiɣ	tt-ffɣ, tt-ffuɣ
12	"die"	mmt	mmut	mmut	tt-mttat
13	"be afraid"	iksuḍ, ksuḍ	ksaḍ	ksaḍ	tt-iksuḍ, tt-ksuḍ
	"be first, precede"	izwur, zwur	zwar	zwar	tt-izwur, zgg°ur
14	"possess"	ili	li/a	li	tt-ili
	"want"	iri	ri/a	ri	tt-iri
15	"exist"	ili	lli/a	lli	tt-ili
	"say"	ini	nni/a	nni	tt-ini

Uses of MAN stems

The table below is adapted from Kossmann.

MAN stem	Main context in which MAN stem is used	Examples	Translation
Aorist	imperative consecutive	amẓ y-amẓ	"take!" " he took"
ad + Aorist	non-realized	ay y-amẓ	"that he take"
rad + Aorist	future	ray y-amẓ	"he will take"
ur + Aorist	negated consecutive	ur y-amẓ	" he didn't take"
ad + ur + Aorist	negated imperative	ad ur t-amẓ-t	"don't take!"
ur + rad + Aorist	negated future	ur ray y-amẓ	"he will not take"
Perfective	past action state	y-umẓ i-rɣa	"he took" "it was hot, it is hot"
ur + Perfective Negative	negated past action negated state	ur y-umiẓ ur i-rɣi	"he did not take" "it was not hot, it is not hot"
Imperfective	habitual/iterative imperative	tt-amẓ	"always take!"
ad + Imperfective	habitual/iterative imperative	at tt-amẓ-t	"you must always take"
ad + ur + Imperfective	negated habitual/iterative imperative	ad ur tt-amẓ-t	"you should never take"
ar + Imperfective	simultaneous action habitual, iterative, durative	ar i-tt-amẓ	"he is taking, he always takes"
ur + ar + Imperfective	negated simultaneous action negated habitual, iterative, durative	ur a y-tt-amẓ, ur aɣ i-tt-amẓ	"he is not taking, he never takes"

Stative verbs

Shilha has around twenty stative verbs which are still recognizable as a separate type of verb on the basis of their MAN stem paradigms. In earlier stages of the language, these verbs had their own separate set of PNG markers, which are sporadically found in premodern manuscripts:
In the modern language, these verbs take the regular PNG markers. Only the original singular relative form without prefix y- may still be encountered, for example adrar mqqur-n or adrar i-mqqur-n "big mountain". Stative verbs do not have a separate Perfective negative form. The table shows a selection of stative verbs.

	Aorist	Perfective	Imperfective
"be few"	idrus	drus	tt-idrus
"be many"	igut	ggut	tt-igut
"be small, young"	imẓiy	mẓẓiy	tt-imẓiy
"be big, old"	imɣur	mqqur	tt-imɣur
"be yellow"	iwriɣ	wraɣ	tt-iwriɣ
"be red"	izwiɣ	zgg°aɣ	tt-izwiɣ

Verbal deictic clitics

There are two deictic clitics which are used with verbs to indicate movement toward or away from the point of reference: centripetal d "hither" and centrifugal nn "thither":
The use of these clitics is compulsory with certain verbs. For example, the verb ack "come" almost always goes with the centripetal particle, and af "find" with the centrifugal clitic:
When the verbal deictic clitics occur after an object pronoun, they change to id and inn:

Possession

Within a noun phrase

A possessive construction within a noun phrase is most frequently expressed as Possessee n Possessor. The preposition n "of" requires a following inflected noun to be in the annexed state. This kind of possessive construction covers a wide range of relationships, including both alienable and inalienable possession, and most of them not involving actual ownership:
Many such possessive constructions are compounds, whose meaning cannot be deduced from the ordinary meaning of the nouns:
The possessor can itself be a possessee in a following possessive construction:
As a rule, the preposition n assimilates to, or fuses with, a following w, y, l or m:
The possessor can also be expressed with a pronominal possessive complement. This consists of a pronominal suffix added to the preposition, which then takes the shape nn-. The form of the 1st singular possessive complement is anomalous: nw after a vowel, and inw after a consonant :

Within a clause

There are two ways to express possession within a clause. The most common way is to use the "exist with" construction:
The verb ili "exist" is usually omitted, leaving a verbless clause:
Alternatively, the verb ṭṭf, ṭṭaf "hold, possess" can be used:
In addition, there is the verb ili "possess", whose use is restricted to part-whole relationships and kinship relationships:
In al its usages ili can be replaced with ṭṭaf or the "exist with" construction, but not the other way around:

Possessed nouns

These are a subtype of uninflected nouns. As with proper names, gender is not transparently marked on possessed nouns, which take gender agreement according to the natural sex of the referent. Plurals are either suppletive or made with the preposed pluralizer id. Most possessed nouns are consanguinal kinship terms which require a possessive suffix.

	Singular	Plural	Remarks
"the mother of"	ma-	id ma-
"the father of"	baba-	id baba-
"the daughter of"	ylli-	ysti-
"the son of"	yiw-, yu-, ywi-		the plural is a pl.m. inflected noun "sons, offspring"
"the sister of"	wlt-ma-	yst-ma-	compound, lit. "the daughter of the mother of"
"the brother of"	g°-ma-	ayt-ma-	compound, lit. "the son of the mother of"
"grandmother: the mother of the mother of"	jdda-		Arabic loan
"grandfather: the father of the mother of"	ti-ma-		compound
"grandmother: the mother of the father of"	tabt-ti-		compound
"grandfather: the father of the father of"	jddi-		Arabic loan

These kinship terms cannot occur without pronominal suffix. Example:

ultma-Ø	"my sister"
ultma-k	"your sister"
ultma-m	"your sister"
ultma-s	"her sister, his sister"
istma-t-nɣ	"our sisters"
istma-t-un	"your sisters"
istma-t-unt	"your sisters"
istma-t-sn	"their sisters"
istma-t-snt	"their sisters"

If these nouns are part of an NP-internal possessive construction, possession must be indicated twice:
The suffix must also be added when possession is expressed in a clause:
Some kinship terms are not possessed nouns but inflected nouns which take possessive complements.
Another group of possessed nouns require a following noun phrase, occurring only in an NP-internal possessive phrase. A following inflected noun must be in the EA.

	Singular	Plural
"the son of, native of"	w	ayt
"the female native of"	wlt	yst

These four possessed nouns occur as first element in compound kinship terms. They also serve to indicate descent, origin and ethnicity:
When w is followed by another w the result is gg°:
Ayt occurs in many Shilha ethnonyms:

Proprietive and privative elements

The proprietive elements masc. bu "he with, he of" and fem. mm "she with, she of" are borrowed from Arabic. They are used as formative elements and require a following inflected noun to be in the annexed state. The plural is formed with the pluralizer id:
In many cases, bu fuses with a following nominal prefix:
The feminine mm is encountered less frequently:
The privative elements masc. war "he without" and fem. tar "she without" are made up of a gender prefix and an element ar which is probably related to the negation wr "not". They do not require the annexed state, and should probably be translated as "who does not have", with the following noun phrase as object:

Lexicon

Tashlhiyt, like other Berber languages, has a small number of loanwords from Phoenician-Punic, Hebrew, and Aramaic. There are also Latin loans from the time of the Roman empire, although the region in which Tashlhiyt is spoken was never in the empire's territory.
Most Tashlhiyt loanwords are Arabic in origin. Maarten Kossmann estimates that about 6% of the basic Tashlhiyt lexicon is borrowed from Arabic; Salem Chaker estimates that 25% of the stable lexicon overall is borrowed from Arabic.
Although some nouns denoting typically Islamic concepts such as timzgida "mosque", taẓallit "ritual prayer", uẓum "fasting", which certainly belong to the very oldest layer of Arabic loans, are fully incorporated into Shilha morphology, many equally central Islamic concepts are expressed with unincorporated nouns, for example lislam "Islam", lḥajj "pilgrimage to Mecca", zzka "alms tax". It is possible that during the early stages of islamization such concepts were expressed with native vocabulary or with earlier, non-Arabic loans. One such term which has survived into the modern era is tafaska "ewe for slaughter on the Feast of Immolation", from pascha, the Latinized name of the Jewish festival of Passover or, more specifically, of the paschal lamb which is sacrificed during the festival. Another example is ibkkaḍan "sins", obsolete in the modern language, but attested in a premodern manuscript text, whose singular abkkaḍu is borrowed from Romance.
Tashlhiyt numerals 5 to 9 may be loanwords, although their origin is unclear; they do not seem to originate from Phoenician-Punic or Arabic. Additionally, all Tashlhiyt numerals agree in gender, whereas Arabic numerals do not.

Secret languages

Destaing mentions a secret language called inman or tadubirt which is spoken by "some people of Souss, in particular the descendants of Sidi Ḥmad u Musa." He quotes an example: is kn tusat inman? "do you speak the secret language?"
Two secret languages used by Shilha women are described by Lahrouchi and Ségéral. They are called tagnawt and taɛjmiyt or taqqjmiyt. They employ various processes, such as reduplication, to disguise the ordinary language.

Cited works and further reading

Various online articles

John Coleman,