On the Nature of Schwa-like Vocalic Elements within some Berber Clusters

In Tashlhiyt Berber, phonetic implementation creates what looks like a schwa vowel but in fact is not, at least of the phonological sort. We present various arguments against the interpretation of these elements as epenthetic segments introduced by the phonological component. In addition to the fact that they do not interact with phonology, our acoustic and articulatory data suggest that these schwa-like elements do not have their own time slot and are not associated with a specific articulatory target. The presence of these vocoids is claimed to be related to the amount of overlap and the voicing specifications of adjacent consonants.