| المستخلص: |
Spirantization is a phonological process whereby obstruent stops become fricatives. Accordingly, the major aim of the present study is to find out the machinery by which spirantization operates in Kabyle Berber, a dialect spoken in North Algeria. To this end, a corpus of Kabyle Berber native words (as well as a set of Arabic loans) has been put under scrutiny. To coach the analysis within a formal theoretical framework, Optimality Theory (henceforth OT) is used. By recruiting the set of relevant universal constraints to account for the data, it is expected that a relatively more unified account of the phenomenon can be reached. This is all based on the basic tenet that spirantization is a sonority increasing process rather than a markedness decreasing process to which the relevant constraints are considered contextual rather than positional. With the exception of certain phonological contexts, stops are generally less marked than fricatives in Kabyle Berber. It has turned out that triggering environments of spirantization are intervocalic/ post-vocalic, post-consonantal (mostly but not exclusively post-sonorants), and morpheme-initial contexts. It is believed that spirantized sounds in these contexts receive the feature [+Cont] through feature spreading. Major inhibitory factors to spirantization, on the other hand, include gemination, nasality, laterality and stridency. Based on the behavior of spirantization in this Berber dialect, we conclude that the phonotactic influence of spirintization-triggering sounds is bi-directional (i.e. progressive and regressive assimilation), thus rendering the dialect a nearly fully spirantizing variety of Berber. Needless to say, the findings have strong implications with regard to the phonology of loan words in that Arabic loans, unlike French loans, are fully integrated as they follow the Berber pattern of spirantization. It is finally concluded that the constraints underlying spirantization in Kabyle Berber are ordered like this: *[Gem Cont]>> *HSPG, NO-Spir [md], NO- Spir [lk], NO-Strident>> AGREE [cont]>> IDENT [cont]>> *[stop], *[cont].
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