Texts For Linguistic Analysis: Glossed Narratives in Tarifit Berber

The value of "raw data" is an essential one: to provide students and professors linguistic data that can be examined and analyzed in context, whether the study is phonological or grammatical. This value is profound in the context of current linguistics where "contrived" data devoid of context is de rigueur. As much as is possible, analyses ought to be "data-led" where conclusions are suggested after careful and methodical investigation. Then one may properly posit well-grounded linguistic theory.

Toward furthering these aims, stories from Tarifit Berber native speakers were collected over a ten year period. They represent a couple of dialects within the Tarifit-speaking region in northeastern Morocco. They are transcribed phonetically, with morpheme-by-morpheme glosses, syllable divisions, and a free translation. Along with the printed versions, the sound files of each of these stories are provided on an enclosed compact disk. It is hoped that this compilation will provide a "target-rich" environment for practical linguistic research for students as well as teachers, and that this manner of glossing will help set a better standard for presenting linguistic data.