McClelland, Clive W. III

About the author: Dr. McClelland was born and raised in Central Texas where he acquired a fascination for languages, both ancient and modern. He received his PhD in Linguistics from the University of Texas, Arlington. He resides in Australia, where he directs a small school for training Asians in language development work.

Interrelations of Syntax, Narrative Structure and Prosody in a Berber Language

2000 0-7734-7740-3
This study is a systematic investigation of the links among prosody, clause structure, and discourse pragmatics in four oral narratives of Tarifit, a VSO Berber language spoken in northeastern Morocco. It is a new method of empirical analysis of language utilizing a unique combination of sound analysis, statistics, grammar and story structure. Using the speech analysis program Signalize, levels of amplitude, fundamental frequency, length, and speed were analyzed. In addition, factors relating to clause structure and discourse pragmatics were quantified. The results of this investigation support some, but not all, claims of previous researchers, and reveal numerous additional interrelations not previously noted. These results suggest that prosody in relation to discourse pragmatics and clause structure may be a rich field of future linguistic endeavor. They also contribute to greater knowledge of a little known language in North Africa.

Tarifit Berber-English Dictionary: Documenting an Endangered Language

2004 0-7734-6345-3
The Berbers are the original inhabitants of North Africa, in residence long before the Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals or the Arabs. Their languages, from the Afroasiatic language family, are spoken throughout the region, from the Siwa Oasis in Egypt to the Atlantic coast, and as far south as southern Niger and Mali.

This book is a representation of the most commonly utilized words and phrases in one of these Berber dialects, in northeastern Morocco. Despite the fact that more than 1 million inhabitants speak the language today, social and economic changes are causing many young people to leave their mother tongue and concentrate on languages of upward mobility, such as Modern Standard Arabic, French and Spanish. Consequently, in an effort to help preserve this unwritten, little-studied and undocumented language, this work was produced.