PERIODICITY OF SEGMENTAL FEATURES. [...] This applies not only to the contours of chapter 6, but also to any other feature or sequence of phonemes which is restricted to simply divisible portions of the utterance length. Thus Moroccan Arabic 'sfƏnǯ' ‘doughnut’, 'bƏrd' ‘wind’, 'ktƏbt' ‘I wrote’, 'xƏdma' ‘work’ all have the pronunciation of the string of consonants phonetically interrupted (by consonant release plus /Ə/) at every second consonant counting from the last. In contrast 'žbƏl' ‘hill’, 'brƏd' ‘cold’, 'sƏwwƏl' ‘he asked’, 'ktƏb' ‘he wrote’ 'kƏtbƏt' ‘she wrote’, all have the pronunciation of the consonant sequence phonetically interrupted before every second consonant counting from one after the last (i.e., counting from the juncture after the last consonant). These two types of short Moroccan utterances could be distinguished by the use of two junctures, say- at the end of the former and = at the end of the latter: /sfnǯ-, brd-, ktbt-/ for 'sfƏnǯ', 'bƏrd', 'ktƏbt', and /žbl=, brd=, swwl=, ktbt=/ for 'žbƏl', 'brƏd', 'sƏwwƏl', 'kƏtbƏt'. We now consider longer utterances in which there may at first appear no simple regularity in respect to /Ə/: 'lbƏrdbrƏd' ‘the wind is cold’. It is possible to divide such an utterance into successive sections, within each of which the distribution of the /Ə/ is regular, either of the /-/ type or of the / = / type. The utterance would then be written: /lbrd-brd= /. It is not necessary to write /Ə/, since the occurrence of /Ə/ is now automatic in respect to the two junctures: The [Ə] is no longer phonemic but is included in the definition of the junctures, which also serve to indicate points of intermittently present pause.
- Harris (1951), a pag.83