166 4 Nominal and pronominal morphology
4.1.2.3 Feminine Singular suffix -t (-t-t)
The normal FeSg suffix for nouns is -t, though as noted above some feminine
nouns lack it (the Fe prefix t- is more reliably present).
This suffix requires an immediately preceding C. There are three basic
ways this constraint can be satisfied. First, the core stem may already end in a
C, as in t-e-jer-t 'cowry'. Second, a few nouns that are V-final in the
masculine have a stem variant with an additional stem-final y or w before the
FeSg and FePl suffixes (§4.1.2.4, below). An example of this archaic
alternation: MaSg ά-jasya 'great-grandson', (T-md) FeSg t-a-jaeyaw-t 'great-
granddaughter'. Third, if the stem is consistently V-final, inner Fe prefix -t- is
added before FeSg -t and (if the plural is suffixal) FePl -en. Thus
t-as-jamba-t-t 'female hippo', suffixal PI t-i-jamba-t-en (alongside unsuffixed
ablaut PI t-l-jumba).
Stem-final V's in nouns are usually full V's, but there are a modest
number of cases involving short V's. Examples: t-a-kbatte-t-t 'pinch (of sth)',
t-ae-sarrs-t-t 'street'.
Some readers may wish to segment -tt as a postvocalic FeSg suffix, with
-ten as the FePl counterpart, rather than identifying the first t as an inner Fe
morpheme -t-.
For the less common Fe (sometimes specifically FeSg) suffix -ait, with no
inner -t- Fe suffix, see §4.1.2.5, below.
FeSg -t does not allow antepenultimate accent. Nearly all feminine
nouns with this suffix have penultimate accent (§3.3.1.1). For example, the
masculine noun a-baembaera 'Bambara man' has default antepenultimate
accent since the stem lacks a lexical accent. One might expect the feminine
counterpart to have the same accent (#t-a-baembaera-t-t), but in fact we get
t-a-baembasra-t-t 'Bambara woman' (or 'Bambara language') with penultimate
accent.
It is rare for an unprefixed masculine noun of more than one syllable with
stem-final accent (an index of borrowing from Songhay or other non-Arabic
language) to have a feminine counterpart. The attested feminines of this type
are not completely uniform in their accentual behavior. The cases known to me
are in (142).
(142) Feminine of Noun with Final Accent in Masculine
gloss masculine feminine
a. Feminine with final accent (usually)
'monster' aexxu t-axxu-t-t (T-ka)
t-aexxu-t-t (A-grm Gao Im K-d R)
