A Grammar of Tamashek (Tuareg of Mali)

182 4 Nominal and pronominal morphology

c. PI 1-CaC-aen for Sg v-CVC

ά-dsr 1-dar-aen 'foot'

ae-lil Ί-lal-asn 'baggage'

d. Pll-CCaP-Een for Sg ύ-CCvC

ά-dmasr 1-dmar-aen '(half of) chest'

[PI also admar-aen]

All of the stems in (156) have stem-medial α in the PI. One could generate
the plural forms by recognizing a vocalic melody for the stem proper. For
the few cases in (156.c-d) where the Sg has a short V, this must be
supplemented by an ablaut component χ that attaches to the same medial V.
One could achieve the same effect by recognizing an ablaut component a that
simply converts the relevant V to a.

There is also another possibility. The fairly common pattern 1-CaPP-asn in
(156.a-b) corresponds to a fairly wide range of singulars, which have any of
several V's and may or may not geminate the final C. This comes close to
being a plural template of the sort more familiar in Arabic. However, the
putative T-CaPP-sen with its geminate and its single stem-initial C would not
work for the minority patterns in (156.c-d), which have different consonantal
structures.
Another recurrent pattern is MaPl aCCaC-asn (FePl counterpart
t-aCCaC-en). In this type, the corresponding singulars also have a rigid shape,
eCCaeC (157), so a templatic analysis is not needed. The shift of stem-initial e
to α is discussed in §4.1.2.10, below.

(157) PI aCCaC-aen

singular plural gloss

endael andal-aen 'awl'

ejhaen ajhan-aen (T-ka) 'band of raiders'

ejmass ajmas-aen (T-ka) 'thumb'

[PI also egmaes-aen (A-grm)]

emzasd amzad-aen 'hair'

t-endael-t t-andal-en 'branding iron'

enhasr anhar-aen 'eyebrow'

[Sg also dnhasr etc.]

eskaer askar-aen (T-ka) 'fingernail'

[PI also eskaer-aen (A-grm)]

eswasl aswal-asn 'mark'

There are two stems, which happen to share the Sg shape e-PasrPaer for
some consonant P, that have a plural i-ParPar-aen with both stem V's
lengthened (158).