4.1 Noun morphology 193This rule ordering, though necessary for the very productive type (169.b)
and consistent with (169.a), is challenged by the handful of examples in
(169.C). Here, Default Accentuation appears to apply to the output of
VV-Contraction, so the PI has a default accent on the surface antepenult
(which corresponds to the underlying fourth syllable from the right). The
nouns in (169.c) are "cultural" vocabulary, and all are problematic. Only one
of the antepenultimate-accented plurals ('black turban cloth') is attested
outside of a narrow dialect area, and this one has a variant Sg ά-laessaew.
Some phonologically more complex cases are given in (170).(170) Additional Contracted -an (or -en) Plurals of V-Final Sgsingular plural glossa. t-a-ksnds-t-t t-l-ksnd-en 'water lily tuber'
b. ae-s-0ru i-s-ur-αη 'pretext'In the feminine noun 'water lily tuber' in (170.a), the PI shows
antepenultimate accent while the Sg has penultimate accent. This indicates that
the stem has no lexical accent, gets the default antepenultimate accent in the
PI, and in the Sg has penultimate accent conditioned by the FeSg suffix -t
(§3.3.1.1, §4.1.2.1).
In (170.b) we see u in different syllables in the Sg and the PI. One
possibility is that this is another case of a shifty u (§3.4.9). However, i-sur-an
could also be a mixed suffixal-ablaut PI with
the amalgamation of the α vowel of the Sg with the Η part of the melody. In
this view, the u of the PI has nothing to do with the u of the Sg.
Consider now (171).
(171) χ-Erasure in Contracted -an Plurals in Nominals from -vCCu- Verbssingular plural glossa. verbal nouns
a-tw-ajj l-tw-ajj-an 'being done'
[Sg also α-tw-eggi (A-grm)]
a-s-atf l-s-3tf-an I 'dumping' (Vs-df)
a-s-sksnn l-s-akn-an 'showing'
a-s-ant l-s-snt-an 'beginning'
a-s-anr l-s-snr-an 'burning'
[Sg also a-s-arri, with PI i-s-srvi-tasn (A-grm)]
a-s-ans Ί-s-ans-an 'sale'
a-trur 1-trur-an 'going down'
a-z-alz ι I l-z-alz-an (T-ka) 'shaving'