A Grammar of Tamashek (Tuareg of Mali)

6 1 Introduction

in much of the zone (some reprisal killings, but mainly forcing Tuareg and

Arab civilians into exile). In 1995 a generous peace was signed, many Arab

and Tuareg combatants were integrated into the government army, and

refugees began to come back under the auspices of the UNHCR and several

NGOs. While some resettled Tuaregs went back to their traditional territories

and lifestyle, many have shifted farther south (i.e. to the Gourma, the Gosi-

Hombori area, or Burkian Faso). Others have been converted from desert

pastoralists to agriculturalists, e.g. growing rice along the river.

1.4 Malian Tamashek

As noted above, the varieties covered in this volume are those of Tamashek in

the narrow sense, excluding Tawellemett but including the other Malian

varieties (Goundam, Timbuktu, Gao, Ansongo, Kidal, and the Gourma area

south of the Niger River including Gosi and the outskirts of Hombori).

There is considerable dialectal diversity within Tamashek even in its

narrow sense. Although the dialectal boundaries are rather fluid, one can

roughly group the dialects into three divisions (6).

(6) Main Divisions of Malian Tamashek

a. Kal Ansar dialects around Timbuktu (T-ka)

b. mainstream Tamashek including Kidal, Tessalit, the Gao area,

and the non-Kal Ansar (i.e. mostly Immededeghan) groups

around Timbuktu; dialects of this general type are those

abbreviated Κ (also K-d, K-f), T-md, I, R, Ts, Th.

c. dialects with some "eastern" features, spoken by certain groups in

the Gourma of Gao and Ansongo, represented here by A-grm

(Ansongo-Gourma).

This grammar is focused on the rather distinctive Timbuktu-area Kal
Ansar (T-ka) dialects, but it includes a fair amount of comparative material
from the other types insofar as they differ structurally from T-ka. One
recurrent difference is that T-ka shows much broader Short-V Harmony, by
which original *as (short a) has become a when the following syllable has a
high vowel {i a u}. The Kal Ansar also have a larger number of Arabic
borrowings, and retain Arabic pharyngeal consonants h and? (instead of
merging them into χ and r, respectively, like other Tuareg varieties). My
grammatical and textual data are more thorough for T-ka than for the other
groups, so my coverage of grammatical differences among the dialects is not
exhaustive. My dictionary of Tamashek will include extensive material from