A Grammar of Tamashek (Tuareg of Mali)

5.2 Possession and compounding 265

The specifically masculine PI 'sons' is just the Sg plus the (otherwise rare)

prenominal PI particle add or d (§4.1.2.28), but in contexts where gender is not

focal the gentilic initial kael 'people of is more common, kael is very common

with tribe and clan names (the compound final is often a place name), and

other expressions for categories of people (e.g. 'people of the desert', 'people

of the city').

For 'son of, Sg aegg is often used before a V, versus aew or ü before a C.

Soime examples, which also exemplify the extended senses of this compound

type, are in (260).

(260) Compounds with 'son'

base noun gloss

laekkol

kaesa

mamaela

a-m-aerwas

a-wnaf

sendad

'school'

'jail'

'commerce'

'debt'

'curiosity'

'laziness'

compund

ύ laekkol

ύ kaesa

u mamaela

aegg ""ae-maerwas

aegg "ae-wnaf

aew sendad

gloss

'schoolboy'

'prisoner'

'merchant'

'lender'

'curious person'

'lazy person'

We also see aegg in the compound aegg adaem 'son of Adam', i.e. 'human
being'. However, the more common (but now less transparent) form of this
combination is aewadaem (now probably fused and reanalysed as ae-wadaem)
'human being'. It has no plural, being replaced by addinaet 'people' in
nonsingular sense. Another case of a former compound becoming frozen is
α-wanhad 'member of blacksmith caste', with PI i-wanhad-aen, FeSg
t-a-wanhat-t, and abstractive t-awwanhada 'being a blacksmith'.
For Sg 'daughter', I recorded waelt for T-ka, waelaet for other dialects
(A-grm, R, T-md). Female counterparts of the 'son of compounds in (260) can
generally be produced by substituting 'daughter' for 'son'. The alternatives
t-aew and t-u, used before C's, are just aew and ü preceded by a Feminine
prefix. An example of a masculine/feminine pair (K-d dialect): u
nt-a-karmu-t-t 'male prisoner (in jail)', t-u 't-a-karmu-t-t 'female prisoner'.
PI saett 'daughters' occurs in (K-d) saett "'ae-taeraes, lit. "daughters of the
plain," denoting any of several high-quality beads.
For normal human reference, aegg 'son of and waelt 'daughter of are
replaced by the plural forms in (259) when denoting more than two persons.
However, aegg is also used in some fixed combinations, as in aegg ufaekdni
'son of U [personal name]', a term denoting the male agama lizard. Its plural is
not #add aegg ufaekdni, rather a simple suffixal plural aegg ufaekani-taen. In
other words, such nonhuman combinations function as frozen compounds
whose internal segmentation is disregarded by morphology (we could just
transcribe aeggufaekani for this noun).