A Grammar of Tamashek (Tuareg of Mali)

314 7 Verbal morphology

therefore another case of the <L H> melody as seen more transparently in

The same Shlmpf melody occurs in heavy non-augment V-final
stems, provided that they have a medial full V. In (314.j) this is the case with
'move out' and 'load', but not the other examples, which lack medial full V's.
The relevant medial full V is either i or u in the basic representation of the
verb, though in the Shlmpf this high V combines with the L part of the melody
and therefore surfaces as a. The melody maps onto the three stem
syllables to give surface vocalic sequences of the type «L L H». The example
of this in (314) is ShlmpfP /-aejjajji-/ 'load' (j), for which I suggest a basic
representation /-vjjujju-/ (cf. PerfP -ajjujja-).
The stem-final hi shows up as surface a before the C-initial subject
suffixes (2FePl -mast, 3FePl -nast). It also combines with the vowel of a
following /-asC/ suffix (except lSg subject) to form a, by VV-Contraction
(37.c) (§3.2.3.3). An example is 3MaPl /-sen/, which surfaces in these
paradigms as ...a-n. The hi is additionally "counted" as a syllable in Default
Accentuation, even when otherwise deleted without trace. Thus /-aejjajji-/
'load (Shlmpf)' has, with Future ad, 3MaSg ad 0-sejjajj 'he will load' (with
phrase-penultimate accent, not #ad 0-asjjajj), 3MaPl ad aejjajja-n (not
#...ae-n), and 3FePl ad asjjajja-naet (with schwa before the suffix).

The complete paradigms of bisyllabic Shlmpf /-asksi-/ (314.g) 'eat' and
l-an-l 'open' (314.Ϊ), and of trisyllabic Shlmpf /-aejjajji-/ 'load' (314.j) are
given in (315). The cases with a before the ks in 'eat' have undergone Short-V
Harmony triggered by the schwa of the following syllable (§3.2.6). Note that ν
accents are fixed (since the deleted stem-final V counts for purposes of Default
Accentuation, §3.3.1), while ν accents on surface monosyllabic forms will give
way to phrasal accent on e.g. Future preverb ad. Compare ad aksa-n 'they-Ma
will eat' with äd t-asks 'she will eat'.

(315) Shlmpf of 'eat' (/-asksi-/), 'open' (/-an-/), and 'load' (/-aejjajji-/)

(314.e).

subject Shlmpf 'eat' Shlmpf 'open' Shlmpf 'load'

a. no schwa

3MaSg 0-seks

n-aeks

0-ar

n-ar

ar-asr

t-ar

0-£jjajj

n-^jjajj

ayjajj-aer

t-äejjajj

1P1

lSg

3FeSg

asks-aer

t-seks

b. schwa present

2MaPl

2FePl

3FePl

2Sg

3MaPl skss-n

t-akss-d

t-aksa-m

t-aksa-mast

t-aksa-maet

t-ara-d

t-ara-m

t-ara-maet

t-ara-naet

ara-n

t-aejjajja-d

t-aejjajja-m

ajjjajja-maet

aejjajja-naet

asjjajja-n