A Grammar of Tamashek (Tuareg of Mali)

374 7 Verbal morphology

'plod on wearily' (K-d), lutay 'preach', murad 'crawl', rürad 'rush', sühar or
zühar 'be stocky, well fed', süsab or züzab 'be marvelous', and tursr 'crave'.
The long imperfectives and VblN's are unremarkable. The syllabic
structure permits full expression of the local formatives including both length
formatives. The lexical u triggers long (as well as short) perfective
melody.
There are two notable features in (375). The first of these can be seen in
the onsets of the perfectives and of the inflectable Shlmpf. These stems show
Stem-Initial V-Insertion, and (because of the full V) are not eligible for Stem-
Initial Syncope, so we would expect CrGemination to take place (§3.4.8.1).
However, CrGemination fails to apply, as in e.g. PerfP -aemoraed- 'crawl'.
Once again, A-grm dialect is exceptional, since it allows C,-Gemination in
these verbs: PerfP -smmoraed- 'crawl'.
The other striking feature about this verb class is the vocalism of the
perfectives. To get from /-vCuCvC-/ (after Stem-Initial V-Insertion) to the
observable PerfP -aeCoCasC-, we need a stem-wide perfective melody.
Usually, a surface perfective melody can be reduced to by
assuming that Stem-Initial Syncope and Leftward L-Spreading have applied
§3.4.3.2, (§3.4.8.1), but here there is no syncope. We are therefore compelled
to assume an idiosyncratic stem-wide for these verbs. Moreover, when
this combines with lexical u, the result in this case is not α as in e.g.
-aeblalaeTf- from lexical -bvlulw- in (373), above. Instead, we get a mid-
height vowel ο that is intermediate between the lexical u and the ideal melodic
target α. I refer to this as V-Height Compromise (§3.4.7), and in verbs it
applies specifically to middleweight verbs beginning in Cu... or Ci...
I now discuss the even trickier verbs for which a lexical representation
-CiCvC- seems appropriate, though even this is subject to debate. Consider the
two MAN stem paradigms in (376), noting their differences in the vocalism of
the short imperfective system, and their identical characteristic long
imperfective melody.

(376) -CiCvC- Stems (T-ka)

'gesture'

-siwvj-

'flee'

-jiwvd-

a. perfective system

PerfP

Resit

PerfN

-aesewaej-

-assewasj-

-aesewaej-

-sejewasd-

-aejewaed-

-sejewasd-

b. short imperfective system

Shlmpf -asiwaj-, -aesawaej-

Imprt siwaj, sawaej

-aejawaed

jawaed