A Grammar of Tamashek (Tuareg of Mali)

414 7 Verbal morphology

V-initial subject suffixes. This possibility is illustrated in 3MaPl Future ad
sessaejre-n 'it-Ma will become long' (T-ka). Some informants had difficulty
with these suffixed forms, and more study is needed.
As with 'be much, many', the participles (§8.1.7) for 'long, tall' lack the
final t, except in the PI, where it functions as the Augment -t-. Thus MaSg
saejre-n 'long, tall', FeSg saejre-t, PI sasjro-t-nen. See (534.e) in §8.5.7.
There is additional dialectal variation in the verbs. For A-grm the verbs
(like the participles) have Augment -t- even in the perfective, hence PerfP
-assagrae-t (3MaPl assagre-n).
For Niger, LTF2 436 gives PerfP "zagrat" with an ablaut change in 3MaPl
"zägrota" (suffix -a for *-asn). In my Malian data, this ablaut change does not
happen in inflectable perfectives though it does occur in participles (see
above). LTF2 (loc. cit.) also gives 3MaPl LoImpfP "tazägren," where the
absence of stem-final t shows that LoImpfP -t-azaegra-t ends in Augment -t.

7.3.2.3 'forget' (Vftv)

The stems are in (412). The verb generally takes Centrifugal clitic Λίη, as in
attawa-\h-\in 'he forgot me'. The MAN stem paradigm is dialectally variable.

(412) 'forget'

a. perfective system

PerfP -attawa-

Reslt -atfiwa-

PerfN -attawa-

b. short imperfective system

Shlmpf -Itaw-, - settaw-

Imprt Itaw, settaw

c. long imperfective system

LoImpfP -t-ltaw-

LoImpfN -t-ltaw-

Prohib -t-ltaw-

d. nominalization

VblN t-e-täewi-t-t, t-ae-taw-t

The Imprt and LoImpfP are based on -Itaw-, with vocalism typical of
adjectival verbs. PerfP -attawa- allows a 3MaSg subject prefix, as in l-ttaw-Vin
'he forgot'. The Resit is -attlwa-, with an i vowel of the sort usually found in
longer verb stems.