A Grammar of Tamashek (Tuareg of Mali)

484 8 Verbal derivation

(499) Participial versus Nominal Gender-Number Suffixes

category Participial nominal suffix 3rd person subject suffix

The connection between Participial and nominal suffixes is far from clean.
Note that suffix -aen is MaSg for participles, but MaPl for nouns.
Participial FeSg -aet ends in a single t. Like the FeSg nominal suffix -aet
(§4.1.2.5), it has no special accentual effect, allowing antepenultimate default
accent as in t-ά t-aedobzen-aet 'the one-FeSg who married'. In this respect -set
contrasts with the common nominal FeSg suffix -t, which forces word-
penultimate accent (i.e. it behaves accentually as though it ended in a vowel,
§3.3.1.1).
Participial -aen (MaSg) and -aet (FePl) induce VV-Contraction when the
preceding stem ends in a V. Specifically, they behave like 3MaPl subject
suffix -aen and 2MaPl subject suffix -aem. In other words, a stem-final
perfective lal in a non-augment verb combines with suffixal /as/ to give as, and
both V's are counted for purposes of Default Accentuation (resulting in surface
penultimate word accent after VV-Contraction): ά-sael wa-\dd osae-n 'the day
he came' (compare PerfP osae-n 'they-Ma came'). For contractions involving
augment verbs, see §8.5.5.

8.5.2 Forms of definite participles (PerfP, Resit)

Consider the examples in (500). MaPl and FePl are the same, except for w-i
versus t-ί demonstrative, so the FePl is omitted.

(500) PerfP and Resit Definite Participles

MaSg -aen

FeSg -aet

MaPl -nen

FePl

0

-t, -aet

-aen, -tasn

-en, -ten

0

0

-aen

-naet

MaSg FeSg MaPl

'enter'

PerfP w-α l-jjaes-aen t-α t-ajjaes-aet w-i ajjaes-nen

Resit w-α i-jjaes-aen t-α t-ajjaes-aet w-i ajjaes-nen

'drink'

PerfP

Resit

w-α 1-swae-n

w-α i-swae-n

t-α t-aswae-t

t-α t-aswae-t

w-i aswae-nen

w-i aswae-nen