A Grammar of Tamashek (Tuareg of Mali)

8.6 Verbal nouns 523

c. medial i, nonsyncopating

'gesture' siwaj α-siwaj i-siwij-sen

a-siwaj i-siwaj-aen

d. medial i, syncopating

'do sorcery' ksrikaw a-krlkaw i-krikiw-aen

a-krikaw i-krikaw-aen

I now turn to non-augment heavy V-final verbs. In the VblN, the final V
does not appear. It can therefore be assumed to be hi, similar to the (easily
deleted) underspecified high vowel III that I attribute to the short imperfectives
(including Imprt) of these and some other unaugmented V-final verbs. For
Stem-Final i/A-Deletion see §3.1.2.4. Assuming the presence of III permits us
to reconcile the surface final-syllable accent of these VblN's with the
penultimate marked accent of the VblN's already presented in this section, by
ordering Default Accentuation before Stem-Final i/A-Deletion. There is no
variant with final-syllable α like those of the VblN's described above. Data in
(555).

(555) Verbal Nouns of Heavy V-Final Verbs

gloss PerfP Imprt Sg VblN PI VblN

a. middleweight, nonsyncopating (α-CaCC, etc.)

'be searched' -affayka- faeyk a-fayk l-fayk-an

'become loose' -affiigga- fugg a-fugg 1-fugg-an

'fail' -aefota- fut a-fut "i-fut-an

b. superheavy, syncopating (a-CCaCC)

'be confused -amtslla- install a-mtsll l-mtall-an

'be spicy' -arrarha- rsrsrh a-rrsrh l-rrarh-an

The PI VblN's shown are typical of T-ka. The -an with full a can be
explained by VV-Contraction (stem-final V plus suffix-initial /as/ combine as
a). The loss of the marked stem accent in the PI, resulting in default accent on
PI prefix i-, is typical when a stem-initial V is lost in this way, see χ-Erasure
(§3.5.3.3). This requires Default Accentuation to (re-)apply after χ-Erasure.
For R dialect I recorded PI VblN's like i-mtalli-tasn for 'be confused',
preserving the original stem-final V as i in the PI only (Sg a-mtall). A-grm
generally preserves the original V as i in both Sg and PI.