8.8 Agentives 539Certain adjectival nouns, especially those denoting precise hues, are used
as biological species names ('white one' = 'addax antelope') or as color-
specified terms for domestic animals. Adjectival nouns denoting life stages
are commonly used as human nouns ('young man', 'old woman'). Sometimes
the species terms have distinctive plurals in the masculine, e.g. unsuffixed
ablaut PI i-mallal 'addaxes' versus suffixal PI i-mallal-aen 'white ones-MaPl'
(both from MaSg α-mallol), or use a different stem altogether than the
adjectival noun, e.g. ά-wrav 'yellow (or light brown) one' versus a-wseraera
'light-brown donkey'.
8.8 Agentives
8.8.1 Deverbal agentives with -m-/-n- Prefix
Many nouns are derived from simple verbs using the -m-/-n- prefix. As with
the Mediopassive prefix, -n- is used when the stem contains a labial {m b f},
otherwise we get -m-.
These nominals are basically agentive, most often denoting a regular or
professional agent. This can be seen most clearly with transitive verbs. When
the verb is intransitive, the agentive quality is weak, so here it might be more
appropriate to speak of the resulting form as a subject participle. Still others
correspond functionally to adjectival nouns (§8.7, above), see e.g. several
examples in (569.h), below.
While the agentive is fairly productive, there are quite a few verbs for
which I was unable to elicit an agentive. I did not succeed in eliciting agentives
for any u/u-class -vCu- verb, for example. For -m-/-n- nominals of the same or
similar formal types, with senses other than agentive, see §8.9, below.
Examples involving light verbs as input are in (569). For subsets where no
ablaut plurals are shown, only suffixal plurals are attested: MaPl i-...-aen. Even
where ablaut plurals are shown, suffixal plurals are also possible. Feminine
agentives are formed from the same stem shapes with the addition of the usual
feminine prefixes and suffixes, e.g. FeSg t-...(-t)-t, FePl t-i-...(-t)-en.
(569) Agentives with -m- or -n- from Light Input Verbs
gloss Imprt Agentivea. -vPQvC-, Agentive as-m-0PQaC
'split' aftak ae-n-aftak (A-grm)
'capture' akfal se-n-dkfal
'guide' alway se-m-alway
'admonish' ansah ae-m-ansah
'graze freely' antaj ae-m-antaj
'stray' ardal ae-m-ardal