4.1 Noun morphology 167b. Feminine with penultimate accent'monkey' kaeya t-ae-kaeya-t-t (Im)
'gas drum' basrgon t-ae-baergon-t (T-ka)
'thorny shrub' busü t-3-büsu-t-t (T-ka)The predominance of penultimate accent, in (142.b) and the T-ka variant
in (142.a), suggests that -t not only disallows word-antepenultimate accent, but
specifically favors penultimate accent even when the lexical accent is on the
final. However, the accent in the feminines is somewhat lexicalized, and
carries over to the corresponding FePl forms: t-i-kaeya-t-en, t-i-gaergon-en,
etc., whose suffix -en- (postvocalic -t-en) has no special accentual properties
elsewhere in nominal morphology.
FeSg -t undergoes specialized consonantal assimilations described in
§3.2.1.1. In addition to routine voicing and pharyngealization assimilation
within coronal clusters, e.g. /d-t/ ->t-t and /d-t/ —>t-t, there are some more
specialized progressive assimilations that could disguise the identity of the
FeSg suffix: /r-1/ q-q, /j-t/ k-k, and /g-t/ -> k-k. When FeSg -t is
replaced by FePl -en, or is dropped in an ablaut plural, the underlying (lexical)
stem-final C appears. Examples: t-ae-masaeq-q 'Tamashek woman', PI
t-i-müsav ; t-a-rrak-k 'book sack', PI t-l-rsrj-en (T-ka) or t-i-rarg-en
(A-grm). In such cases, the plural must be checked in order to determine the
correct stem-final C.
In a few nouns, a final geminate that looks as though it might result from
such an assimilation with -t is actually lexical, and appears in unreduced form
in the plural. For example,: phonetic [tae'laq:] for the Sg of 'mud' with final
geminated [q:] would suggest /t-ae-lar-t/ with the usual assimilation /r-t/
->q-q, like the vast majority of singular feminine nouns ending in [q:]. This
would imply a plural #t-i-lav-en, but in fact the plural is t-i-loqq-en, which
shows that the geminate qq is part of the stem. I therefore transcribe the stem
as t-ae-laqq instead of t-ae-laqq. A similar case is t-idstt 'truth', PI t-ldatt-en,
though for this noun the plural is uncommon.
Examples of the less common type with Fe prefix t- and no FeSg suffix:
t-3-dukra 'ground millet', t-arfa 'entrails', t-ele 'shade', t-orhanna 'disease'.
Most of these nouns end in e or a, which may historically have been minor
Feminine suffixes (MGT 4.44-45). They cannot be segmented synchronically
as such (in the absence of masculine/feminine alternations). The usual PI is
with FePl suffix -en added to a w-extended stem, e.g. t-i-dukraw-en 'ground
millets', t-arfiw-en 'guts'.
4.1.2.4 Extra stem-final semivowel or vowel before FeSg -t
An additional problem is that some stems that occur in masculine and feminine
forms have a slightly longer shape before FeSg suffix -t than in the unsuffixed