A Grammar of Tamashek (Tuareg of Mali)

170 4 Nominal and pronominal morphology

have Islamic associations, and gender assignment may be influenced by the
individual speaker's level of knowledge of Koranic Arabic. The dialect that
most systematically interprets nouns ending in ...aet as masculine, with MaPl
...aet-aen, is K-d (e.g. aslxidmaet 'work', PI aelxidmast-asn). For this dialect
there is no basis to segment -aet- as a suffix, and I transcribe it as part of the
stem.
Since Hassaniya (and more broadly Maghrebi) Arabic has FeSg -a (for
Classical Arabic -at-), it is not surprising that some dialectal doublets occur,
e.g. alfrbada (T-ka) and aelribad-aet (A-grm) for 'imploring (God)'. In other
cases only a form ending in α is recorded: slkasiba 'increase in one's flock',
EelwaellaI I 'ablutions'.

4.1.2.6 Simple suffixal pluralization and stem extension (w)

Since all nominal plurals involve the same prefixal changes, we may classify
plurals into a) simple suffixal (this section and §4.1.2.13), b) mixed ablaut-
suffixal (§4.1.2.7-12, §4.1.2.14) where there are some stem-internal changes in
addition to PI suffixation, and c) pure ablaut plurals with no suffixes
(§4.1.2.15ff).
As noted earlier, those nouns that have a segmentable Sg prefix (variably
-α-, -e-, or -ae-/-3-) replace it with -i- in the plural. Other nouns have invariant
onsets that do not mark plurality and are not audibly affected by Prefix
Reduction. Among the nouns with invariant onsets are most borrowings from
Arabic and Songhay, including (to my knowledge) all nouns with final-syllable
accent.
Most masculine nouns have a MaPl suffix whose simplest form is -aen,
while most feminine nouns add -en. The exceptions are the nouns that have
suffixless ablaut plurals (see below). As noted in previous sections, the
allomorphs -aen and -en are regular after a consonant (including, for feminine
nouns, inner Fe suffix -t-). Examples in (144). For MaPl -taen after certain
C-final nouns (monosyllables, or borrowings with accent on the final syllable),
see discussion of (148-9), below.

(144) Plural Suffixes after C-final noun stem

singular plural gloss

a. masculine

se-danan

e-rehas

Ider

i-danan-sen

i-rehas-aen

Ider-asn

erhitt-aen

'Cordia fruit'

'castrated animal'

'bottom'

erhitt 'will'