A Grammar of Tamashek (Tuareg of Mali)

172 4 Nominal and pronominal morphology

Some of the cases with w ('oven stone', 'sky') occur chiefly in the PI, and
all of the stems are at least fairly common in the PI. This is consistent with the
view that the ...w-aen MaPl is unproductive and lexicalized. While the -t- of
-taen functions as an idiosyntactic epenthetic C associated with the suffix, the
w of ...w-aen is best analysed as a (deletable) stem-final segment. For
'grandson', the w shows up not only in MaPl i-haeyaw-aen, but also in FeSg
t-a-haeyaw-t 'granddaughter', showing stem-final w before FeSg -t. 'Great-
grandson' likewise has a (dialectal) feminine counterpart t-a-jaeyaw-t.
ά-Ysansi 'shank, shin', may have originated as a compound involving e-rasss
'bone' and t-mse (variant t-Inse) 'toe'.
For feminines, if the Sg ends in -t-t (with inner suffix Fe -t- and outer
FeSg -t), the suffixal PI has -t-en (146.a). There are a small number of
unsuffixed V-final feminine singulars (mostly loanwords) that also take -ten
(146.b). In this case I take the t as part of the suffix allomorph, parallel to the
-taen allomorph of the MaPl suffix. A much larger number of unsuffixed
V-final feminines have stem-extension ...w- before -en (146.c). There are also
several cases of FePl ...w-en with a further shift in the preceding V (§4.1.2.11).
There is one attested case (R dialect) with y instead of w (146.d).

(146) Plural Suffixes after V-final noun stems

singular plural gloss

a. FePl -t-en (V-final with Sg -t-t, productive pattern)

t-e-däewi-t-t t-i-daewi-t-en 'joy'

b. FePl -ten (unsuffixed V-final Sg)

t-aemati t-aemati-ten 'tomato'

[or masculine PI taemati-taen]

m-aerda m-aerda-ten 'hope' (A-grm)

maetla maetla-ten 'mattress'

[or masculine PI maetla-taen]

t-andoyba t-andoyba-ten 'bird sp.'

t-arba t-arba-ten 'trap'

t-aegrja t-aeqqa-ten 'parallel cousin'

t-aerfo t-aerfo-ten '(woman's) wrap'

c. FePl ...w-en (unsuffixed V-final Sg, all known exx. with no vocalic

shift)

t-lbra t-lbraw-en

t-a-farjijamsa t-i-farjijamsaw-en

t-a-franke t-i-fraqkaw-en

[Sg also t-a-fraqka-t-t]

t-a-vaeya t-i-raeyaw-en

t-ae-koba t-i-kobaw-en

'grabbing handful'

'gecko'

'tree bark'

'hoop, bow'

'sabre'