A Grammar of Tamashek (Tuareg of Mali)

4.1 Noun morphology 175

d. other (C)VCC nouns (unaccented Sg, accented PI)

Ιάζι ι Ιάζ-tasn 'famine'

kokk kok-taen 'vagina'

yell yelb-tsen (A-grm) 'grass'

t-üff t-üffe-t-en (A-grm) 'being inflated'

eff effae-taen (A-grm) 'shelter'

In (148.a), I take the a as the surface output of stem-final underspecified
deletable hi. The verbs in question are of the shape -vCCi>, e.g. PerfP -ödha-
'fold'. It is much harder to establish a stem-final deletable V in noun stems,
though at least historically there was probably a stem-final V in 'palate'
(148.b), since a variant άητα is recorded for Im dialect.
In the other cases in (148.c-d), with the possible exception of the A-grm
forms with a in the PI, an underlying stem-final V seems unlikely. In these
cases, however, the PI has a marked penultimate accent, though the Sg has a
default accent (which shifts onto a preceding preposition). This is seen by
adding prepositions, e.g. daer laz 'in the famine', PI daer laz-tasn 'in the
famines' (not #daer laz-taen). In effect, these plurals are accented as though
they had a V between stem and -tasn suffix, as heard audibly in the plurals of
'being inflated', 'palate', and 'grass'. Since no such V is audible, I have no
choice but to mark the plural with the acute accent (Ιάζ-tasn, kok-taen).
The plurals in (148.a) and that of 'palate' in (148.c) are dialectally
variable. R idhi-taen 'foldings' has a full i. Likewise, T-ka PI Ijja-taen
'stretchings to look' corresponds to Rljji-taen and A-grm "iggi-taen. While only
Im dialect has bisyllabic Sg άηνα 'palate', a few other dialects (A-grm, R)
have Sg άην but PI aqra-taen (K-area dialects have PI aqriw-en). For T-md I
recorded PI laz-taen 'hungers' with default accent (hence dser Ιαζ-tasn 'in ...').
C-final stems of more than one syllable that take -taen rather than -aen are
shown in (149). Most of them have final accent, and all lack vocalic prefixes
(these are typical features of loanwords). The correlation with final accent is
seen clearly in T-ka wasil, PI wasil-taen versus other dialects' wasil, PI
wasil-aen.

(149) Plural -taen after Unprefixed C-final Monosyllable

singular plural gloss

a. final accent in Sg

hasgaey haegsey-taen (A-grm) 'harvest' (<Son)

[haegaey, PI heegaey-taen (T-ka)]

kukutaess kukutaes-taen 'hoopoe (bird)'

kukastel kukastel-taen 'hoopoe (bird)'

aelvaebb aelraebba-taen (A-grm) 'mosquito net' (<Ar.)

aelkass aslkas-taen 'drinking glass' (<Ar.)

[Sg also aelkas]