A Grammar of Tamashek (Tuareg of Mali)

4.1 Noun morphology 217

(190) Unsuffixed Plural Ablaut (Medial Full V in Sg, Short V in PI)

singular plural gloss

t-a-yara-t-t t-l-yara 'inter-dune interval'

This noun is used as a measure of distance (roughly 1-2 kilometers), and is
therefore frequently quantified, a situation that lends itself to lexicalization of
the plural.
For the record, the other (marginal) cases recorded from single informants,
in all cases T-md or A-grm, were: Sg. a-raelas 'fresh burrgrass', PI i-rulas
(T-md); ae-gasan 'broom', PI i-gusan (A-grm); e-laekef 'horse saddle', PI
i-lukaf (T-md, more often 1-lakf-an); ά-staj 'padded saddle', PI i-s-utaj
(T-md, more often ί-staj); t-e-zerdam-t 'scorpion', PI t-i-zardam (A-grm,
versus T-ka t-i-zurdam); t-a-s-udmaer-t 'question', PI t-i-s-admar (A-grm);
t-ae-zugge-t-t 'punch', PI t-l-zagga (A-grm, versus T-ka Sg t-a-zugge-t-t, PI
t-l-zugga). I suspect that, had I been able to recheck these data with the T-md
informant (who passed away) or the A-grm informant, I may have been able to
resolve the irregularities. For T-ka and K-d, where I have better data, I was
able to re-check apparent exceptions and was able to correct mistaken
transcriptions.

With feminine nouns whose singular ends in -t (or -t-t), we very often get
a surface FeSg/FePl accent shift. The FeSg has penultimate accent, while the
FePl has antepenultimate accent (for bisyllabic stems, this means that the FePl
has prefixal accent). These apparent accent shifts are phonologically
predictable, if we assume that these stems have no lexical accent. This is
because FeSg -t belongs to the set of suffixes (and clitics) that are
incompatible with antepenultimate accent, so for these FeSg stems penultimate
accent is the default (§3.3.1.1). Some examples are scattered through the lists
given earlier in this section. Further examples are in (191).

(191) Predictable Singular/Plural Accent Shift (Feminine Nouns)

singular plural gloss

a. regular cases

t-as-kala-t-t t-l-kula

t-a-damu-t-t t-1-dama

t-a-dambu-t-t t-l-damba

t-a-m-aersoy-t t-l-mavsa

t-a-kambu-t-t t-l-kamba

t-a-laggi-t-t t-l-lagga

t-a-ibabi-t-t t-l-?baba

t-ae-vlale-t-t t-l-rlala

'dragging rope'

'millet beverage'

'penis'

'dead animal'

'hat'

'sedge sp.'

'wailing'

'ululation'

t-a-flansi-t-t t-l-flansa (A-grm) 'hoof