A Grammar of Tamashek (Tuareg of Mali)

4.1 Noun morphology 225

In (200.a), -CvCuC- stems with one short accented stem V and one final-
syllable full V, excluding -CaeCaC- with stem-wide vocalism, have
unsuffixed ablaut plurals of the form 1-CCaC. This ί-CCaC is syncopated from
underlying /i-CsCaC/ with PI melody. The A-grm dialect alone
preserves the unsyncopated i-CaCaC. The corresponding feminines (200.b)
have PI t-i-CCaC (A-grm t-i-CsCaC). All of the stems in (200) have a vocalic
prefix, generally -a- or -e- in the Sg.
As elsewhere (e.g. verbal nouns of long verb stems), Syncope applies to
the schwa of a stem-initial /-CaCV.../ sequence ("V" = short or full vowel)
after a nominal prefix. Syncope does not normally apply to ae, the other short
V. Interestingly, Syncope is not blocked by accent. When Syncope causes the
lexical accent to become unattached, it simply re-attaches to the prefixal
syllable to the left. Since the syllable in question is penultimate (not
antepenultimate), the accent is marked (i.e. is not due to Default
Accentuation). Consistent with this, the accents in the PI (as well as in the Sg)
remain in place when a preposition is added: ί-btal 'ground depressions', with
preposition dasr ^a-btal 'in the depressions'.
As noted briefly above, Sg nouns of type -CaeCaC- with vocalism
rarely take this (or any other) ablaut plural in any dialect. These nouns
generally have simple affixal plurals, but a few have a suffixed ablaut MaPl
VCaCC-αη or FePl t-1-CaCC-en , see (178.b) and (184.b) in §4.1.2.14. Verbal
nouns of type a-CaeCaC take affixal plurals without ablaut, i.e. i-CaeCaC-aen.
A handful of Sg stems with all-low V's have irregular PI forms involving
Syncope along with various other stem changes (201). For 'hole', the regular
suffixal PI i-naebaj-aen is also common.

(201) Sg with Low Vowels, PI (t-)1-CCuPPa

Masculine V-final stems with Sg ά-CvCu have a syncopated PI 1-CCa (e.g.

T-ka), or unsyncopated 1-CaCa (A-grm). As in (200), Syncope applies to the

schwa of /i-CaCa/ except in A-grm dialect. Examples are in (202). Accent

Reattachment is not applicable to these cases since the deleted (syncopated) V

does not bear a marked accent. All of the examples have default accents in

both Sg and PI.

singular plural gloss

a-naebaj

t-ae-naebajju-t-t

a-n-aekaebba

1-mbujja 'hole'

t-l-mbujja 'hole'

1-gkubba 'large boubou'