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I thought I had figured out an important verbal group, and presented about it today... and then I ran into Simone Mauri's description of Ayt Atta #Tamazight.
What I'm interested in is how to reconstruct the Aorist and perfect of verbs with two long vowels. A small thread.
What I'm interested in is how to reconstruct the Aorist and perfect of verbs with two long vowels. A small thread.
Most forms of Central Moroccan Tamazight have an a...u vocalism for both the Aorist and perfect (just like Tashlhiyt). From there I had thought of a way to reconcile the Kabyle form ulwu/ulwa with the Tamaight alwu alwu. I proposed a three step analogy:
1. Start with ulwu/ulwa
2. Through analogy of verbs like agʷəm/ugəm, the aorist was reformed to alwu: alwu/ulwa.
3. The aorist stem was generalized to the perfect: alwu/alwu.
But this explanation totally breaks down for Ayt Atta!
2. Through analogy of verbs like agʷəm/ugəm, the aorist was reformed to alwu: alwu/ulwa.
3. The aorist stem was generalized to the perfect: alwu/alwu.
But this explanation totally breaks down for Ayt Atta!
It's been a while since I wrote on #Tamazight/#Berber, so I thought it would be nice to do a thread on its plural formation. Much like Arabic (and Semitic more generally), Berber has 'sound plurals' and 'broken plurals'. Let's have a look at how these are reconstructed.
The 'sound plural' is simply formed by a suffix: *-ăn for the masculine, *-en for the feminine. For example:
*a-maziɣ pl. i-maziɣ-ăn "Berber man"
*ta-maziɣ-t pl. *ti-maziɣ-en "Berber woman"
In most dialect *-ăn > -ən and *-en > -in, but some retain the contrast.
*a-maziɣ pl. i-maziɣ-ăn "Berber man"
*ta-maziɣ-t pl. *ti-maziɣ-en "Berber woman"
In most dialect *-ăn > -ən and *-en > -in, but some retain the contrast.
If a sound plural suffix is added to a word-final vowel, usually an epenthetic *-t- is infixed to avoid the meeting of two vowels. Perhaps this is due to historical loss of *t (there is some weird stuff with disappearing *t's elsewhere in morphology).
*anu pl. *anu-t-ăn 'well'
*anu pl. *anu-t-ăn 'well'
