Asymmetric inflection in Berber: the view from gender

Noam Faust (1) , Mohamed Lahrouchi (1)

1 SFL - Structures Formelles du Langage

In Tashlhiyt Berber nouns, grammatical gender is usually expressed on both edges of the noun by the segment /t/. However, at the right edge, there is another, more minor pattern: many grammatically feminine nouns end in a vowel. The regular realization involves a final /t/ associated to a suffixal CV unit. Vowel-final feminine nouns are derived when a final stem vowel is associated to the V position of the suffix, blocking the association of the /t/. This right-edge effect is a mirror-image of Bendjaballah’s (2011) analysis of the left-edge inflection of vowel-initial stems. The distribution of gender marking in loans provides further supports to our analysis.

Mots clés: Berber; Compounds; Gender; loanwords; Nominal Morphology

Domaines: Linguistique

Noam Faust, Mohamed Lahrouchi. Asymmetric inflection in Berber: the view from gender. Brill's Journal of Afroasiatic Languages and Linguistics, 2022, 14 (2), pp.194-209. ⟨10.1163/18776930-01402005⟩. ⟨halshs-03054108v2⟩