Central Atlas Tamazight grammar
belongs to the Northern Berber branch of the Berber languages.
As a member of the Afroasiatic family, Tamazight grammar has a two-gender system, VSO typology, emphatic consonants, and a templatic morphology.
Tamazight has a verbo-nominal distinction, with adjectives being a subset of verbs.
Nouns
Nouns may be masculine or feminine and singular or plural. Definiteness is not marked. Normally plurals end in /-n/, singular masculines have the prefix /a-/ and plurals /i-/, and feminines have the circumfix in singular and in plural. In Ayt Seghrouchen initial /a/ is dropped in many singular nouns, though their plurals and construct states are similar to Ayt Ayache.Plurals may either involve a regular change, internal vowel change, or a combination of the two. Some plurals are mixed, e.g. > .
Native masculine singular nouns usually start with in singular and in plural, and "sound plurals". This suffix undergoes the following assimilatory rules:
- >
- >
- > )
Examples:.
Nouns may be put into the construct state to indicate possession, or when the subject of a verb follows the verb. This is also used for nouns following numerals and some prepositions, as well as the word . The construct state is formed as follows:
- In masculine nouns:
- In feminine nouns:
Pronouns
Tamazight's use of possessive suffixes mirrors that of many other Afroasiatic languages.- of verbs and prepositions
- whether objective pronouns are prefixed or suffixed is determined by various factors
- -inw is used when the noun ends in a consonant
- In Ayt Ayache these have the allomorphs,,, etc. after prepositions. These mutate after .
Independent possessives are formed by attaching the possessive suffixes to or ', e.g. .
Special possessive suffixes are used with kinship terms.
Emphatics are formed with the word, e.g. .
- Ayt Ayache
- Ayt Seghrouchen
Other deictic suffixes: , , e.g. , .
Verbs
Verbs are marked for tense, aspect, mode, voice, and polarity, and agree with the number, person, and gender of the subject.Verb framing
Satellite framing is accomplished with the proximate affix /d/ and remote /nː/, e.g. /dːu/ 'to go' yields /i-dːa/ 'he went', /i-dːa-d/ 'he came', /i-dːa-nː/ 'he went there'
Voice
Derived verb stems may be made from basic verb stems to create causatives, reciprocals, recipro-causatives, passives, or habituals.
Causatives are derived from unaugmented stems with the prefix /s-/.
Habituals are derived from unaugmented and reciprocal/recipro-causative stems with the prefix /tː-/, from causatives by an infixed vowel, and from passives by an optional infixed vowel:
/fa/ 'yawn' > /tːfa/
Reciprocals are formed with the prefix /m-/, and recipro-causatives with /-ms-/, sometimes with internal change.
Passives are formed with the prefix /tːu-/:
/ħnːa/ 'pity' > /tːuħnːa/
Tense, mode, and subject
marks future tense, marks interrogative mode, and marks negative mode.
Pronominal complement markers cliticize to the verb, with the indirect object preceding the direct object, e.g. /izn-as-t/ "he sold it to him".
Central Atlas Tamazight uses a bipartate negative construction which apparently was modeled after proximate Arabic varieties, in a common development known as Jespersen's Cycle. This is a phenomenon where a postverbal item is reanalyzed as being an element of a discontinuous negation marker composed of it and the preverbal negation marker. It is present in multiple Berber varieties, and is argued to have originated in neighboring Arabic and been adopted by contact.
Standard negation is accompanied by a negative indefinite pronoun, walu.
Tamazight has a null copula. The words 'to be, to do' may function as a copula in Ayt Ayache and Ayt Seghrouchen respectively, especially in structures preceded by /aj/ 'who, which, what'.
Many Arabic loans have been integrated into the Tamazight verb lexicon. They adhere fully to patterns of native stems, and may even undergo ablaut.
Ablaut
In Ayt Ayache, ablaut occurs only in affirmative and/or negative past. Types of ablaut include Ø:i/a, Ø:i, and a:u, which may be accompanied by metathesis. In Ayt Seghrouchen types of ablaut include Ø:i, i/a, i/u, a-u, and a-i.
Adjectives
Adjectives come after the noun the modify, and inflect for number and gender:Adjectives may also occur alone, in which case they become an NP.
Practically all adjectives also have a verbal form used for predicative purposes, which behaves just like a normal verb:
As such, adjectives may be classed as a subset of verbs which also have other non-verbal features. However Penchoen argues that they are actually nouns.
Particles
PrepositionsPrepositions include , , , and . These may take pronominal suffixes.
Some prepositions require the following noun to be in the construct state, while others do not.
encliticizes onto the following word, and assimilates to some initial consonants: it becomes before a noun with initial, before initial, and before initial . Nouns with initial normally drop in when following 'some of', e.g. 'some meat', but some don't, following the normal rules of construct state, e.g. 'some tea'. Conjunctions The conjunction 'and' requires construct state, and also assimilates to a following, e.g. 'the donkey and the cow'. Other conjunctions include: NumeralsCardinal numeralsThe first few cardinal numerals have native Berber and borrowed Arabic forms. The Arabic numerals are only used for counting in order and for production of higher numbers when combined with the tens. All higher cardinals are borrowed from Arabic. This is consistent with the linguistic universals that the numbers 1-3 are much more likely to be retained, and that a borrowed number generally implies that numbers greater than it are also borrowed. The retention of one is also motivated by the fact that Berber languages near-universally use unity as a determiner. The numbers 3-9 have special apocopated forms, used before the words , , , and , e.g. .
The numbers 11-19 only end in before the words and .
is only used for '100' before or . Also note the dual forms, and for '2,000,000'.
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