As my work on the Aujila language continues, I try to figure out some of the syntax and morphology.
Part of every Berber language’s verbal morphology is the way it handles the CC* verbs, or CCa/i verbs. These are verbs with two root consonants and a final vowel that alternates in different contexts.
Historically, these verbs were triradical verb whose final consonant was a glottal stop. The resulting paradigm and subsequent analogies quite radically different paradigms in the different language, but one theme can be distilled. Almost always the variation of vowels varies between a/i/ø depending on the person and tense of the verb.
Ayer Tuareg (Niger) is an exception to this, which merged all CC* verbs with the CCu (<*CCh?) verbs. Figuig is somewhat special too as it has variation with a/i/ø/u.
Kossmann (2001) discusses this variation and the reconstruction of these Verbs in Proto-Berber. I think it is a worthwhile addition to discuss how Aujila handles these verbs, as it is quite exotic in some respects.
There are three ‘groups’ of vocalism that can be distinguished. The 1sg. and 2sg. always group together with the same vowel. The 3sg.m., 3sg.f. and 1pl. always group together with the same vowel. Finally the 2pl.m., 2pl.f., 3pl.m. and 3pl.f. all take the same vocalism. These groups don’t seem to be any different in Aujila, although it is sometimes hard to tell, since the available data especially lacks 2pl. forms (A common problem in any language where the only access to the language is textual, 2pl. forms just don’t occur very often in stories).
Due to these groupings it is enough to cite just the 1sg. 3sg.m. and 3pl.m.:
- aor. 1sg. cca-x
- aor. 3sg.m. yə-cc
- aor. 3pl.m. unknown. So far, I have not encountered a single aor. 2pl.m., 2pl.f., 3pl.m. or 3pl.f.
- perf. 1sg. cci-x
- perf. 3sg.m. yə-cca
- perf. 3pl.n.əcca-n
- impf. 1sg. cəc̄i-x
- impf. 3sg.m. i-cəc̄a
- impf. 3pl.m cəc̄a-n
Not all of these forms are special. The perfect behaves similar to most other Berber languages (Tashelhiyt, Ghadamès, Ahaggar Tuareg, MA Berber; But not Riffian and Figuig).
The Imperfect behaving the same as the perfect is interesting though. In MA Berber, for example, the final vowel is always a, regardless of the ending. In Riffian there is usually no vowel at all.
The final, most striking feature is the 1sg. and 2sg. of the aorist having a vowel a. This is unlike any other Berber language. The origin of this development is quite obscure as well.
The /x/ in Aujila does have a colouring effect on /ə/ which sometimes results in Paradisi transcribing what should phonologically be an /ə/ as <a>, <ä> or <å> (e.g. pf. 3sg.m. yáḫzer [PT:VI,VII], yäḫzér [PT:III], yeḫzér 'to look' for /y-əxzər/). I wondered if it might be that the regular ending was -əx and for 2sg. t-...-ət (as with most languages) and that the -əx was coloured to -ax creating an imbalance. In the perfect and imperfect the 1sg. and 2sg. are grouped together, while in the aorist. due to colouring the two forms would have two different vowels. This would then be spread by analogy to the 2sg.
But, this explanation would only work if /ə/ shifted to /a/ phonemically, and I doubt that this is the case. There are many examples where <a> that should be a /ə/ still behaves as a /ə/. For example pf. 1sg. saḫḫ /səġ-x/; pf2.ssíḫḫa /síġ-x-a/‘to buy’. Here we see the typical raising of /ə/ to /i/ when the -a suffix pf the pf2. is attached.
So, this analogy-explanation is not particularly attractive. This leaves us with a vowel /a/ that I do not quite understand.
I’m curious to hear how exactly Siwa Berber handles these types of verbs.
I decided to try a new font for my blog, it should now display in Gentium 12pt. The default font my blog theme uses is not a Unicode font, giving quite an ugly look when using Linguistic symbols. Gentium is a lovely Oldstyle serif font, with the support of a lot of funny characters us linguists like to use.
If you don’t have it already, you can get the font here. While Gentium Plus is better at stacking diacritics, which is sometimes important, the default Line spacng is much broader which I don’t like, it also seems like the hinting is not as good.
I have also justified the text, instead of flush-left. The standard justification engines of operating systems are quite terrible, so I’m not sure if I’ll continue to do this. But the text field seems just broad enough to make it work and not make it look too horrible.
Let me know what you think
Maarten Kossmann (2001) L'origine du vocalisme en zénaga de Mauritanie. Frankfurter Afrikanistische Blätter, 13, pp. 83-95
I mark the resultative form with pf2. for convenience, as it is a derivation of the perfect. See my previous blog post on the formation of this form.