Tamasheq language

Tamashek or Tamasheq is a variety of Tuareg, a Berber macro-language widely spoken by nomadic tribes across North and West Africa in Algeria, Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso. Tamasheq is one of the three main varieties of Tuareg, the others being Tamajaq and Tamahaq.

Tamashek is spoken mostly in Mali, especially in its central region including Timbuktu, Kidal, and Gao. It is also spoken by a sizeable population in Burkina Faso where it is spoken by 187,000 people as of 2021. As of 2022, approximately 900,000 people speak Tamashek, with the majority of speakers residing in Mali with approximately 590,000 speakers. The livelihood of the Tuareg people has been under threat in the last century, due to climate change and a series of political conflicts, notably the Arab-Tuareg rebellion of 1990–1995 in Mali which resulted in ethnic cleansing of the Tuareg in the form of reprisal killings and exile. Tamashek is currently classified as a developing language (5), partly due to the Malian government's active promotion of the language; it is currently taught in public education, from primary schools to adult literacy classes.

Tamashek is often understood in Mali as a term that denotes all Tuareg varieties. Other alternative names for Tamashek include Tamachen, Tamashekin, and Tomacheck.

Dialect divisions of Malian Tamashek

There are divergent views regarding Tamashek's dialect divisions. Some report two main dialects, named Timbuktu and Tadhaq.

Others take there to be roughly three main divisions of Malian Tamashek:

# Kal Ansar dialects around Timbuktu (denoted 'T-Ka')
# "mainstream" Tamashek dialects spoken in Kidal, Tessalit, the Gao area, and the non-Kal Ansar groups around Timbuktu
# dialects spoken by certain groups in the Gourma of Gao and Ansongo

Phonology

Vowels

The Tamasheq language has seven vowels in total: two frontal vowels /i/, /æ/; three central vowels /ə/, /æ/, /a/; and two back vowels /u/, /o/. There are two short vowels, /ə/ and /æ/, where /ə/ may be elided in some contexts, and /æ/ is always short but may be phonetically realized as a sound ranging from �to distinguished from /a/ which is always �ː There are no other distinctions between vowels which are primarily length-based. Tamasheq has no diphthongs.

While all vowels occur word-initially and word-medially, only full vowels occur word-finally.

Consonants

Tamasheq has 33 consonants, featuring six manners of articulation and eight places of articulation. There are no non-pulmonic consonants. The consonants are detailed in the table below.

The table places the two laryngeal consonants, and /h/ and /ʔ/, according to the IPA chart (the source did not specify their manners of articulation).

Consonants in a single parenthesis are of marginal use, "confined largely to loanwords." Consonants of Arabic origins – /sˤ/, /ɫ/, /ħ/, /ʕ/, and /ʔ/ – occur in Arabic loanwords. The glottal stop /ʔ/ is already largely absent in local Arabic dialects, is thus only found in unassimilated Islamic vocabulary.

Consonants in a double parenthesis occur mostly as geminated versions of other consonants. A uvular stop /q/ principally occurs in the geminated form /qq/, which can be interpreted as the "phonetic realization of geminated /ɣɣ/.

Accent

Accent is an "important feature of Tamasheq". The role of accent is "very different" for verbs and nouns. For nouns and other non-verb stems, accent is lexically determined. This is not the case for verbs. According to the rule called "default accentuation", the accent falls on the antepenult or on the leftmost syllable of verbs. The exception to the rule is resultative and long imperfect positive stems.

For example, ''a-bæ̀mbæra'', which means Bambara, has its primary accent on the antepenult syllable. A bisyllabic word ''hæ̀ræt'', which is glossed as 'thing,' has its accent on the initial syllable.

Morphology

Tamasheq's two main morphological processes are ablaut and affixation, with the former permeating the language. Many processes also undergo a combination of the two.

Derivational morphology

Most of Tamasheq nouns are underived, although some are derived by "some combination of ablaut and prefixation." For example, the noun ''t-æ-s-ȁnan-t'', which means 'oxpecker,' is prefixally derived from the causative verb ''æ̀ss-onæn'' 'tame, break in animal' with its ''-s-'' prefix.

In Tamasheq, nearly all "modifying adjectives" are participles of inflected intransitive verbs. For example, the verb 'to ripe' is ''əŋŋá'', and it is inflected into participles such as ''i-ŋŋá-n'' (MaSg) or ''t-əŋŋá-t'' (FeSg). These resultative participles are used with "adjectival" sense, adjectivalized into the word 'ripened'.

Nominal morphology

Gender and number

Gender and number are mainly marked using affixation, though in many cases they use ablaut or a combination of both.

Most nouns, regardless of gender, have vocalic prefixes, varying between -''æ-/-ə, -a-, or -e-'' for the singular, and invariable ''i-'' in the plural. Some nouns entirely lack a vocalic prefix, e.g. ''deké'' ('basket').

Feminine nouns are additionally marked by the Fe inineprefix ''t-''. For feminine singular nouns, suffix ''-t'' is required to denote singularity, thus we see a circumfix ''t-...-t.'' In cases where the stem ends in a vowel, however, an additional inner Fe suffix ''-t-'' is added before the outer suffix, thus the affix frame becomes ''t-...-t-t''.

In addition to the plural vocalic prefix ''-i-'', pluralization of nouns requires gender-based suffixation: for feminine plural nouns, suffix ''-en'' or ''-ten'' is added, while for masculine nouns Ma culinesuffix ''-æn'' or ''-tæn'' is added. In some cases, a noun pluralizes by stem ablaut without suffixation; one example of unsuffixed plural ablaut is ''æ̀-ɣata'' ('crocodile'), which is pluralized to ''ì-ɣata''.

The table below illustrates the idealized morphological rules of gender and number marking explained so far:

Compounding

Tamasheq makes use of compounding to form nouns. Most noun-noun compounds necessitate a possessor preposition ə̀n in between the two morphemes, which can be analytically structured as [ə̀n Y 'X of Y.' Depending on the nouns, ə̀n may become unaccented, as shown in the first example below.

Verbal morphology

Ablaut distinguishes the three basic inflectable verb stems in Tamasheq:

#perfective
#short Imperfective aspect">imperfective