After my previous blogpost, Maarten Kossmann pushed back in the comments on Twitter on the idea that *əw really yields *u, which is something that would be needed to derive *əssuɣəd from *əssəwɣəd. There are, namely several cases where u and əw really seem to remain distinct, especially in the *CəCC-an plural pattern. Thus *a-ḍăwwal pl. *i-ḍəwl-an 'brother-in-law' where the later does not surface as **iḍulan in several dialects but as iḍəwlan, for example in Figuig. Now that could perhaps be explained as the result of analogy, but Prof. Kossmann pointed out two other words where that absolutely cannot be the case, as there (surprisingly!) is no *w in the singular:
- Riffian ḏ̣aḏ̣ pl. i-ḏ̣əwḏ̣an 'finger' (though surprisingly not Figuig ḍaḍ pl. i-ḍuḍan)
- Riffian aẓwar pl. iẓəwran 'root' besides e.g. Kabyle a-ẓar pl. i-ẓuran which suggests a regularized but originally irregular alternation between singuler a-ẓar pl. i-ẓəwran.
Not only do we see here that *əw apparently does not yield *u in all dialects (but causative əssuɣəd always has u), but we also see yet another example of an a corresponding to the presence of a w, as in the instrument nouns like a-satəl from the root ăttəl.
With noun formations, we have a certain amount of formations that we can explore, which would generate some different possible formations. Nouns typically have the shape CăCVC or CCVC (from syncopated *CəCVC?) where V can be any vowel. The middle radical can also be geminated, but we can pretty clearly count that out as an option since we know the outcome of that from *a-ḍăwwal, there *w is just retained.
So could it be that the a comes from the loss of an intervocalic *w or, at least a pre-vocalic *w? Assuming that *t-addar-t pl. *t-udr-en 'house' are indeed from the root *wdr 'to live', we'd reconstruct these as *ta-wăddar-t and *ti-wədr-en. Depending on the relative chronology of the univerbation of the noun prefix to the noun (it was surely at one point a definite article or something like that) that either suggests the sound laws: *awă > a and *iwə > u or *wă > a and *wə > u.
Words like *urəɣ 'gold' (cf. iwriɣ 'to be yellow') make it clear that *a-wrəɣ or *a-wərəɣ yields *urəɣ, so that for the vocalisation of *u from *w we can probably posit *Vwə > *u and possibly *aw > u. So What could 'finger' and 'root' be similarly from something like *a-ḍăwad or *a-ḍăwăd (or perhaps even *a-ḍ(ə)wăd/*a-ḍ(ə)wad)?
If we assume this, this has implications for our causatives of Primae waw verbs, and revives an idea I have had kicking around in my head before, one would have to assume that *əssuɣəd goes back to *əssəwəɣəd. This runs into some trouble with especially the perfect in light of how I reconstruct heavy verbs with four vowels, but this is something that can be resolved with some shuffling of relative chronology.
One reason why it's attractive to posit *əssəwəɣəd with a vowel between the w and the rest of the root, is because it would resolve a bit of irregular behaviour that is widespread in Berber dialects. The verb *ănkər 'to get up' in many dialects (irregularly) assimilate the *n to k, thus yielding kkər, but in a number of dialects this *n reappears again in the causative, e.g. Kabyle kkər caus. ssənkər. That is beautifully explained if there was a *ə in between the first and the second radical of the root, blocking the assimilation in the causative that took place in the underived root.
To make this work, the instrumental formation (*a-satəl) would also have to historically have had an intervocalic *w that become a *a. Not unsurprising, I would suspect instrumental formation is ultimately a kind of nominalization from the causative 'a thing which you make/cause to wrap').
However, this could not be reconstructed as *a-s-ăwătəl as that would predict that the normal instrumental formation would be **a-săɣănəs, but comparative evidence makes it pretty clear it's *a-săɣnəs. I think we can sneak in a ə between the second and third root consonant and posit a syncope of some kind (as we would need to do in the causative *əss-əlməd < əssələməd), but there is very little reason to assume that *ă ever syncopated. So... *a-s-ăwətəl? That would suggest that *ăwə yields yields *a. This would mean 'finger' could also be from *a-ḍăwəd. This solution is pretty ad hoc and only really solves this specific problem, which isn't great.
It does, however, resolve our issue why the agent noun doesn't show the same behaviour. We saw that for the agent noun we expect *m-|ă...ă/a|, but with instrumentals of Primae waw stems it shows up with an initial *u! So *a-n-uḍăf could come from *a-n-ăwḍăf, with yet another shift: *ăw > u. Again this is fairly ad hoc, but it doesn't run into big trouble I think.
So to sum up (assuming vocalisation of *w happened before the noun prefix became part of the root):
- *(ə)wə > *u (əssuɣəd, urəɣ)
- *ăwə > *a (a-ḍad?, a-satəl)
- *əwC > *əw
- *ăwC > *u
There is a final issue that I don't think is fully resolved yet, these Primae waw verbs are also an important source of words with word-initial *e that do not come from an earlier *a. Thus forms like *eḍəs 'sleep' (verb *ăṭṭəs) and eləs 'fleece' (verb *ălləs), *eɣəd 'embers' (verb ăqqəd 'to burn') but also a fairly widespread pattern *ec̄ac of verbal nouns which seems reconstructible, e.g. in Tuareg eqqad 'cauterizing' from əqqəd 'to cauterize', cf. Fig. iqqad from qqəd 'to burn'.
Prasse derives these from *a-Hĭɣĭd and *a-Hĭqqad. *a-Hĭ quite nicely yields *e, in a pretty similar way as it does in word-final position in verbs, əmda + 1sg -əɣ yields əmdeɣ which in Prasse's reconstruction would be something like *əmdăH-ĭɣ. We could perhaps rewrite this rule with *w so that *awĭ yields *e and *awŭ yields *u, but that would require us to assume that these contractions only happened once the prefix had become part of nominal stem and we have the assume that Pre-Proto-Berber had a distinction between *ĭ and *ŭ (which is not unreasonable, but there's not that much evidence for it).
The reason why this is necessary is because stems with a long vowel as stem initial vowel (verbal stems of the type *agəm) do not yield e once they come in contact with the prefix but just i. e.g. Tuareg abər 'to take a handful' VN ibbur not **ebbur. Prasse explains the *e in eqqad as lowering of *i to e under influence of a, That words for those forms, but it doesn't explain the *e vowel in *eḍəs, *eləs, *eɣəd.
It is fine of course to assume that the contraction only happened once the prefix had univerbated with the rest of the noun stem, but it yields a rather ugly reconstruction where *ăwə yields *a whereas *awə yields u or e (presumably depending on whether it is *awŭ or *awĭ), which is... phonetically not so plausible, even if it doesn't technically get me in trouble. Historical linguistic explanations should not only work (which this one does) but also be plausible (not so sure if this one is)... Rewriting the rules with prefix univerbation in mind:
- *awŭ > *u
- *awĭ > *e
- *ĭwĭ > *u (*ĭ is probably requires here to explain why it is *əssigəm from *agəm but *əssuɣəd from *ăqqəd)
- *ăwə > *a
- *əwC > *əw
- *ăwC > *u
So, err, who knows. I don't know if it's any good yet. I've solved all the problems, but it requires a lot of ad hoc sound changes which are moreover not phonetically particularly plausible... I wonder if there is a possibility to think of a suprasegmental labialization which is used to explain difficult things in Chadic... but not entirely sure where to start with that.
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