1. Family: Afro-Asiatic
  2. Genus: Berber

Tuareg (Ahaggar)

WALS coordinates: 23° N, 6° E

spoken in Libya, Niger, Algeria

Alternative Names

Ethnologue:
Ruhlen:
  • Tamahaq
Routledge:
  • Tamasheq
Other:
  • Tamachek',
  • Tuareg,
  • Tamasheq (Tahaggart),
  • Tuareg (Tahaggart Tamahaq),
  • Tuareg (Tahaggart)
ISO 639-3:

Features

Feature Value References
Phonology
Consonant Inventories Moderately large
Vowel Quality Inventories Large (7-14)
Consonant-Vowel Ratio Average
Voicing in Plosives and Fricatives In both plosives and fricatives
Voicing and Gaps in Plosive Systems Missing /p/
Uvular Consonants Uvular stops and continuants
Glottalized Consonants No glottalized consonants
Lateral Consonants /l/, no obstruent laterals
Front Rounded Vowels None
Syllable Structure Complex
Tone No tones
Absence of Common Consonants All present
Presence of Uncommon Consonants None
Nominal Categories
Comitatives and Instrumentals Differentiation
Verbal Categories
Perfective/Imperfective Aspect Grammatical marking
The Past Tense No past tense
The Future Tense Inflectional future exists
The Perfect No perfect
Simple Clauses
Predicative Possession Locational
Predicative Adjectives Verbal encoding
Nominal and Locational Predication Different
Zero Copula for Predicate Nominals Possible
Comparative Constructions Locational
Lexicon
Numeral Bases Decimal