Folia Orientalia

Abstract

Berber languages outside Mauritania have a number of different morphological classes of vowel-final and semivowel-final verbs ("final weak verbs"). The situation in Zenaga of Mauritania looks very different. In this article, the Zenaga reflexes of the non-Mauritanian weak verbs are compared by studying all relevant cognates. As a result, it proves possible to establish to what extent the main weak verb classes of non-Mauritanian Berber are reflected in Zenaga, and to what extent certain irregularities can be understood from Zenaga-internal developments.