The Origin of Front Vowel Nominal Prefixes in Berber

Abstract

Almost all nouns in Berber are preceded by a prefix. The most commonly attested prefix system marks gender, number and ‘state’. There are two states, the annexed state or Etat d’Annexion (henceforth EA) which marks the post-verbal subject and post-preposition nouns, and the free state or Etat Libre (henceforth EL), which is used in all other contexts, and is the usual citation form.1 The example of the noun aɣyul ‘donkey’ in Kabyle Berber below illustrates the typical system found in Moroccan-Algerian Berber languages.2