Abstract The goal of this paper is to present newly collected data of Djibouti Somali and show how it offers insight into the architecture of nouns. Djibouti Somali, like Standard Somali, is characterized by the presence of inflectional classes. Building on my own fieldwork material, I discuss both the empirical statements and the theoretical implications that emerge from the observation of three aspects of noun inflection: (1) pluralization strategies, (2) the position of pitch accent with respect to gender and (3) the opposition between Absolutive and Nominative case. In particular, the fact that Djibouti Somali uses mainly two suffixes to pluralize nouns, leads us to the hypothesis that the inflectional system of this variety consists of only two inflectional types. Basic non-derived nouns belong to what I call type A, whereas suffixed nouns belong to type B. This dichotomy is confirmed by the behavior of pitch accent with respect to both gender and syntactic case. Finally, I propose that the distinction between type A and type B can be accounted for, in the context of a formal analysis, by postulating the existence of a contrast between null vs. overt nominalizer.

中文翻译：

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吉布提索马里语名词的复数，女性化和变调

摘要本文的目的是介绍吉布提索马里语的最新收集的数据，并说明它如何提供对名词体系的洞察力。像标准索马里人一样，吉布提索马里人的特点是存在拐弯阶层。在我自己的田野调查材料的基础上，我讨论了从名词变位的三个方面的观察得出的经验陈述和理论含义：（1）多元化策略；（2）变调在​​性别上的位置；（3） ）绝对和主格案件之间的对立。特别地，吉布提索马里语主要使用两个后缀来复数名词这一事实，使我们得出这样一个假设，即该变种的屈折系统仅包含两种屈折类型。基本的非衍生名词属于我所说的A型，后缀名词属于B型。这种二分法由音高重音在性别和句法格方面的行为所证实。最后，我建议，在形式分析的背景下，可以通过假设零位标定词与明显标定词之间存在对比来解释A型和B型之间的区别。