How is the feminine marker t found across Afro-Asiatic languages?

The feminine gender marker t is a significant, ancient feature of the Afro-Asiatic languages, serving as a common element used to mark feminine gender across various divisions of the phylum.12

Its usage manifests in several ways:

• Gender Marking: The t element is used in combination with other markers to distinguish feminine singular forms in demonstratives, articles, and nouns.2
• Verb Conjugation: It is widely employed in verb conjugation to indicate the feminine gender of the subject. For example, the third-person singular feminine prefix ta- or ti- appears in Amazigh (t-dawa), Hausa (tá-sàyáa), Bedawi (ti-dbíl), and Akkadian (ta-prus). Corresponding suffixes are also found, such as -t in Amazigh, -tj in Egyptian, and -at in Semitic.2
• Noun Derivation: In Semitic languages, adding the suffix -(a)t to a nominal or adjectival stem creates a secondary feminine form, such as the Arabic kātib-at-un (female writer) compared to kātib-un (male writer).3

Because of the great antiquity of Proto-Afro-Asiatic, this marker is one of the few features that has survived across the various divisions of the language family.1