Morphophonology

Suffixes fall into three categories, +, - and ±. The first type, the plus type, is the plain agglutinative one, the suffix is just added to the stem. The second type (-) tells that the suffix can only be added to a vowel-final stem, so it removes an eventual final consonant from the stem, and the third type (±) is stem-sensitive, so that it truncates the final consonant from some stems, but not from others.

Morphology

Nouns

Example nouns

                           
stem         rel        pl         nut
=============================================
p-decl       {-p}       {-t}       {-nut}        
tuttu       tuttup     tuttut     tuttunut
angutE      angutip    angutit    angutinut
qimmiq      qimmip     qimmip     qimminut 

p-variety    {-p}       {-t}       {-nut}                                 
miir(q)aq   meeqqap    meeqqat    meeqqanut
atuag(k)aq  atuakkap   atuakkat   atuakkanut
kalaal(l)iq kalaallip  kalaallit  kalaallinut

Transitional {-up}       {-it}       {+nut}                              
kangirluk   kangerluup kangerluit kangerlunnut
panik       paniup     paniit     paninnut

up-decl      {±up}      {±it}     {+nut}                                
irniq       ernerup    ernerit    ernernut

The p-variety stems all have a short fricative in the stem (v, s, l, j, g, r), this one is lengthened in front of a consonantal minus suffix.

The p-variety stems are gradually shifted to both the p-declension and the up-declension(?). For taliq + mi we have 3 different forms: tallimi (tal(l)iq+mi) (correct), talimi (taliq+mi (regularized), talermi (taliq+mi) ("wrong", but very often)

All the suffixes of the p-declension are minus-suffixes (they remove a final consonant)

The suffixes of the up-declension are plus/minus-suffixes

p-nouns

Transitional nouns

up-nouns

Cases

Files

Trond Trosterud trond.trosterud@hum.uit.no
Last modified: Sun Oct 31 08:09:22 2004