THEORY: Inuit

> Date:         Thu, 10 Jun 1999 13:40:01 +0200
> From: Christophe Grandsire <Christophe.Grandsire@...>
>         I'd really like to find an Inuit grammar. Maybe I would then
> finally understand what a polysynthetic language can be! :) (and how
> to derive in one only word: "we didn't find any place to rest" for a
> root meaning "to be tired"! -that's the first (and only) example of
> Inuit I ever saw-)
This is going by a grammar of West Greenlandic that I read half a year
ago or so... so no guarantees.

Basically, there are 6 open-class types of morpheme in Inuit
languages:
        Verb/adjective roots,
        Noun roots,
        Verb-verb suffixes,
        Verb-noun suffixes,
        Noun-verb suffixes, and
        Noun-noun suffixes.

Words are constructed from a root, any number of suffixes --- this
combination I'll call a base --- and a synthetic ending expressing
tense/agreement (for verb bases) or case/number/agreement (for noun
bases).

The rule for suffixes is that xxxx-yyyy suffixes go on an xxxx base to
form a yyyy base. There is some overlap between suffix classes, where
'the same' suffix can occur in more than one role with very similar
meaning, but in general a suffix belongs to one class only.

Also, different suffixes have different rules for how much is kept of
the base they attach to, and some have alternate forms for different
phonetic shapes of the base --- the usual natlang complications.

I never saw your particular example, so I can't say exactly what the
derivation is. But it could go something like this:

        A verb root meaning 'to be tired'.
        Tack on a verb-verb suffix to get 'to rest'.
        Tack on a verb-noun suffix to get 'place to rest'.
        Tack on a noun-verb suffix to get 'find a place to rest'.
        Tack on a verb-verb suffix to get 'not find a place to rest'.
        Tack on a verb ending to get 'we did not find a place to rest'.

AFAICT, roots are generally used for the more concrete concepts, and
suffixes for more abstract ones, like derivation is in languages like
English or Latin. But there are some suffixes that would need to be
expressed as separate words, or at least by compounding, in the other
languages. "Find a-" in the word above is one example; "arrive too
late to-" is another, IIRC.

(Note that this is a simpler type of polysyntheticness than in some
North American Native languages, where all sorts of objects and
oblique arguments can be incorporated in the verb. More like serial
verbs, perhaps).

Apart from this, the language is ergative and pro-drop. The genitive/
ergative case, called relative, governs agreement on another noun or
the verb. Verbs agree with their absolute argument too. (Nouns can
agree with a relative (in genitive function) regardless of their own
case). Approx. five non-core cases like locative, instrumental, ....

Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@...> (Humour NOT marked)