Introduction

Why do we need a morphemic dictionary?

Suppose you want to learn Greenlandic/Kalaallisut. That means learning affixes, because you can hardly say a single non-trivial sentence without using at least a few of them.

Now suppose you want to say I go (somewhere) to see it. You know 'I see it' is takuara, so now you just need a way to express 'go to'. You browse through the DAKA dictionary and stumble upon the affix -riartorpoq, which precisely means 'go to'. However, according to the entries, this affix can also have the forms -kkiartorpoq, -jartorpoq and -artorpoq. So which form should you use? DAKA does not tell you directly; it only gives you some examples for each form, with no explanation whatsoever. These are the examples:

• qisussioriartorpoq, goes out to gather firewood
• uffariartorpoq, goes somewhere to shower
• ermikkiartorpoq, goes to wash his face
• pattakkiartorpoq, goes to play piano
• sinikkiartorpoq, goes home to sleep
• igajartorpoq, goes home to cook food
• itersaajartorpoq, goes over to wake up the others
• imerteriartorpoq, is on his way to water his garden
• neriartorpoq, goes to eat
• suliartorpoq, goes to work

If you look up each of these bases (qisussiorpoq, uffarpoq, ermippoq, pattappoq, sinippoq, igavoq, itersaavoq, imerterivoq, nerivoq, sulivoq) you might eventually realise that

• -riartor- is used when the stem ends in "r" (i.e. qisussiorpoq, uffarpoq)
• -kkiartor- is used when the stem ends in "p" (i.e. ermippoq, pattappoq, sinippoq)
• -jartor- is used when the stem ends in "a" (i.e. igavoq, itersaavoq)
• -artor- is used when the stem ends in "i" (i.e. nerivoq, sulivoq)

But why could the dictionary not just state this in plain words? Why is this detective work necessary? And furthermore: the examples do not tell you which form to choose when the stem ends on "u"! So which form should you choose with taku-?

Imagine you wanted to learn this affix: If you try to learn from the DAKA, you would seemingly have to memorise all four forms plus the rather complicated case analysis for when to use each form. And that is just for one single affix! But there are hundreds of affixes, and none of them behave exactly like -riartor-, so you cannot even hope to reuse it as a 'template' for learning the behaviour of other affixes. Clearly, this approach is hopeless.

It is also completely unnecessary. We can capture the whole range of behaviours above with just a single form, V{(gi)jaqtuq}V, plus a quite simple rule: (gi) disappears after any vowel. By learning just this one form, and this one little special rule about (gi), you can generate all the forms above, by applying the general sandhi- and sound rules described in the AITWG. This also answers our initial question: taku- is a vowel stem, so (gi) disappears. By applying the sound rules, we therefore get

V{taku}{(gi)jaqtuq}V{vara} ⇒ /takujaqtuqvara/ ⇒* takujartorpara

In other words, V{(gi)jaqtuq}V is the morphemic form underlying the four concrete forms listed above. It is the single form learners ought to memorise, instead of the complicated case analysis above, and it is the form a dictionary of Kalaallisut ought to list, if that dictionary were intended to help people actually learn the language. But sadly, the DAKA is not such a dictionary. In contrast, MoFo is.