Details

General

Morphemic form: N{-gə}V
New orthography: -gaa, -givaa, -ginnippoq, -raa, -rivaa, -rinnippoq
Old orthography: -gâ, -râ
Combinations: Click here
Variants: V{-gə}V,
See also: N{-qaq}V, N{-u}V,
Left sandhi:
Fusional,
Right sandhi:
Default/none,
Inflection sandhi:
ə-contraction,
Stem type: ə-stem
Diathesis: Reflexive
Valency change: None
Valency:
Divalent,
HTR morpheme:
nnək,
HTR stem: -gənnək,

Description and behaviour

Form and usage:

This affix is most commonly used on noun stems, but also has a less common, verbal variant V{-gə}V, presumably from the same morpheme {kə-}, albeit with a completely different meaning. However, their form and sandhi behaviour is the same.

The meaning of this affix can best be rendered as 'Agent has Patient as N'. This should normally be translated as 'Patient is Agents N', so this affix is used to express sentences of the form 'it is my dog', 'I am your father' etc. It combines the 'having' sense of N{-qaq}V with the 'owning' meaning of a possessive ending, which cannot be obtained otherwise. It can thus be viewed as a divalent version of the monovalent affix N{-qaq}V, or as a verbal form of a possessive ending (which it indeed in many cases will resemble). Hence we denote it the verbal possessive affix.

The meaning of this affix can be difficult to grasp at first for English speakers, because equivalent English sentences are usually expressed with the verb to be. This can best be illustrated by performing an intermediate step where the English sentence is rewritten to the appropriate Greenlandic structure ('Grenglish'), before translating the sentence. Consider for example the sentence Peter is my friend. Using {əkəŋŋutə}N, 'friend', we can translate this sentence as follows:

  1. English: Peter is my friend
  2. Grenglish: I have Peter as friend
  3. Greenlandic: Piitaq ikinngutigaara (uncontracted: ikinngutigivara)

using the transitive indicative 1.sg/3.sg ending V{vara}, 'I Vb him'.

In the English sentence, Peter is the subject and my friend is the subject predicate, and a possessive noun phrase with friend being owned by I. In the Grenglish sentence, I is the subject and Peter is the object, and friend is a part of an adverbial phrase. Finally, in the Greenlandic sentence, the verb ending V{vara} expresses that I is the subject and some 3rd person he is the object, and this object is further specified with an explicit noun, Piitaq, appearing in the absolutive case.

Note that in the sentence construction, this affix may (especially in older literature) prefer a reversal of the usual order of subject and object, if both are explicitly mentioned in the sentence. The usual ordering is SOV, but if the verb is constructed with this affix, the ordering may thus instead be OSV.


Left sandhi:

This affix is truncative, except on q-stems where /qg/ regularly fuse to /r/.


Meanings and examples

This is the way to express the equivalent of English sentences such as 'he is my friend', 'I am your father', i.e. 'subject is object's N'.

  • ataatagaara, he is my father

    literally 'I have him as father', from ataata, and with IND.1sg/3sg ending V{vaqga}. Notice how the subject and object are reversed in the Greenlandic sentence, compared to the English construction.

  • ataatagaarma, I am thy father

    literally 'thou have me as father', with IND.2sg/1sg ending V{vaqma}.

  • oqaasilerineq soqutigisama ilagaat, grammar is one of my interests

    Literally 'my interests (soqutigisama) have grammar (oqaasilerineq) as their part'. Note the reversed word order, OSV; soqutigisama is the subject.


References