Details

General

Description and behaviour

Form and usage:

According to Kleinschmidt [13], the basic meaning of this stem is: "a sign/marker by which one can know something", and with a possessive ending, e.g. absolutive 3sg/sg N{-a}, nalunaa(q)qutaa, either "his sign/marker" (that he owns), or "a sign/mark by which he can be recognised". However, a more specific meaning here is a watch, i.e. a device by which one can know the time.

Later dictionaries [14, 16, 19] also add more specific meanings:

• 'sight' (aiming device on a rifle),
• 'direction marker' (something indicating a direction, maybe also a compass).

However, nowadays, the most common meaning is still watch. The other meanings (including the general meaning 'sign') do not seem to be commonly used.

Form:

The older dictionaries by Kleinschmidt, Chr. Rasmussen and Schultz-Lorentzen [13, 14, 16] give the form nalunaerĸutaĸ, corresponding to nalunaaqqutaq in the new orthography. However, the newer dictionaries Ordbogeeraq and Oqaatsit [17, 19] instead give the form nalunaaqutaq with only a single /q/. This is the form used today, so we also give the morphemic form as /nalunaiqutaq/ with a single /q/.

The Comparative Eskimo Dictionary [21] give the reconstructed historical form as {naɬunaʀilkutaʀ}. They do reference the historic forms of V{-utaq}Nfix/vv/naq, "kl/affix/vv/-iq) }}, but with no clear indication of how the listed form is derived from this combination, nor of how the modern-day form is derived from this historic form. However, given both the meaning and the form, it seems that the final morpheme is V{-utaq}N, or maybe a variant thereof, cf. N{-qutaq}N. This still leaves open the question of the origin of the /q/ (or 'rĸ' in the old orthography) before this last morpheme.

Inflection sandhi:

Inflection sandhi is inherited from the right-most component, V{-utaq}N. See this for details.

Meanings and examples