Details

General

Description and behaviour

Form and usage:

The basic meaning of this stem is 'Agent reads Patient'. Today, the morpheme is regularly agentive, but some lexicalised words exist that have been formed with the HTR-morpheme V{ði}V, e.g. atuaasoq, a 'reader', with V{ðuq}N. When used intransitively, e.g. atuarpoq, it can just mean 'he reads (something)', i.e. an ordinary anti-passive construction. However, the intransitive usage has also attained a secondary meaning: 'he is in/goes to school'.

Form

According to the comparative Eskimo Dictionary [16], the historical form of this base is {atuaq-}. However, we have here added a /v/ to the stem (even though it does not appear in the reconstructed, historic form) to account for the cases where a geminating affix is added, e.g. V{'-t(ə)}V. In these cases, an [ff] will appear between the /u/ and /a/, e.g. in atuffappaa. This can regularly be accounted for, by including a /v/ in this position, even though it will not normally be visible, since /uva/ is always spelt 'ua' in the new orthography. Furthermore, this hypothetical /v/ also appears in some of the i-dialects, such as East Greenlandic, where atuar- indeed has the form alivar-; for example in the word for 'school', alivarpik (West Greenlandic: atuarfik).

Notable forms:

• HTR-form: {atuvaq}V + V{ði}V ⇒ /atuvai/
  

  This HTR-form is found in some lexicalised constructions such as atuaasoq.

• Passive participle: {atuvaq}V + V{-ðaq}N ⇒ /atuvagaq/
  

  This is the standard passive participle, which is also lexicalised in the sense of 'book'.

Meanings and examples