Details
General
| Morphemic form: | V{nəqcarə}V |
| New orthography: | +nersaraat |
| Old orthography: | -nerssarât |
| Sources: | [SB03] |
| Combinations: | View list |
| Constituents: | V{nəqcaq}N + N{-gə}V |
| Left sandhi: | Default, ə-eliding |
| Right sandhi: | Default/none |
| Inflection sandhi: | ə-contraction |
| Stem type: | ə-stem |
Description and behaviour
Form and usage:
This affix a verbal form of superlative V{nəqcaq}N, created with the 'verbal possessive' affix N{-gə}V.
The meaning is 'Patient is the most Vb'ing of the Agents'.
It is similar to using V{nəqcaq}N with possessive endings, except that this affix yields a full verbal clause, rather than a possessive noun phrase.
Thus, this affix is comparable to the verbalisation of the superlative V{nəqpaaq}N with N{-u}V, i.e. V{neqpau}V, except that those two affixes are used for creating modifiers for nouns, and verbal clauses with a subject predicate, whereas V{nəqcaq}N and V{nəqcarə}V are used for partitive superlative constructions.
Compare the following, using {aŋə}N, 'Actor is big' as an example:
- V{nəqpaaq}N, 'the most Vb'ing', e.g. annerpaaq, 'the biggest' (nominal).
- V{nəqpau}V, 'it is the most Vb'ing', e.g. annerpaavoq, 'it is the biggest' (verbal).
- V{nəqcaq}N, 'the most Vb'ing of them', e.g. annersaat 'the biggest of them' (nominal).
- V{nəqcarə}V, 'it is the most Vb'ing of them', e.g. annersaraat 'it is the biggest of them' (verbal).
Given the meaning of this affix, the Subject marking in the ending will likely always be plural.
Furthermore, note that, as with N{-gə}V, the way the sentence is structured is differently compared to its English equivalent.
Thus, it should be translated in two steps:
- 'The
Patientis the most Vb'ing (part/member) of theAgents' is the natural way to express the meaning of this affix in English. - 'The
Agents have thePatientas their most Vb'ing (part/member)' is the literal meaning.
Notice how the Subject in the normal English sentence corresponds to the Patient role, and therefore will become the Object in the resulting sentence in Kalaallisut.
For example, to express a sentence such as 'the polar bear is the largest of the animals' in Kalaallisut, it should first be rewritten to the appropriate form:
- Normal English: the polar bear is the largest of the land animals.
- Transformed English: the land animals have the polar bear as their largest.
- Kalaallisut: nanoq nersutit annersaraat.
The Subject is nersutit (the land animals), and the Object is nanoq (the polar bear).
Notice also the reversed word order, with Object before Subject: this is not uncommon in constructions with N{-gə}V in general, and in particular with the present affix.
Left sandhi:
Left sandhi is inherited from the left-most component, V{nəqcaq}N. See this for details.
Meanings and examples
- Piitaq annersaraat, Piitaq is the biggest of them
Literally 'they have Piitaq as their biggest'. Note also the ending, V{vaat}, which is the indicative 3pl/3sg ending; i.e. it marks a 3rd person plural as
Subject(not explicitly specified, so here just translated as 'they'), and a 3rd person singular asObject, which is here explicitly specified as Piitaq. - Nuuk illoqarfiit annersaraat, Nuuk is the biggest of the towns
Nuuk is the explicit
Object, which is mapped to thePatientrole, whilst illoqarfiit, 'the towns' is theSubjectand is mapped to theAgentrole. Thus literally: 'the towns have Nuuk as their biggest'.The example could also be expanded further, e.g. Nuuk Kalaallit Nunaata illoqarfiisa annersaraat, which has the whole possessive noun phrase Kalaallit Nunaata illoqarfiisa, 'the towns of Greenland', as
Subject.
Search the corpus for further examples.
Tags
References
- [SB03] Stig Bjørnum (2003): Grønlandsk Grammatik.