Details

General

Description and behaviour

Form and usage:

The meaning of this stem is 'Agent teaches/instructs Patient'. It is a straightforward combination of {əlitniaq}V, 'study' and the causative affix V{tət}V. Thus, the literal meaning is 'he causes/lets him study/learn (something)'.

Note that the thing being studies optionally can be given in the instrumental case; this is inherited from the base {əlitniaq}V. That stem is itself divalent and agentive, and it denotes:

• 'Agent₁ studies Patient₁', or
• 'Agent₁=Actor studies (Patient₁@INS)'.

Thus, when V{tət}V is attached, it may combine with either of these two meanings, and since this affix introduces its own Agent₂ role when attached to a divalent stem, but maps an Actor role to the Patient role when attached to a monovalent stem, there are thus two possible interpretations of the present stem:

• 'Agent₂ lets (Agent₁@INS) study Patient₁', or
• 'Agent₂ lets Agent₁=Actor=Patient₂ study (Patient₁@INS)'.

Thus, if a secondary object is given in the instrumental case, it can either denote the person who is tutored (and the direct object will be the topic), or it can denote the topic (and the direct object will be the person being tutored). This complication carries over to the case where this stem is used with a HTR-morpheme, which removes the Patient role and allows it to appear in the instrumental case. There can only be one instrumental object, and with the HTR-stem this can therefore either denote the topic or the person being tutored.

Right sandhi:

Right sandhi is inherited from the right-most component, V{tət}V. See this for details.

Meanings and examples

Search the corpus for further examples.

Tags

• Semantic categorisation / Uncategorised

References

• [SK71] Samuel Kleinschmidt (1871): Den grønlandske Ordbog.
• [CWSL58] C.W. Schultz-Lorentzen (1958): Den Grønlandske Ordbog.
• [CBBJRPIKJR97] Christian Berthelsen, Birgitte Jakobsen, Robert Petersen, Inge Kleivan & Jørgen Rischel (1997): Oqaatsit.