Details

General

Description and behaviour

Form and usage:

According to Kleinschmidt [SK71], this stem has a number of meanings:

1. 'Agent cuts something off Patient', or 'shortens Patient' (by cutting something off). This seems to be the general, literal meaning.
2. 'Agent interrupts Patient', i.e. stops speech or an action before it is completed.
3. 'Agent circumcises Patient'. This is a specific meaning of the more general, first meaning.

If used intransitively, without a HTR-morpheme, the meaning becomes passive, 'Patient=Actor has something cut off'. According to Kleinschmidt [SK71], the passive usage is preferably only in the first sense of this stem.

Notable forms:

• HTR: {kəpə}V + V{ði}V ⇒ /kəpəci/
  

  The HTR-form is mentioned in Oqaatsit [CBBJRPIKJR97], but seemingly not in any of the older dictionaries.

• Passive participle: {kəpə}V + V{-ðaq}N ⇒ /kəttaq/
  

  This form is listed in Schultz-Lorentzen [CWSL58] as a separate entry, spelt kítaĸ in the old orthography, and denoting 'a slice' (e.g. of bread), i.e. 'something that has been cut off'. It seems to be a passive participle, but irregularly formed by drop of the stem-final /ə/. See also {kəppaq}N, which seems to have a similar meaning.

Inflection

Inflection pattern:

Meanings and examples

Search the corpus for further examples.

Tags

• Semantic categorisation / Uncategorised

References

• [MFSJLK10] Michael Fortescue, Steven Jacobson, Lawrence Kaplan (2010): Comparative Eskimo Dictionary (2ED).
• [SK71] Samuel Kleinschmidt (1871): Den grønlandske Ordbog.
• [CWSL58] C.W. Schultz-Lorentzen (1958): Den Grønlandske Ordbog.
• [JP67] Jonathan Petersen (1967): Ordbogêraĸ.
• [CBBJRPIKJR97] Christian Berthelsen, Birgitte Jakobsen, Robert Petersen, Inge Kleivan & Jørgen Rischel (1997): Oqaatsit.