Details

General

Morphemic form: N{a}
New orthography: a
Old orthography: a
Sources:
Combinations: View list
Left sandhi: Irregular

Description and behaviour

Form and usage:

This is the so-called demonstrative a, which also appears in the demonstrative case endings. However, the demonstrative roots can also form a kind of exclamations (in the Comparative Eskimo Dictionary [MFSJLK10] called predicative usage), which consist of the demonstrative root itself (with or without the prefix {ta(ð)}*) and then this "demonstrative a".

The general meaning of such an exclamatory form is "X it is", where X is the location denoted by the demonstrative root (e.g. 'here', 'there', 'far up on the mountain' etc.). However, many of these exclamatory forms have become lexicalised with quite different, special meanings. This is noted in the entry for each root.


Left sandhi:

The ending usually causes gemination of a final consonant in a demonstrative root, for example:

However, it is not always the case with all roots, and adding the prefix {ta(ð)}*) may also suppress this, e.g.

Whether gemination or suppression happens is too irregular to give a rule for, so these cases are best learnt individually, since their numbers are limited. It is noted in the entries for each of the demonstrative stems.


Meanings and examples


Search the corpus for further examples.


References