Details

General

Description and behaviour

Form and usage:

This is the un-possessed ergative singular ending. It has three forms:

• The form N{p} is used on p-declined stems, which are vowel-stems and weak stems (mostly q-stems, very few k-stems).
• The form N{-up} is used on up-declined stems, which are regular stems and strong stems (most k-stems are regular, very few q-stems are regular; conversely, most strong stem are q-stems, few are k-stems).
• The form N{-ip} is used on ip-declined stems, which are a very small collection of stems; mainly N{-lək}N and stems derived from it, but also a few others.

See also the absolutive plural ending N{t}, the ergative plural ending N{t}, and the absolutive 2sg/sg possessive ending N{t}, which vary similarly.

Left sandhi:

The N{p} form causes weak stems to drop their final consonant. The ending is not inherently truncative (i.e. sandhi truncative), but it is phonotactically truncative. The ending consists of a single consonant, and any stem ending in a consonant must necessarily therefore lose this consonant, since no syllable (and hence no word) can end on a double consonant.

The N{-up} and N{-ip} forms are truncative. However, on strong stems, the ending may cause metathesis, or it may weaken the stem-final consonant rather than removing it.

Meanings and examples

Search the corpus for further examples.

References

• [CR88] Christian Rasmussen (1888): Grønlandsk Sproglære.
• [CWSL51] C.W. Schultz-Lorentzen (1951): Det Vestgrønlandske Sprog.
• [SB03] Stig Bjørnum (2003): Grønlandsk Grammatik.
• [FAJN19] Flemming A.J. Nielsen (2019): Vestgrønlandsk Grammatik.