Details
General
| Morphemic form: | V{vai} |
| New orthography: | +vai, +pai |
| Old orthography: | -vai, -pai |
| Sources: | [CR88], [CWSL51], [SB03], [FAJN19] |
| Combinations: | View list |
| Left sandhi: | Default |
Description and behaviour
Form and usage:
This is the transitive indicative 3sg/3pl ending.
The mood marker {va} here appears as {vaq}, which behaves like a weak q-stem, and the Subject and Object are marked by the absolutive 3sg/pl possessive ending N{-i}, i.e. the ending appears to have been formed from
- {vaq} + {-i} ⇒ {vai}
This is the same for all transitive indicative endings with 3rd person Object marking.
According to the Comparative Eskimo Dictionary [MFSJLK10], there may also be some relation between this transitive mood marker {va(q)} and the passive participle V{-ðaq}N, with /ð/ having become /v/ at some point, which then seems to be the reason behind this special construction of the 3rd person endings.
As this ending is built from N{-i}, it also has the same apparent exception from the a-assimilation rule, i.e. the ending is spelt +vai, +pai in the new orthography, but the pronunciation is still [vaaj].
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.
- [MFSJLK10] Michael Fortescue, Steven Jacobson, Lawrence Kaplan (2010): Comparative Eskimo Dictionary (2ED).