Details

General

Morphemic form: {maətna}
New orthography: maanna, maannakkut
Old orthography: mãna, mãnákut
Sources: [MFSJLK10], [SK71], [CR93], [CWSL58], [JP67], [CBBJRPIKJR97]
Combinations: View list

Description and behaviour

Form and usage:

The meaning of this particle is 'now', 'in this moment' etc. According to the Comparative Eskimo Dictionary [MFSJLK10], it derives from the reconstructed historical form {maðətən}, which is the (reconstructed) equative case form of the demonstrative root {mað-}, i.e. {mat}N, meaning 'now' (or 'this (moment)'). However, as this construction is no longer possible, since it depends on phonemes, that have been dropped long ago, we do not record it as a combination here.

Besides the plain form maanna, denoting 'now', Kleinschmidt [SK71] also notes that it even may be used with some of the (modern) prepositional case endings, even though it is not a noun stem, and that it (historically) already carries an ending. These are:

In these examples, the ablative/allative/equative endings may even be added on top of the vialis ending, contrary to normal word formation (with the final /t/ seemingly being treated like an ending on a weak q-stem, so it is removed, rather than assimilated).

The word is also sometimes used as an enclitic, cf. ??.


Meanings and examples

  • maanna ulapissutaruppunga, now there is no longer anything I am busy with [CWSL58]

Search the corpus for further examples.


Tags

References