Half-transitive affixes

Agent-preserving and patient-preserving stems:

Divalent verbal stems (including valency-increasing affixes) can be divided into two, overlapping categories:

• Agent-preserving stems, for example atuarpaa, 'he reads it', and toquppaa, 'he kills it'.
• Patient-preserving stems, for example atorpaa, 'he uses it', and toquppaa, 'he kills it'.

The meaning of these stems include both a logical Agent role (the doer of the action), and a logical Patient role (the one on whom the action is done), and with a transitive ending, both roles are marked in the ending (since a transitive ending contains two person markers, denoting both the Subject and the Object). The distinction above is based on how the meaning changes, if instead an intransitive ending is added (since an intransitive ending only contains a single person marker, denoting the Subject).

• On agent-preserving stems, the Agent role is retained.
• On patient-preserving stems, the Patient role is retained.

However, the two categories are overlapping, so some stems are both agent-preserving and patient-preserving. Thus, this gives rise to a three-way distinction:

• Agentive stems are agent-preserving and not patient-preserving. Thus, if given intransitive form, the Patient is dropped and meaning remains active. For example: atuarpaa, 'he reads it' ⇒ atuarpoq, 'he reads '.

• Patientive stems are patient-preserving and not agent-preserving. Thus, if given intransitive form, the Agent role is dropped, and the Patient role is instead mapped to the Subject in the ending, so the meaning becomes passive. For example: atorpaa, 'he uses it' ⇒ atorpoq, 'it is used'.

• Reflexive stems are both agent-preserving and patient-preserving. Thus, if given intransitive form, both the Agent role and the Patient role are retained, and both are therefore mapped to the Subject in the ending, so the meaning becomes reflexive (or reciprocal, if the Subject marker is plural). For example: toquppaa, 'he kills it' ⇒ (imminut) toquppoq, 'he kills himself'.

The anti-passive construction:

The point of not mentioning a role in the ending is to remove focus from it. With agentive stems, this is straightforward as mentioned above, but if the stem is patientive or reflexive, this cannot be done directly without changing the meaning. However, by adding a HTR-morpheme first, the meaning remains active and transitive, even though the form becomes intransitive. This allows the Patient to be defocused, since it is no longer marked explicitly in the verbal ending, which gives a meaning that can be understood as indefinite ('a/some' instead of 'the'). For example:

• atorpaa, 'he uses it' ⇒ atuivoq, 'he uses (something)'.
• toquppaa, 'he kills it' ⇒ toqutsivoq, 'he kills (something)'.

This is a so-called anti-passive construction. Finally, a direct object can be added in the instrumental case, i.e. N{mək}, N{nək} etc., which references the Patient role, but now defocused, since it is not marked by an explicit person marker. For example:

• qarasaasiaq atorpaa, 'he uses the computer' ⇒ qarasaasiamik atuivoq, 'he uses a/some computer'.
• puisi toquppaa, 'he kills the seal' ⇒ puisimik toqutsivoq, 'he kills a/some seal'.

Distribution of HTR-morphemes:

There are two primary HTR-morphemes, V{ði}V and V{nnək}V, and each stem has a preference for only one of these. In the present dictionary, we indicate the preferred HTR-morpheme for each stem. However, in general, they are used as follows:

• q-stems generally take V{ði}V, but according to Kleinschmidt [9], they may occasionally take V{nnək}V.
• k-stems generally take V{ði}V, but according to Kleinschmidt [9], they may occasionally take V{nnək}V.
• t-stems take V{ði}V.
• Vowel-stems (a, i, u) generally take V{ði}V, but they may occasionally take V{nnək}V.
• ə-stems generally take V{nnək}V, but in some cases V{ði}V is used instead, with elision of /ə/.
• t(ə)-stems take V{ði}V.

In addition, there is a specialised HTR-morpheme, V{(k)liq}V, which is used on a few stems.

As indicated above, there are some rules-of-thumb for determining the HTR-morpheme based on the stem type, but they are not without exceptions, so the preferred HTR-morpheme is listed explicitly in the Verb stem section. Affixing the HTR-morpheme to the stem yields its HTR-stem, which is also indicated in the Verb stem section. This is especially relevant for stems taking the HTR-morpheme V{ði}V, because this morpheme has some highly irregular left-sandhi behaviour; cf. the left-sandhi section of that morpheme. The other HTR-morphemes join regularly onto the preceding stems.