Greenlandic language

Ranges of West Greenlandic monophthongs on a vowel chart.[18]

The Greenlandic three-vowel system, composed of /i/, /u/, and /a/, is typical for an Eskimo–Aleut language. Double vowels are analyzed as two morae and so they are phonologically a vowel sequence and not a long vowel. They are also orthographically written as two vowels.[19][20] There is only one diphthong, /ai/, which occurs only at the ends of words.[21] Before a uvular consonant (/q/ or /ʁ/), /i/ is realized allophonically as [e], [ɛ] or [ɐ], and /u/ is realized allophonically as [o] or [ɔ], and the two vowels are written ⟨e, o⟩ respectively (as in some orthographies used for Quechua and Aymara).[22] /a/ becomes retracted to [ɑ] in the same environment. /i/ is rounded to [y] before labial consonants.[22] /u/ is fronted to [ʉ] between two coronal consonants.[22]

The allophonic lowering of /i/ and /u/ before uvular consonants is shown in the modern orthography by writing /i/ and /u/ as ⟨e⟩ and ⟨o⟩ respectively before ⟨q⟩ and ⟨r⟩. For example:

• /ui/ "husband" pronounced [ui].
• /uiqarpuq/ "(s)he has a husband" pronounced [ueqɑppɔq] and written ⟨ueqarpoq⟩.
• /illu/ "house" pronounced [iɬɬu].
• /illuqarpuq/ "(s)he has a house" pronounced [iɬɬoqɑppɔq] and written ⟨illoqarpoq⟩.

The palatal sibilant [ʃ] has merged with [s] in all dialects except those of the Sisimiut–Maniitsoq–Nuuk–Paamiut area.[23][24] The labiodental fricative [f] is contrastive only in loanwords. The alveolar stop /t/ is pronounced as an affricate [t͡s] before the high front vowel /i/. Often, Danish loanwords containing ⟨b d g⟩ preserve these in writing, but that does not imply a change in pronunciation, for example ⟨baaja⟩ [paːja] "beer" and ⟨Guuti⟩ [kuːtˢi] "God"; these are pronounced exactly as /p t k/.[25]

A bilingual sign in Nuuk showing the contrast between Danish and Kalaallisut. The sign translates to "parking forbidden for all vehicles".

The broad outline of the Greenlandic grammar is similar to other Eskimo languages, on the morpholological and syntactic plan.

The morphology of Greenlandic is highly synthetic and exclusively suffixing[26] (except for a single highly-limited and fossilized demonstrative prefix). The language creates very long words by means of adding strings of suffixes to a stem.[lower-alpha 8] In principle, there is no limit to the length of a Greenlandic word, but in practice, words with more than six derivational suffixes are not so frequent, and the average number of morphemes per word is three to five.[27][lower-alpha 9] The language has between 400 and 500 derivational suffixes and around 318 inflectional suffixes.[28]

There are few compound words but many derivations.[29] The grammar uses a mixture of head and dependent marking. Both agent and patient are marked on the predicate, and the possessor is marked on nouns, with dependent noun phrases inflecting for case. The primary morphosyntactic alignment of full noun phrases in Kalaallisut is ergative-absolutive, but verbal morphology follows a nominative-accusative pattern and pronouns are syntactically neutral.

The language distinguishes four persons (1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th or 3rd reflexive (see Obviation and switch-reference); two numbers (singular and plural but no dual, unlike Inuktitut); eight moods (indicative, interrogative, imperative, optative, conditional, causative, contemporative and participial) and eight cases (absolutive, ergative, equative, instrumental, locative, allative, ablative and prolative). Greenlandic (as well as the eastern minority's Tunumisut) is the only Eskimo language having lost its dual.

Verbs carry a bipersonal inflection for subject and object. Possessive noun phrases inflect for both possessor and case.[30]

In this section, the examples are written in Greenlandic standard orthography except that morpheme boundaries are indicated by a hyphen.

Greenlandic distinguishes three open word classes: nouns, verbs and particles. Verbs inflect for person and number of subject and object as well as for mood. Nouns inflect for possession and for case. Particles do not inflect.[31]

The verb is the only word that is required in a sentence. Since verbs inflect for number and person of both subject and object, the verb is in fact a clause itself. Therefore, clauses in which all participants are expressed as free-standing noun phrases are rather rare.[31] The following examples show the possibilities of leaving out the verbal arguments:

The Greenlandic language uses case to express grammatical relations between participants in a sentence. Nouns are inflected with one of the two core cases or one of the six oblique cases.[32]

Greenlandic is an ergative–absolutive language and so instead of treating the grammatical relations, as in English and most other Indo-European languages, whose grammatical subjects are marked with the nominative case and objects with the accusative case, Greenlandic grammatical roles are defined differently. Its ergative case is used for agents of transitive verbs and for possessors. The absolutive case is used for patients of transitive verbs and subjects of intransitive verbs.[33] Research into Greenlandic as used by the younger generation has shown that the use of ergative alignment in Kalaallisut may be becoming obsolete, which would convert the language into a nominative–accusative language.[34]

In transitive clauses whose object and subject are expressed as free noun phrases, the basic pragmatically-neutral word order is SOV / SOXV in which X is a noun phrase in one of the oblique cases. However, word order is fairly free. Topical noun phrases occur at the beginning of a clause. New or emphasized information generally come last, which is usually the verb but can also be a focal subject or object. As well, in the spoken language, "afterthought" material or clarifications may follow the verb, usually in a lowered pitch.[35]

On the other hand, the noun phrase is characterized by a rigid order in which the head of the phrase precedes any modifiers and the possessor precedes the possessed.[36]

In copula clauses, the word order is usually subject-copula-complement.

An attribute appears after its head noun.

An attribute of an incorporated noun appears after the verb:

Syntactic coordination and subordination is built by combining predicates in the superordinate moods (indicative, interrogative, imperative and optative) with predicates in the subordinate moods (conditional, causative, contemporative and participial). The contemporative has both coordinative and subordinative functions, depending on the context.[37] The relative order of the main clause and its coordinate or subordinate clauses is relatively free and is subject mostly to pragmatic concerns.[38]

The Greenlandic pronominal system includes a distinction known as obviation[39] or switch-reference.[40] There is a special so-called fourth person[41] to denote a third person subject of a subordinate verb or the possessor of a noun that is coreferent with the third person subject of the matrix clause.[42] Here are examples of the difference between third and the fourth persons:

third person		fourth person
illu-a house-3.POSS taku-aa see-3SG/3SG illu-a taku-aa house-3.POSS see-3SG/3SG "he saw his (the other man's) house"		illu-ni house-4.POSS taku-aa see-3SG/3SG illu-ni taku-aa house-4.POSS see-3SG/3SG "he saw his own house"
Ole Ole oqar-poq say-3SG tillu-kkiga hit-1SG/3SG Ole oqar-poq tillu-kkiga Ole say-3SG hit-1SG/3SG "Ole said I had hit him (the other man)"		Ole Ole oqar-poq say-3SG tillu-kkini hit-1SG/4 Ole oqar-poq tillu-kkini Ole say-3SG hit-1SG/4 "Ole said I had hit him (Ole)"
Eva Eva iser-pat come in-3SG sini-ssaa-q sleep-expect-3SG Eva iser-pat sini-ssaa-q Eva {come in}-3SG sleep-expect-3SG "When Eva comes in (s)he'll sleep (someone else)"		Eva Eva iser-uni come in-4 sini-ssaa-q sleep-expect-3SG Eva iser-uni sini-ssaa-q Eva {come in}-4 sleep-expect-3SG "When Eva comes in she'll sleep"

There is no category of definiteness in Greenlandic and so information on whether participants are already known to the listener or they are new to the discourse is encoded by other means. According to some authors, morphology related to transitivity such as the use of the construction sometimes called antipassive[43][44] or intransitive object[45] conveys such meaning, along with strategies of noun incorporation of non-topical noun phrases.[46][47] That view, however, is controversial.[48]

The morphology of Greenlandic verbs is enormously complex. The main processes are inflection and derivation. Inflectional morphology includes the processes of obligatory inflection for mood, person and voice (tense and aspect are not inflectional categories in Kalaallisut).[49][50][51] Derivational morphology modifies the meaning of verbs similarly to English adverbs. There are hundreds of such derivational suffixes. Many of them are so semantically salient and so they are often referred to as postbases, rather than suffixes, particularly in the American tradition of Eskimo grammar.[52] Such semantically "heavy" suffixes may express concepts such as "to have", "to be", "to say" or "to think". The Greenlandic verb word consists of a root, followed by derivational suffixes/postbases and then inflectional suffixes. Tense and aspect are marked by optional suffixes between the derivational and the inflectional suffixes.

Greenlandic verbs inflect for agreement with agent and patient and for mood and for voice. There are eight moods, four of which are used in independent clauses the others in subordinate clauses. The four independent moods are indicative, interrogative, imperative and optative. The four dependent moods are causative, conditional, contemporative and participial. Verbal roots can take transitive, intransitive or negative inflections and so all eight mood suffixes have those three forms.[53] The inflectional system is even more complex since transitive suffixes encode both agent and patient in a single morpheme, with up to 48 different suffixes covering all possible combinations of agent and patient for each of the eight transitive paradigms. As some moods do not have forms for all persons (imperative has only 2nd person, optative has only 1st and 3rd person, participial mood has no 4th person and contemporative has no 3rd person), the total number of verbal inflectional suffixes is about 318.[54]

The indicative mood is used in all independent expository clauses. The interrogative mood is used for questions that do not have the question particle immaqa "maybe".[55]

The table below shows the intransitive inflection of the verb neri- "to eat" in the indicative and interrogative moods (question marks mark interrogative intonation; questions have falling intonation on the last syllable, unlike English and most other Indo-European languages, whose questions are marked by rising intonation). Both the indicative and the interrogative mood have a transitive and an intransitive inflection, but only the intransitive inflection is given here. Consonant gradation like in Finnish appears to occur in the verb conjugation (with strengthening to pp in the 3rd person plural and weakening to v elsewhere).

The table below shows the transitive indicative inflection for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person singular subjects of the verb asa- "to love" (an asterisk means that the form does not occur as such but uses a different reflexive inflection).

The table below gives the basic form of all the inflexional suffixes in the indicative and interrogative moods. Where the indicative and interrogative forms differ, the interrogative form is given second in brackets. Suffixes used with intransitive verbs are in italics, while suffixes used with transitive verbs are unmarked.

Apart from the similarities between forms highlighted in bold, it will be observed that all basic forms start with v- except for the 3rd person plural intransitive forms, that all basic transitive indicative forms have /a/ as their first vowel, that all basic intransitive indicative forms have /u/ as their first vowel (voq is phonemically /vuq/), and that all basic forms unique to the interrogative mood have /i/ as their first vowel except for the 3rd person intransitive forms. Furthermore, if the subject of a transitive verb is 3rd person, the suffix will start with vaa- (with one exception). In the forms unique to the interrogative transitive (which all have 2nd person subjects), the forms with a (2nd person) singular subject are turned into forms with a (2nd person) plural subject by adding -si- after the initial vi- (except when the object is 1st person plural, in which case the same form is used for both plural and singular subject, as is the case for all indicative and interrogative forms with the object in the 1st or 2nd person plural). When the object is 1st or 2nd person singular, the forms with a 3rd person singular subject are turned into forms with a (3rd person) plural subject by lengthening the second consonant: [vaːŋa] → [vaːŋŋa], [vaːt͡sit̚] → [vaːtt͡sit̚]. If the subject or object is 2nd person plural, the suffix will include -si(-). If the subject or object is 1st person plural, the suffix will end in -t except when the object is 2nd person plural.

The interrogative mood has separate forms only when the subject is 2nd person or intransitive 3rd person; otherwise, the interrogative forms are identical to the indicative forms. All suffixes that start with vi- have a subject in the 2nd person.

The initial v- changes to p- or is deleted according to the rules described above.

After the suffix -nngil- ‘not’, v- is deleted (while the pp- of the 3rd person plural intransitive forms is changed to l-) and a first vowel /u/ is changed to /a/ (e.g. suli+vugut ‘we work’ but suli-nngil+agut ‘we don't work’). The intransitive 2nd person does not have separate interrogative forms after -nngil-, hence e.g. suli+vutit ‘you (sg.) work’, suli-nngil+atit ‘you (sg.) don't work’, suli+vit? ‘do you (sg.) work?’, suli-nngil+atit? ‘don't you (sg.) work?’ (instead of the expected *suli-nngil+it?).

After the future suffix -ssa-, vu- and vo- (both /vu/) change to a-. (Va-, vi-, ppu-, and ppa- do not change.)

After the suffix -qa- ‘very’, vu-, vo-, va-, vi-, ppu-, and ppa- all change to a- (except when this would lead to aaa, in which case aaa is shortened to aa). -qa- + vai becomes qai, not *qaai. (In accordance with the rule, aau becomes aaju, hence -qa- + viuk becomes qaajuk, not *qaauk.) The suffix -qa- was historically -qi-.

The imperative mood is used to issue orders and is always combined with the second person. The optative is used to express wishes or exhortations and is never used with the second person. There is a negative imperative form used to issue prohibitions. Both optative and imperative have transitive and intransitive paradigms. There are two transitive positive imperative paradigms: a standard one and another that is considered rude and is used usually to address children.[56]

The conditional mood is used to construct subordinate clauses that mean "if" or "when".[57]

The causative mood (sometimes called the conjunctive) is used to construct subordinate clauses that mean "because", "since" or "when" and is also sometimes used to mean "that". The causative is used also in main clauses to imply some underlying cause.[58]

The contemporative mood is used to construct subordinate clauses with the meaning of simultaneity and is used only if the subject of the subordinate clause and of the main clause are identical. If they differ, the participial mood or the causative mood is used. The contemporative can also be used to form complement clauses for verbs of speaking or thinking.[59]

The participial mood is used to construct a subordinate clause describing its subject in the state of carrying out an activity. It is used when the matrix clause and the subordinate clause have different subjects. It is often used in appositional phrases such as relative clauses.[60]

Verbal derivation is extremely productive, and Greenlandic has many hundreds of derivational suffixes. Often, a single verb uses more than one derivational suffix, resulting in very long words. Here are some examples of how derivational suffixes can change the meaning of verbs:

Greenlandic grammar has morphological devices to mark a distinction between the recent and distant past, but their use is optional[61] and so they should be understood as parts of Greenlandic's extensive derivational system, rather than as a system of tense-markers. Rather than by morphological marking, fixed temporal distance is expressed by temporal adverbials:[62]

All other things being equal and in the absence of any explicit adverbials, the indicative mood is interpreted as complete or incomplete, depending on the verbal lexical aspect.[64]

However, if a sentence with an atelic verbal phrase is embedded within the context of a past-time narrative, it would be interpreted as past.[65]

Greenlandic has several purely-derivational devices of expressing meaning related to aspect and lexical aspect such as sar, expressing "habituality", and ssaar, expressing, "stop to".[66] Also, there are at least two major perfect markers: sima and nikuu. sima can occur in several positions with obviously-different functions.[67] The last position indicates evidential meaning, but that can be determined only if several suffixes are present.

With atelic verbs, there is a regular contrast between indirective evidentiality, marked by sima, and witnessed evidentiality, marked by nikuu.[69] Its evidential meaning causes the combination of first person and sima to be sometimes marked.[70]

In the written language[63] and more recently also in the spoken language, especially by younger speakers, sima and nikuu can be used together with adverbials to refer to a particular time in the past.[71] That is, they can arguably mark time reference but do not yet do so systematically.

Just as Greenlandic does not systematically mark past tense, the language also does not have a future tense. Rather, it employs three different strategies to express future meaning:

The status of the perfect markers as aspect is not very controversial, but some scholars have claimed that Greenlandic has a basic temporal distinction between future and nonfuture. Especially, the suffix -ssa and handful of other suffixes have been claimed to be obligatory future markers.[74][75] However, at least for literary Greenlandic, the suffixes have been shown to have other semantics, which can be used to refer to the future by the strategies that have just been described.[76]

Greenlandic has an antipassive voice, which transforms the ergative subject into an absolutive subject and the absolutive object into an instrumental argument; it is formed mostly by the addition of the marker -(s)i- to the verb (the presence of the consonant being mostly phonologically determined, albeit with a few cases of lexically determined distribution) and, in small lexically restricted sets of verbs, by the addition of -nnig- or -ller- (the former being, however, more frequent because it is the one selected by the common verbal element -gi/ri- 'to have as').[77] It has also been analysed as having passive voice constructions, which are formed with the elements -saa- (composed of the passive participle suffix -sa- and -u- 'to be'), -neqar- (composed of the verbal noun suffix -neq- and -qar- 'to have') and -tit- (only to demote higher animate participants, also used with a reflexive causative meaning 'to cause, let [someone do something to one]'). In addition, an "impersonal passive" from intransitive verbs -toqar- (composed of intransitive agent suffix -toq- and -qar 'to have') has been identified.[78]

There is also a debate in the linguistic literature on whether Greenlandic has noun incorporation. The language does not allow the kind of incorporation that common in many other languages in which a noun root can be incorporated into almost any verb to form a verb with a new meaning. On the other hand, Greenlandic often forms verbs that include noun roots. The question then becomes whether to analyse such verb formations as incorporation or as denominal derivation of verbs. Greenlandic has a number of morphemes that require a noun root as their host and form complex predicates, which correspond closely in meaning to what is often seen in languages that have canonical noun incorporation. Linguists who propose that Greenlandic had incorporation argue that such morphemes are in fact verbal roots, which must incorporate nouns to form grammatical clauses.[44][79][80][81][82][83] That argument is supported by the fact that many of the derivational morphemes that form denominal verbs work almost identically to canonical noun incorporation. They allow the formation of words with a semantic content that correspond to an entire English clause with verb, subject and object. Another argument is that the morphemes that derive denominal verbs come from historical noun incorporating constructions, which have become fossilized.[84]

Other linguists maintain that the morphemes in question are simply derivational morphemes that allow the formation of denominal verbs. That argument is supported by the fact that the morphemes are always latched on to a nominal element.[85][86][87] These examples illustrate how Greenlandic forms complex predicates including nominal roots:

Nouns are always inflected for case and number and sometimes for number and person of possessor. Singular and plural are distinguished and eight cases are used: absolutive, ergative (relative), instrumental, allative, locative, ablative, prosecutive (also called vialis or prolative) and equative.[88] Case and number are marked by a single suffix. Nouns can be derived from verbs or from other nouns by a number of suffixes: atuar- "to read" + -fik "place" becomes atuarfik "school" and atuarfik + -tsialak "something good" becomes atuarfitsialak "good school".

Since the possessive agreement suffixes on nouns and the transitive agreement suffixes on verbs in a number of instances have similar or identical shapes, there is even a theory that Greenlandic distinguishes between transitive and intransitive nouns as it does for verbs.[89][lower-alpha 10]

There are personal pronouns for first, second, and third person singular and plural. They are optional as subjects or objects but only when the verbal inflection refers to such arguments.[90]

Personal pronouns are, however, required in the oblique case:

Both grammatical core cases, ergative and absolutive, are used to express grammatical and syntactical roles of participant noun phrases. The oblique cases express information related to movement and manner.

The instrumental case is versatile. It is used for the instrument with which an action is carried out, for oblique objects of intransitive verbs (also called antipassive verbs)[44][91][92] and for secondary objects of transitive verbs.[93]

There is no case marking if the noun is incorporated. Many sentences can be constructed oblique object as well as incorporated object.

It is also used to express the meaning of "give me" and to form adverbs from nouns:

The allative case describes movement towards something.[94]

It is also used with numerals and the question word qassit to express the time of the clock and in the meaning "amount per unit":

The locative case describes spatial location:[94]

The ablative case describes movement away from something or the source of something:[94]

The prosecutive case describes movement through something and the medium of writing or a location on the body. It is also used to describe a group of people such as a family as belonging to the modified noun.[95]

The equative case describes similarity of manner or quality. It is also used to derive language names from nouns denoting nationalities: "like a person of x nationality [speaks]".[95]

In Greenlandic, possession is marked on the noun that agrees with the person and the number of its possessor. The possessor is in the ergative case. There are different possessive paradigms for each different case.[96] Table 4 gives the possessive paradigm for the absolutive case of illu "house". Here are examples of the use of the possessive inflection, the use of the ergative case for possessors and the use of fourth person possessors.

For affixes about which the precise meaning is the cause of discussion among specialists, the suffix itself is used as a gloss, and its meaning must be understood from context: -SSA (meaning either future or expectation), -NIKUU and -SIMA.