Siberian Yupik/Grammar

Morphophonemics

Stem Termination Patterns

I don't understand what these are exactly. Also, you seem to be saying that an analysis like 'nuna<n>' maps to an English form like '-land', which probably needs to expressed differently. -JNW

• Stem ending in a single prime vowel (any other than e)
  • nuna<n> ↔ -land
  • pana<n> ↔ -spear
  • siku<n> ↔ -ice
  • qiya<v> ↔ -to cry
  • ifla<v> ↔ -to lose or be lost

• Stems ending in two prime vowels
  • puu<n> ↔ -handle
  • kii<n> ↔ -wound
  • avii<v> ↔ -for one's ears to ring
  • aghnau<v> ↔ -to be a woman

• Stems ending with e not preceded by t
  • nege<n> ↔ -food
  • tume<n> ↔ -footprint
  • neghe<v> ↔ -to eat
  • kuuve<v> ↔ -to spill

• Stems ending in te
  • yughaghte<n> ↔ -preacher
  • riigte<n> ↔ -den
  • ingaghte<v> ↔ -to lie down

• Stems ending in weak gh
  • qayagh<n> ↔ -kayak
  • aghnagh<n> ↔ -woman
  • qikmigh<n> ↔ -dog
  • No verbs

• Stems ending in strong fricative
  • savig<n> ↔ -knife
  • kiiw<n> ↔ -river
  • ategh<n> ↔ -bone
  • All verbs ending with fricatives are strong fricatives
  • gavagh<v> ↔ -to sleep
  • mayugh<v> ↔ -to climb

Adding Ø ending to nouns

So what is the morphological function of this? I think you probably need to come up with a tag to distinguish e.g. 'nege' from 'nega'; it's not very useful if they both have the same analysis nege<n>. -JNW

Ø ending changes noun stem into common form used for naming, I couldn't find a good tag for this, so I am using <np> the proper noun tag for this.

• e# → a
  • nege<n><np> ↔ nega -food
  • riigte<n><np> ↔ riigta -den
  • sigute<n><np> ↔ siguta -ear
• gh# → q
  • qayagh<n><np> ↔ qayaq -kayak
• g# → k
  • ungag<n><np> ↔ ungak -whisker
• w# → kw
  • kiiw<n><np> ↔ kiikw -river
• ghw# → qw
  • qiighw<n><np> ↔ qiiqw -grey hair
• Prime vowel at end of stem remains the same