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

This is for my reference, these are the possible ways that stems can end and will be useful in determining what suffixes can be added to a stem.

• 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