Western Abenaki/Grammar Documentation
Contents
Parts of Speech
Western Abenaki has heavily inflected verbs, which have affixes marking subject person and number as well as object person and number, nouns inflected with formatives in a similar manner, adjectives which have agreement with nouns, adverbs, and pronouns.
Spell Relax
ȣ and ô
w
"w" and "u" are used fairly interchangeably across the corpus. It is unclear (but unlikely) that there is a pronunciation difference. Additionally, "w" is often dropped orthographically and phonetically when followed by "ô."
Morphology
Noun Pluralization
Regular plurals are formed depending on whether the noun is animate or inanimate.
- Regular animate plurals are formed with -ak:
- kanal - teakettle
- kanal<n><aa><pl> ↔ kanalak
- After -d and -t the animate plural becomes -ik
- After -gw and -kw the animate plural becomes -ok and the w disappears.
- amiskw - beaver
- amiskw<n><aa><pl> ↔ amiskok
- azeskwamagw - mud fish
- azeskwamagw<n><aa><pl> ↔ azeskwamagok
- After -ȣ and -a the animate plural becomes -k
- abitȣ - farmer
- abitȣ<n><aa><pl> ↔ abitȣk
- alȣtegwihla - wood duck
- alȣtegwihla<n><aa><pl> ↔ alȣtegwihlak
- Regular inanimate plurals are formed with -al:
- After -g and -k the inanimate plural becomes -il
- After -gw and -kw the inanimate plural becomes -ol and the w disappears.
- Certain words ending in -m and -n form their plural with -ok and -ol (animate and inanimate respectively)
Pronouns
Pronouns are usually affixed to verbs, but sometimes are found as their own words.
| case and number | Western Abenaki |
|---|---|
| 1st person singular | you<px1sg> |
| 2nd person singular | tou<px2sg> |
| 3rd person singular | sou<px3sg> |
| 1st person plural (exclusive) | nuosso<px1pl> |
| 1st person plural (inclusive) | nuosso<px1pl> |
| 2nd person plural | buosso<px2pl> |
| 3rd person plural | sou<px3pl> |
| 3st person plural (obviative) | nuosso<px1pl> |
Locative Case
The locative case (<loc>) on Western Abenaki nouns (<n>) denotes a location or being located at or with something, adding a "place" quality to a noun. The functions roughly like with English prepositions "in/at/on."
It is suffixed to the noun in one of three forms: "-k" "-ek" or "-ik." The distinction is based on the root-final segment.
- алма<n><loc> ↔ алмада
- кол<n><loc> ↔ колдо
- көз<n><loc> ↔ көздө
- бел<n><loc> ↔ белде
- баш<n><loc> ↔ башта
- чок<n><loc> ↔ чокто
- күч<n><loc> ↔ күчтө
- иш<n><loc> ↔ иште
