Blackfoot/Grammar

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Nouns

Nouns in Blackfoot can be inflected for grammatical gender (animacy), number particularity, and XXXXX

Noun Inflections

Grammatical Gender

Blackfoot has two noun classes: animate and inanimate. Animate nouns, which refer to sentient beings such as people, animals, and spirits, take the suffixes -wa when singular and -iksi when plural.

Animate Nouns

Singular animate nouns whose stem ends in a vowel take the suffix -yi.

  • i'ksisako <n><sg> ↔ i'ksisakoyi
  • ni'tommo <n><sg> ↔ n'tommoyi
  • matsini <n><sg> ↔ matsiniyi

-Yi is realized as -i after consonants.

  • paataak <n><sg> ↔ paataki
  • miin <n><sg> ↔ miini
  • soyopok <n><sg> ↔ soyopoki

Number

Blackfoot distinguishes between singular and plural nouns.

Animate Plurals