Blackfoot/Grammar
From LING073
Contents
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.