Today's news and objectives
Learn how to ask a few questions using the interrogative mood (henceforward Int). By the end of today's exercises you will be able to handle more than 1,000 wordforms.
You will observe that today's exercises introduce only a few new items but you will most likely also observe that playing with the new derivational morphemes forces you to have a lot on your plate. But do not worry! I know from personal experience that it is doable after all.
Play with another derivational morpheme added to nouns. You know it already from lesson 5
Play with a new important derivational morpheme added to verbs
The first things about asking questions
- V+Int+2Sg = {vit} 5a (interrogative mood 2. person singular = You verb?)
- V+Int+2Sg+3SgO = {viuk} (interrogative mood 2. person singular with 3. person singular object = You verb him/her/it?)
Remember that /v/ turns /p/ after consonant. Hence suli+{vit} → sulivit, whereas aallar+{vit} → aallarpit
Clarifying a thing about mood-morphemes:
Greenlandic does not have a stock of conjunctions such as because, if, that etc. Instead a mandatory part of the verb called the mood-morpheme tells the verb's function.
This far you've seen only two indicative morphemes
- {+vu} (varying with {+pu} after consonants) is intransitive indicative as in tikip{+vunga} → tikippunga (I arrive)
- {+va} (varying with {+pa} after consonants) is transitive indicative as in naapip{+vara} → naapippara (I met him/her)
but today a new mood morpheme is introduced
- {+vi} (varying with {+pi} after consonants) is interrogative mood for second person intransitive and transitive alike
Vb-NNGIT has a unique behaviour in the indicative mood as it replaces both {+vu} and {+va} with {-la}.
E.g. I am bad (ajor {+vunga}) = ajorpunga; I am not bad/ I am good (ajor -NNGIT {-langa}) = ajunngilanga
You will as in the preceding chapters
- continue training the skill you cannot be without namely the two-sided ability to perceive surface words and at the same time to produce words out of abstract bits and pieces underlying the surface words you hear
- understand the wordforms you know by now in context
- form a few simple sentences
Lexical material you need to know to manage today's exercises besides words you already are familiar with from lessons 1-5
Vb
- ajor- to be bad
- pikkorip- to be skilled
- qujaannar- to reject
- taku- to see (object)
- utoqqatser- to excuse
Adverbs
- aap yes
- aqaguagu day after tomorrow
- ippassaq yesterday
- naamik no
What you need to know about processes and changes (phonology)
Adding to your knowledge
- Any vowel adjacent to an /a/ will itself become /a/. Hence pizza-U+vuq (It is pizza) will be pizzaavoq
- Greenlandic orthography holds a few superfluous rules. One such says that *uvi, *uve and *uva (but not uvu and uvo!) must be spelled without /v/ as ui, ue and ua. Accordingly e.g. taku{+vara} (I saw him/her/it) is misspelled as *takuvara and correct as takuara. The rule is purely orthographical. *takuvara and takuara both share the same pronunciation.
- GUSUP comes with a speciality as it changes /g/ to /r/ after vowel. Hence taku + GUSUP + I_him will NOT be *takugusuppara, rather takorusuppara (I want to see him/her/it) and suli + GUSUP + I will NOT be *suligusuppunga but sulerusuppunga (I want to work). Note that this behaviour is special for GUSUP so do not bring it with you to other morphemes in /g/
- {vu} normally reduces to {a} after -SSA. Hence suli -SSA {+vunga} (work future I) will not be *sulissavunga as expected but sulissaanga. Please observe that this phenomenon only occurs with SSA + {vu}. Accordingly naapip -SSA {+vara} (meet future I_him) will be naapissavara as expected. As a matter of facts the rule applies with only about 4% of all occurrences of -SSA in running text so do not overdo this exception. If in doubt it is better to underdo it. *sulissavunga will maybe call for a smile but it will always be understood whereas *naapissaara most likely will be gibberish in native ears.