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Studies in Inuktitut Grammar

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Studies in Inuktitut Grammar STUDIES IN INUKTITUT GRAMMAR by Matthew David Beach November 10, 2011 A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Linguistics i Copyright by Matthew David Beach 2011 ii Acknowledgements First and foremost, I would like to thank the language consultants who helped to make this dissertation possible. Minnie Grey was very patient as I continued to ask questions, even though she was very busy. She has been one of the most helpful speakers that I have worked with; especially as I neared completion of my work, she made a point to teach me about constructions that she thought I might not be aware of, even though I was just asking whether or not a given sentence was grammatical, rather than asking for a translation from English into Inuktitut. Joanna Okpik was much more than a consultant to me. She was a really great friend. It was also really terrific to have a chance to work with Saila Michael. Other speakers who have helped me along the way include Annie Okpik, Ilisapi Kaallak, and Elizabeth Annahattak. It is my hope that the knowledge that they have shared with me can be used to help formulate questions to ask about the more endangered dialects of this language before they go extinct. I am also indebted to Alana Johns for setting me up with Saila Michael as my dissertation came to an end, and to Shanley Allen for telling me how to find a speaker of Inuktitut when I was first starting out. My parents, Marcia and David Beach, but particularly my mother, were very helpful in giving me the courage to continue, even when I ran into difficulties, like having to wait through long stretches of time with no speaker access. My sister, Juliana Beach, also gave me some very helpful pep talks. It has been a long and challenging road, and it has ended up taking far too long to finish this dissertation for reasons that were out of my control. It would have been much more difficult to get through it all without their support. iii Aaron Broadwell was also a very helpful friend to talk to when I ran into difficulties, and it was very nice to have someone outside of the department that I could talk with about syntax in open-minded ways. Shortly before sending my dissertation off to my committee, I sent a copy to Michael Fortescue, and asked him to look at particular sections to give me feedback about how West Greenlandic does or does not differ from Inuktitut. I appreciate his taking the time to read those sections and for giving me some very helpful feedback. There was also a time when I sent an e- mail to Louis-Jacques Dorais, explaining a bit about my dissertation. He responded that some of the unacceptable sentences probably had more to do with the pragmatics of language use than grammatical restrictions. This feedback ultimately proved to be very helpful to me. It was quite an amazing experience to do my dissertation work with Matthew Dryer, a linguist who seems to be a bit of an expert on every language family in the entire world. His no- nonsense approach is quite refreshing, and I am very indebted to him for all the invaluable comments he made on my early and later drafts. I am also quite lucky to have had a brilliant semanticist and syntactician on my dissertation committee, Jean-Pierre Koenig. His contribution went beyond what is normally expected from a committee member, since he read two versions of my dissertation, one which was a much earlier draft compared to the current document. Karin Michaelson was supposed to be on my committee, but she was on sabbatical when my dissertation came to completion. I have often been inspired by how careful and thorough her research on Oneida is. I also really appreciate the feedback that I got from David Fertig, who was also on my committee, since we share interests in morphology and historical linguistics. In the early stages of the dissertation, I worked with Robert Van Valin. I very much appreciate the help he gave me. iv I started out my graduate work at McGill University, but switched to the University at Buffalo, because I wanted to be somewhere that has a more descriptive and fieldwork-oriented approach to languages. But, I am really glad to have had a chance to get to know Lisa Travis, Nigel Duffield, and Heather Goad during my time in Montreal. v Table of Contents Acknowledgements iii Table of contents vi List of tables ix Abbreviations used in this dissertation x Abstract xiii 1. Introduction 1 2. Nouns, verbs, and participles 8 2.1 Nouns 9 2.2 Verbs 16 2.3 Participles 20 2.4 Split in the indicative paradigm 27 2.5 More data on person and number in Inuktitut 36 2.6 Specificity and absolutive objects 52 2.7 Intransitive noun stems 75 2.8 Absence of binding data 79 2.9 Atuni ‘each’ 81 2.10 Pronouns 83 2.11. Final remarks on Chapter 2 90 3. Cases 92 3.1 Relative case 92 3.2 Absolutive case 100 vi 3.3 Secondary case 102 3.4 Dative case 118 3.5 Ablative case 127 3.6 Locative case 128 3.7 Vialis case 130 3.8 Simulative case 132 3.9 Comparative case 134 3.10 Summary 137 4. Verb stems and derivational processes 140 4.1 Overview of verbal stems and the antipassive alternation 142 4.2 Verb stems in other environments 164 4.3 Guma, ‘want’, and related suffixes 184 4.4 Tit-causatives 187 4.5 Benefactives 196 4.6 Naq-causatives 202 4.7 Tsau and nir/jarniq/garniq 211 4.8 Giakit 215 4.9 Reciprocals 221 4.10 Vik-type nominalizations 226 4.11 Active and passive participles 239 4.12 Suuq-type nominalizations 251 4.13 Agentive nominalizations 270 4.14 Gerunds 277 vii 4.15 Nikumuuq constructions 289 4.16 -Liaq and –taaq 293 4.17 Adjectival modifiers in the imperative/optative 296 4.18 Guminaaq, ‘I wish I could’ 303 4.19 –tigi, ‘be/do as much as’ 307 4.20 Review of Chapter 4 309 5. Adjectival stems 311 6. Affix ordering and semantic scope 318 7. Noun incorporation 331 7.1 Bare noun incorporation 332 7.2 Post-inflectional noun incorporation and -la, ‘say’ 358 7.3 Noun incorporation and coordination constructions 380 8. Concluding remarks 395 Appendix 1 399 Appendix 2 403 References 407 viii List of Tables 2.1 Properties of nouns and verbs 26 2.2 Split in the indicative paradigm 34 3.1 The uses of relative case 100 3.2 Uses of absolutive case 102 3.3 Differences between example (3.3.11) and (3.3.12) 111 3.4 Differences between example (3.3.1) and (3.3.2) 113 3.5 Uses of secondary case 118 3.6 Uses of dative case 127 3.7 Uses of ablative case 128 3.8 Uses of locative case 130 3.9 Uses of vialis case 132 3.10 Use of simulative case 134 3.11 Use of comparative case 137 3.12 The case system of Inuktitut 139 4.1 Verb stems discussed in this section 146 4.2 Restrictions of a number of different nominalizing suffixes as they relate to attaching to [transitive] or [intransitive] verb stems. 276 5.1: Suffixes which can or cannot be added to five stems which correspond to adjectives in the English translation 312 ix Abbreviations used in this dissertation 1 First person 2 Second person 3 Third person 3per Third person A Actor agreement (or subject agreement) ABL Ablative case ABS Absolutive case AP Antipassive APT Active participle forming suffix APP Appositional mood BEN Benefactive suffix indicating that something was done for someone BR Bare root COMP Comparative case COND Conditional mood marker DAT Dative case DECI Declarative intransitive DECT Declarative transitive du Dual number agreement DUB Dubitative mood marker DS Different subject EST Established mood marker GER Gerund-forming suffix x HAB Habitual HABNOM Habitual nominalization INDI Indicative intransitive INDT Indicative transitive IMP Imperative/optative mood INT Interrogative mood ITR Indicates that the meaning of a phonological sequence is only possible if it is used as an intransitive stem LOC Locative case NEG Negation OBJ Object OBJθ Objectθ REL Relative case PAST Past tense PPT Passive participle forming suffix pl Plural REC Reciprocal suffix sg Singular SEC Secondary case SIM Simulative case SUBJ Subject TR Transitive/reflexive U Undergoer agreement (or object agreement) xi VIA Vialis case xii Abstract This dissertation addresses a number of issues about the grammar of Eastern Canadian Inuktitut. Inuktitut is a dialect within the Inuit dialect continuum which is a group of languages/dialects within the Eskimo-Aleut language family. (Eastern Canadian Inuktitut has an ISO 693-3 language code of ‘ike’.) Typologically, it is an ergative language that is heavily derivationally polysynthetic with a very free word order. The goals are both descriptive and theoretical. Accurate description is essential since some dialects in this language family will soon go extinct, so it is important to know what types of questions need to be asked. While description may be the primary goal of this dissertation, theoretical issues are addressed in various places. Ergative languages are important to many syntactic theories as are languages with freer word order and polysynthetic languages.
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