AGENTTVE AND PATIENTIVE VERB BASES IN NORTH ALASKAN INUPIAQ A DISSERTATION Presented to the Faculty of the University of Alaska Fairbanks in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY By TadatakaNagai, B.Litt, M.Litt. Fairbanks, Alaska May 2006 © 2006 Tadataka Nagai Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 3229741 INFORMATION TO USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleed-through, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. ® UMI UMI Microform 3229741 Copyright 2006 by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. AGENTIVE AND PATIENTIYE VERB BASES IN NORTH ALASKAN INUPIAQ By TadatakaNagai ^ /Z / / RECOMMENDED: -4-/—/£ £ ■ / A l y f l A £ y f 1- -A ;cy/TrlHX ,-v /| /> ?AL C l *- Advisory Committee Chair Chair, Linguistics Program APPROVED: A a r// '7, 7-ooG Date Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. iii Abstract This dissertation is concerned with North Alaskan Inupiaq Eskimo. It has two goals: (i) to provide a grammatical sketch ofthe Upper Kobuk dialect of this language; (ii) to investigate agentive and patientive verb bases. Chapter 2 is a grammatical sketch of the Upper Kobuk dialect of North Alaskan Inupiaq. Chapters 3 through 5 deal with two types of verb bases in this language, called agentive and patientive. As we see in Chapter 3, agentive and patientive verb bases are verb bases that can inflect either intransitively or transitively, and they differ in the following ways: (i) prototypical agentive bases have the intransitive subject corresponding with the transitive subject, and do not require a half-transitive postbase to become antipassive; (ii) prototypical patientive bases have the intransitive subject corresponding with the transitive object, and require a half-transitive postbase to become antipassive. In Chapter 4 ,1 present the polarity—the property ofbeing agentive or patientive—of all the verb bases that can inflect either intransitively or transitively, sorted by meaning, in order to uncover semantic features that characterize agentive and patientive bases. I identify 13 semantic features, such as indicating the agent’s process for agentive bases and the lack of agent control for patientive bases. All these semantic features are related with the saliency ofthe agent or patient. In Chapter 5,1 investigate several pieces of evidence that show that the dividing line between the agentive and patientive classes is not rigid: (i) There are verb bases that can have the intransitive subject corresponding with either the transitive subject or object. (ii) Some verb bases may or may not take a half-transitive postbase to become antipassive. (iii) Certain postbases or a certain verb mood turn agentive bases into patientive or patientive bases into agentive. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Although two classes of verbs similar to the agentive and patientive classes in Inupiaq are found many languages, such phenomena as described in this chapter are seldom studied. This chapter purports to be the first coherent study of its kind. The appendices contain two Inupiaq texts. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Table o f contents Page Signature page ........................................................................................................................ i Title page ..............................................................................................................................ii Abstract ................................................................................................................................iii Table of contents .................................................................................................................... v List of figures ........................................................................................................................x List of tables .........................................................................................................................xi List of appendices ............................................................................................................... xiii Dedication ..........................................................................................................................xiv Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................... xv Abbreviations and symbols .................................................................................................xvii Conventions in glossing examples .........................................................................................xx Chapter 1. Introduction .......................................................................................................... 1 1.1. Eskimo-Aleut language family .....................................................................................2 1.2. Overview of the dissertation .........................................................................................7 Chapter 2. Grammatical sketch of the Kobuk dialect ofNorth Alaskan Inupiaq ......................... 10 2.1. The language and its speakers ...................................................................................10 2.1.1. Linguistic type .................................................................................................... 12 2.1.2. Present situation .................................................................................................. 13 2.1.3. Previous work .................................................................................................... 14 2.1.4. My fieldwork ..................................................................................................... 14 2.1.5. Sources ..............................................................................................................16 2.1.6. Notation .............................................................................................................18 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. vi Page 2.2. Phonology and morphophonology ............................................................................... 18 2.2.1. Phoneme inventory .............................................................................................. 18 2.2.2. Phonemic alternations .......................................................................................... 22 2.2.2.1. Phonological alternations ............................................................................... 23 2.2.2.2. Morphophonologjcal alternations ................................................................... 24 2.2.3. Types of suffixes ..................................................................................................27 2.3. Morphology .............................................................................................................. 35 2.3.1. Makeup of a word ...............................................................................................35 2.3.2. Nominals and adverbs .......................................................................................... 39 2.3.2.1. Nouns .......................................................................................................... 39 2.3.2.1.1. Case...................................................................................................... 40 2.3.2.1.2. Number..................................................................................................52 2.3.2.1.3. Person and number of possessor. .............................................................. 53 2.3.2.2. Demonstratives .............................................................................................54 2.3.2.3. Personal pronouns ......................................................................................... 69 2.3.2.4. Intenogatives................................................................................................72 2.3.3. Verbs ..................................................................................................................76 2.3.3.1. Mood. .......................................................................................................... 76 2.3.3.2. Person and number of arguments .................................................................. 100 2.3.4. Postbases .......................................................................................................... 102 2.3.4.1. Noun-elaborating postbases ..........................................................................102