Similar to the-er suffix in English, the-í suffix attached to a verb means "the one who does [verb]". Thusnaaʼnaʼ(“he/she/it crawls about”) +-í ("-er") producesnaaʼnaʼí ("the one that crawls, crawler"). Prefixing this withchidí(“car”) produceschidí naaʼnaʼí(“caterpillar tractor”).
When applied to words ending in a vowel, an epenthetic /h/ is sometimes added before the suffix, as inginíłbáhí(“western goshawk”).
Henrik Liljegren, Naseem Haider (2011) “-í”, inPalula Vocabulary (FLI Language and Culture Series; 7)[1], Islamabad, Pakistan: Forum for Language Initiatives,→ISBN
Henrik Liljegren, Naseem Haider (2011) “-í”, inPalula Vocabulary (FLI Language and Culture Series; 7)[2], Islamabad, Pakistan: Forum for Language Initiatives,→ISBN
Henrik Liljegren, Naseem Haider (2011) “-í”, inPalula Vocabulary (FLI Language and Culture Series; 7)[3], Islamabad, Pakistan: Forum for Language Initiatives,→ISBN
Inherited fromVulgar Latin*-īī <Latin-īvī, first-person singular present perfect active indicative ending of the fourth conjugation, later generalized to almost all non-first conjugation verbs.