This article is about the Eskaleut language. For the extinct North Germanic language, seeGreenlandic Norse.
This article shouldspecify the language of its non-English content, using{{langx}},{{transliteration}} for transliterated languages, and{{IPA}} for phonetic transcriptions, with an appropriateISO 639 code. Wikipedia'smultilingual support templates may also be used - notablykl for Kalaallisut.See why.(November 2024)
Greenlandic is apolysynthetic language that allows the creation of long words by stringing togetherroots andsuffixes. The language'smorphosyntactic alignment isergative, treating both the argument (subject) of an intransitive verb and theobject of a transitive verb in one way, but thesubject of a transitive verb in another. For example, "he plays the guitar" would be in the ergative case as a transitive agent, whereas "I bought aguitar" and "as theguitar plays" (the latter being the intransitive sense of the same verb "to play") would both be in the absolutive case.
Nouns are inflected by one of eightcases and for possession.Verbs are inflected for one of eightmoods and for thenumber andperson of itssubject andobject. Both nouns and verbs have complex derivational morphology. The basicword order intransitiveclauses issubject–object–verb. The subordination of clauses uses special subordinate moods. A so-called fourth-person category enablesswitch-reference between main clauses and subordinate clauses with different subjects. Greenlandic is notable for its lack ofgrammatical tense; temporal relations are expressed normally by context but also by the use of temporal particles such as "yesterday" or "now" or sometimes by the use of derivational suffixes or the combination of affixes withaspectual meanings with the semanticlexical aspect of different verbs. However, some linguists have suggested that Greenlandic always marksfuture tense. Another question is whether the language hasnoun incorporation or whether the processes that create complex predicates that include nominal roots are derivational in nature.
When adopting new concepts or technologies, Greenlandic usually constructs new words made from Greenlandic roots, but modern Greenlandic has also taken manyloans from Danish andEnglish. The language has been written inLatin script since Danish colonization began in the 1700s. Greenlandic's firstorthography was developed bySamuel Kleinschmidt in 1851, but within 100 years, it already differed substantially from thespoken language because of a number ofsound changes. An extensiveorthographic reform was undertaken in 1973 and made thescript much easier to learn. This resulted in a boost in Greenlandicliteracy, which is now among thehighest in the world.[note 1][5]
Greenlandic was brought to Greenland by the arrival of theThule people in the 1200s. The languages that were spoken by the earlierSaqqaq andDorset cultures in Greenland are unknown.
The first descriptions of Greenlandic date from the 1600s. With the arrival of Danish missionaries in the early 1700s and the beginning of Danish colonization of Greenland, the compilation of dictionaries and description of grammar began. The missionaryPaul Egede wrote the first Greenlandic dictionary in 1750 and the first grammar in 1760.[6]
From the Danish colonization in the 1700s to the beginning of Greenlandic home rule in 1979, Greenlandic experienced increasing pressure from the Danish language. In the 1950s, Denmark's linguistic policies were directed at strengthening Danish. Of primary significance was the fact that post-primary education and official functions were conducted in Danish.[7]
From 1851 to 1973, Greenlandic was written in a complicated orthography devised by the missionary linguistSamuel Kleinschmidt. In 1973, a new orthography was introduced, intended to bring the written language closer to the spoken standard, which had changed considerably since Kleinschmidt's time. The reform was effective, and in the years following it, Greenlandic literacy has received a boost.[7]
Another development that has strengthened Greenlandic language is the policy of "Greenlandization" of Greenlandic society that began with the home rule agreement of 1979. The policy has worked to reverse the former trend towards marginalization of the Greenlandic language by making it the official language of education. The fact that Greenlandic has become the only language used in primary schooling means that monolingual Danish-speaking parents in Greenland are now raising children bilingual in Danish and Greenlandic.[8] Greenlandic now has several dedicated news media: the Greenlandic National Radio,Kalaallit Nunaata Radioa, which provides television and radio programming in Greenlandic. The newspaperSermitsiaq has been published since 1958 and merged in 2010 with the other newspaperAtuagagdliutit/Grønlandsposten, which had been established in 1861 to form a single large Greenlandic language publishing house.[9][10]
Before June 2009, Greenlandic shared its status as the official language in Greenland with Danish.[note 2] Since then, Greenlandic has become the sole official language.[2] That has made Greenlandic the unique case of anIndigenous language of the Americas recognized by law as the only official language of a semi-independent country. Nevertheless, it is still considered to be in a "vulnerable" state by the UNESCORed Book of Language Endangerment.[12] The country has a 100% literacy rate.[13] As the Western Greenlandic standard has become dominant, aUNESCO report has labelled the other dialects as endangered, and measures are now being considered to protect the Eastern Greenlandic dialect.[14]
Kalaallisut and the other Greenlandic dialects belong to theEskimo–Aleut family and are closely related to theInuit languages ofCanada andAlaska. Illustration 1 shows the locations of the different Inuit languages, among them the two main dialects of Greenlandic and the separate languageInuktun ("Avanersuaq").
Example of differences between the 3 main dialects
The most prominent Greenlandic dialect is Kalaallisut, which is the official language of Greenland. The nameKalaallisut is often used as a cover term for all of Greenlandic. The eastern dialect (Tunumiit oraasiat), spoken in the vicinity ofAmmassalik Island andIttoqqortoormiit, is the most innovative of the Greenlandic dialects since it hasassimilatedconsonant clusters and vowel sequences more than West Greenlandic.[17]
Kalaallisut is further divided into four subdialects. One that is spoken aroundUpernavik has certain similarities to East Greenlandic, possibly because of a previous migration from eastern Greenland. A second dialect is spoken in the region ofUummannaq and theDisko Bay. The standard language is based on the central Kalaallisut dialect spoken inSisimiut in the north, aroundNuuk and as far south asManiitsoq. Southern Kalaallisut is spoken aroundNarsaq andQaqortoq in the south.[6] Table 1 shows the differences in the pronunciation of the word for "humans" in the two main dialects and Inuktun. It can be seen that Inuktun is the most conservative by maintaining⟨gh⟩, which has been elided in Kalaallisut, and Tunumiisut is the most innovative by further simplifying its structure by eliding/n/.
Ranges of West Greenlandic monophthongs on avowel chart.[18]
The Greenlandic three-vowel system, composed of/i/,/u/, and/a/, is typical for an Eskimo–Aleut language. Double vowels are analyzed as twomorae and so they are phonologically a vowel sequence and not a long vowel. They are also orthographically written as two vowels.[19][20] There is only one diphthong,/ai/, which occurs only at the ends of words.[21] Before auvular consonant (/q/ or/ʁ/),/i/ is realizedallophonically as[e],[ɛ] or[ɐ], and/u/ is realizedallophonically as[o] or[ɔ], and the two vowels are written⟨e, o⟩ respectively (as in some orthographies used forQuechua andAymara).[22]/a/ becomes retracted to[ɑ] in the same environment./i/ is rounded to[y] before labial consonants.[22]/u/ is fronted to[ʉ] between two coronal consonants.[22]
The allophonic lowering of/i/ and/u/ before uvular consonants is shown in the modern orthography by writing/i/ and/u/ as⟨e⟩ and⟨o⟩ respectively before⟨q⟩ and⟨r⟩. For example:
/ui/ "husband" pronounced[ui].
/uiqarpuq/ "(s)he has a husband" pronounced[ueqɑpːɔq] and written⟨ueqarpoq⟩.
/illu/ "house" pronounced[iɬːu].
/illuqarpuq/ "(s)he has a house" pronounced[iɬːoqɑpːɔq] and written⟨illoqarpoq⟩.
^The uvular nasal[ɴ] is not found in all dialects and there is dialectal variability regarding its status as a phoneme.[23]
^Short[t͡s] is in complementary distribution with short[t], with the former appearing before/i/ and the latter elsewhere; both are written⟨t⟩ and could be analysed as belonging to the same phoneme/t/. Before/i/, long[tːs] occurs while long[tː] does not, so long[tːs] before/i/ could be analysed as long/tː/. However, before/a/ and/u/, both long[tːs] and long[tː] occur (except in some dialects, including that of Greenland'sthird largest town). Long[tːs] is always written⟨ts⟩, e.g.asavatsigut ‘you love us’,atsa ‘aunt (father's sister)’,Maniitsoq.
^⟨ff⟩ is the way of writing the devoiced/vː/geminate;/rv/ is written⟨rf⟩; otherwise,⟨f⟩ occurs only in loanwords.
^When/l/ is geminated, it is heard as a[ɬː] fricative sound.
^/ʃ/ is found in some dialects (including those of Greenland's two largest towns) but is not distinguished from/s/ in the written language.
The palatal sibilant[ʃ] has merged with[s] in all dialects except those of theSisimiut–Maniitsoq–Nuuk–Paamiut area.[24][25] The labiodental fricative[f] is contrastive only inloanwords. The alveolar stop/t/ is pronounced as an affricate[t͡s] before the high front vowel/i/. Often, Danish loanwords containing⟨b d g⟩ preserve these in writing, but that does not imply a change in pronunciation, for example⟨baaja⟩[paːja] "beer" and⟨Guuti⟩[kuːtˢi] "God"; these are pronounced exactly as/ptk/.[26]
A bilingual sign in Nuuk showing the contrast between Danish and Kalaallisut. The sign translates to "parking forbidden for all vehicles."
The broad outline of the Greenlandic grammar is similar to other Eskimo languages, on the morpholological and syntactic plan.
Themorphology of Greenlandic is highlysynthetic and exclusively suffixing[27] (except for a single highly-limited and fossilized demonstrative prefix). The language creates very long words by means of adding strings of suffixes to a stem.[note 3] In principle, there is no limit to the length of a Greenlandic word, but in practice, words with more than six derivational suffixes are not so frequent, and the average number of morphemes per word is three to five.[28][note 4] The language has between 400 and 500 derivational suffixes and around 318 inflectional suffixes.[29]
The language distinguishes four persons (1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th or 3rd reflexive (seeObviation and switch-reference); two numbers (singular and plural but nodual, unlike Inuktitut); eight moods (indicative, interrogative, imperative, optative, conditional, causative, contemporative and participial) and eight cases (absolutive, ergative, equative, instrumental, locative, allative, ablative and prolative). Greenlandic (including the eastern Tunumiisut variety) is the only Eskimo language having lost its dual.
Greenlandic distinguishes threeopen word classes:nouns,verbs andparticles. Verbs inflect for person and number of subject and object as well as for mood. Nouns inflect for possession and for case. Particles do not inflect.[32]
The verb is the only word that is required in a sentence. Since verbs inflect for number and person of both subject and object, the verb is in fact a clause itself. Therefore, clauses in which all participants are expressed as free-standing noun phrases are rather rare.[32] The following examples show the possibilities of leaving out the verbal arguments:
The Greenlandic language usescase to express grammatical relations between participants in a sentence. Nouns are inflected with one of the two core cases or one of the six oblique cases.[33]
Greenlandic is an ergative–absolutive language and so instead of treating thegrammatical relations, as in English and most otherIndo-European languages, whose grammaticalsubjects are marked with the nominative case andobjects with the accusative case, Greenlandic grammatical roles are defined differently. Its ergative case is used foragents of transitive verbs and for possessors. The absolutive case is used for patients of transitive verbs and subjects of intransitive verbs.[34] Research into Greenlandic as used by the younger generation has shown that the use of ergative alignment in Kalaallisut may be becoming obsolete, which would convert the language into anominative–accusative language.[35]
In transitive clauses whose object and subject are expressed as free noun phrases, the basic pragmatically-neutral word order isSOV / SOXV in which X is a noun phrase in one of the oblique cases. However, word order is fairly free.Topical noun phrases occur at the beginning of a clause. New or emphasized information generally come last, which is usually the verb but can also be afocal subject or object. As well, in the spoken language, "afterthought" material or clarifications may follow the verb, usually in a lowered pitch.[36]
On the other hand, the noun phrase is characterized by a rigid order in which the head of the phrase precedes any modifiers and the possessor precedes the possessed.[37][failed verification]
Incopula clauses, the word order is usually subject-copula-complement.
ex:
Andap
Anda
A
tujuuluk
sweater
O
pisiaraa
bought
V
Andap tujuuluk pisiaraa
Anda sweater bought
A O V
"Anda bought the sweater"
An attribute appears after its head noun.
ex:
Andap
Anda
A
tujuuluk
sweater
O
tungujortoq
blue
X
pisiaraa
bought
V
Andap tujuuluk tungujortoq pisiaraa
Anda sweater blue bought
A O X V
"Anda bought the blue sweater"
An attribute of an incorporated noun appears after the verb:
Syntacticcoordination andsubordination is built by combining predicates in the superordinate moods (indicative, interrogative, imperative and optative) with predicates in the subordinate moods (conditional, causative, contemporative and participial). The contemporative has both coordinative and subordinative functions, depending on the context.[38] The relative order of the main clause and its coordinate or subordinate clauses is relatively free and is subject mostly topragmatic concerns.[39]
The Greenlandic pronominal system includes a distinction known asobviation[40] orswitch-reference.[41] There is a special so-called fourth person[42] to denote a third person subject of a subordinate verb or the possessor of a noun that is coreferent with the third person subject of the matrix clause.[43] Here are examples of the difference between third and the fourth persons:
There is no category ofdefiniteness in Greenlandic and so information on whether participants are already known to the listener or they are new to the discourse is encoded by other means. According to some authors, morphology related to transitivity such as the use of the construction sometimes calledantipassive[44][45] or intransitive object[46] conveys such meaning, along with strategies of noun incorporation of non-topical noun phrases.[47][48] That view, however, is controversial.[49]
The morphology of Greenlandic verbs is enormously complex. The main processes areinflection andderivation. Inflectional morphology includes the processes of obligatory inflection for mood, person andvoice (tense andaspect are not inflectional categories in Kalaallisut).[50][51][52] Derivational morphology modifies the meaning of verbs similarly to Englishadverbs. There are hundreds of such derivational suffixes. Many of them are so semantically salient and so they are often referred to aspostbases, rather than suffixes, particularly in the American tradition of Eskimo grammar.[53] Such semantically "heavy" suffixes may express concepts such as "to have", "to be", "to say" or "to think". The Greenlandic verb word consists of a root, followed by derivational suffixes/postbases and then inflectional suffixes. Tense and aspect are marked by optional suffixes between the derivational and the inflectional suffixes.
Greenlandic verbs inflect foragreement with agent and patient and for mood and for voice. There are eight moods, four of which are used in independent clauses the others in subordinate clauses. The four independent moods areindicative,interrogative,imperative andoptative. The four dependent moods are causative, conditional, contemporative and participial. Verbal roots can take transitive, intransitive ornegative inflections and so all eight mood suffixes have those three forms.[54] The inflectional system is even more complex since transitive suffixes encode both agent and patient in a single morpheme, with up to 48 different suffixes covering all possible combinations of agent and patient for each of the eight transitive paradigms. As some moods do not have forms for all persons (imperative has only 2nd person, optative has only 1st and 3rd person, participial mood has no 4th person and contemporative has no 3rd person), the total number of verbal inflectional suffixes is about 318.[55]
The indicative mood is used in all independent expository clauses. The interrogative mood is used forquestions that do not have the question particleimmaqa "maybe".[56]
The table below shows the intransitive inflection of the verbneri- "to eat" in the indicative and interrogative moods (question marks mark interrogative intonation; questions have falling intonation on the last syllable, unlike English and most other Indo-European languages, whose questions are marked by rising intonation). Both the indicative and the interrogative mood have a transitive and an intransitive inflection, but only the intransitive inflection is given here.Consonant gradation like inFinnish appears to occur in the verb conjugation (with strengthening topp in the 3rd person plural and weakening tov elsewhere).
Intransitive indicative and interrogative moods
indicative
interrogative
nerivunga "I am eating"
nerivunga? "Am I eating?"
nerivutit "You are eating"
nerivit? "Are you eating?"
nerivoq "He/she/it eats"
neriva? "Is he/she/it eating?"
nerivugut "We are eating"
nerivugut? "Are we eating?"
nerivusi "You are eating (pl.)"
nerivisi? "Are you eating? (pl.)"
neripput "They are eating"
nerippat? "Are they eating?"
The table below shows the transitive indicative inflection for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person singular subjects of the verbasa- "to love" (an asterisk means that the form does not occur as such but uses a different reflexive inflection).
The table below gives the basic form of all the inflexional suffixes in the indicative and interrogative moods. Where the indicative and interrogative forms differ, the interrogative form is given second in brackets. Suffixes used with intransitive verbs are initalics, while suffixes used with transitive verbs are unmarked.
Object of transitive verb or subject of intransitive verb
1st person
2nd person
3rd person
singular
plural
singular
plural
singular
plural
vunga
vugut
vutit[vit?]
vusi[visi?]
voq[va?]
pput[ppat?]
Subject of transitive verb
1st person
singular
vakkit
vassi
vara
vakka
plural
vatsigit
varput
vagut
2nd person
singular
varma[vinga?]
vatsigut[visigut?]
vat[viuk?]
vatit[vigit?]
plural
vassinga[visinga?]
varsi[visiuk?]
vasi[visigit?]
3rd person
singular
vaanga
vaatigut
vaatit
vaasi
vaa
vai
plural
vaannga
vaatsit
vaat
vaat
Apart from the similarities between forms highlighted inbold,
all basic forms start withv- except for the 3rd person plural intransitive forms;
all basictransitive indicative forms have/a/ as their first vowel;
all basicintransitive indicative forms have/u/ as their first vowel (voq is phonemically/vuq/); and
all basic forms unique to the interrogative mood have/i/ as their first vowel except for the 3rd person intransitive forms.
Furthermore, if the subject of a transitive verb is 3rd person, the suffix will start withvaa- (with one exception).
When the object is 1st or 2nd person singular, the forms with a 3rd personsingular subject are turned into forms with a (3rd person)plural subject by lengthening the second consonant:[vaːŋa] →[vaːŋŋa],[vaːt͡sit̚] →[vaːtt͡sit̚]. If the subject or object is 2nd person plural, the suffix will include-si(-). If the subject or object is 1st person plural, the suffix will end in-t except when the object is 2nd person plural.
The interrogative mood has separate forms only when the subject is 2nd person or intransitive 3rd person; otherwise, the interrogative forms are identical to the indicative forms. All suffixes that start withvi- have a subject in the 2nd person. In the forms unique to the interrogative transitive (which all have 2nd person subjects), the forms with a (2nd person)singular subject are turned into forms with a (2nd person)plural subject by adding-si- after the initialvi- (except when the object is 1st person plural, in which case the same form is used for both plural and singular subject, as is the case for all interrogativeor indicative forms with the object in the 1st or 2nd person plural).
The initialv- changes top- or is deleted according to therules.
After the suffix-nngil- ‘not’,v- is deleted (while thepp- of the 3rd person plural intransitive forms is changed tol-) and a first vowel/u/ is changed to/a/ (e.g.suli+vugut ‘we work’ butsuli-nngil+agut ‘we don't work’). The intransitive 2nd person does not have separate interrogative forms after-nngil-, hence e.g.
suli+vutit ‘you (sg.) work’
suli-nngil+atit ‘you (sg.) don't work’
suli+vit? ‘do you (sg.) work?’
suli-nngil+atit? ‘don't you (sg.) work?’ (instead of the expected *suli-nngil+it?)
After the future suffix-ssa-,vu- andvo- (both/vu/) change toa-. (Va-,vi-,ppu-, andppa- do not change.)
After the suffix-qa-,vu-,vo-,va-,vi-,ppu-, andppa- all change toa- (except when this would lead toaaa, in which caseaaa is shortened toaa).-qa- +vai becomesqai, not *qaai. (In accordance with therule,aau becomesaaju, hence-qa- +viuk becomesqaajuk, not *qaauk.) The suffix-qa- was historically-qi-.
The imperative mood is used to issue orders and is always combined with the second person. The optative is used to express wishes or exhortations and is never used with the second person. There is a negative imperative form used to issue prohibitions. Both optative and imperative have transitive and intransitive paradigms. There are two transitive positive imperative paradigms: a standard one and another that is considered rude and is used usually to address children.[57]
Thecausative mood (sometimes called theconjunctive) is used to construct subordinate clauses that mean "because", "since" or "when" and is also sometimes used to mean "that". The causative is used also in main clauses to imply some underlying cause.[59]
The contemporative mood is used to construct subordinate clauses with the meaning of simultaneity and is used only if the subject of the subordinate clause and of the main clause are identical. If they differ, the participial mood or the causative mood is used. The contemporative can also be used to form complement clauses for verbs of speaking or thinking.[60]
The participial mood is used to construct a subordinate clause describing its subject in the state of carrying out an activity. It is used when the matrix clause and the subordinate clause have different subjects. It is often used in appositional phrases such asrelative clauses.[61]
Verbal derivation is extremely productive, and Greenlandic has many hundreds of derivational suffixes. Often, a single verb uses more than one derivational suffix, resulting in very long words. Here are some examples of how derivational suffixes can change the meaning of verbs:
Greenlandic grammar has morphological devices to mark a distinction between the recent and distant past, but their use is optional[62] and so they should be understood as parts of Greenlandic's extensive derivational system, rather than as a system oftense-markers. Rather than by morphological marking, fixed temporal distance is expressed by temporal adverbials:[63]
All other things being equal and in the absence of any explicit adverbials, the indicative mood is interpreted as complete or incomplete, depending on the verballexical aspect.[64]
However, if a sentence with an atelic verbal phrase is embedded within the context of a past-time narrative, it would be interpreted as past.[65]
Greenlandic has several purely-derivational devices of expressing meaning related to aspect and lexical aspect such assar, expressing "habituality", andssaar, expressing, "stop to".[66] Also, there are at least two major perfect markers:sima andnikuu.sima can occur in several positions with obviously-different functions.[67] The last position indicates evidential meaning, but that can be determined only if several suffixes are present.
Withatelic verbs, there is a regular contrast between indirectiveevidentiality, marked bysima, and witnessed evidentiality, marked bynikuu.[69] Its evidential meaning causes the combination of first person andsima to be sometimes marked.[70]
In the written language[62] and more recently also in the spoken language, especially by younger speakers,sima andnikuu can be used together with adverbials to refer to a particular time in the past.[71] That is, they can arguably mark time reference but do not yet do so systematically.
Just as Greenlandic does not systematically mark past tense, the language also does not have a future tense. Rather, it employs three different strategies to express future meaning:
1)
suffixes denoting cognitive states that show an attitude about prospective actions
The status of the perfect markers as aspect is not very controversial, but some scholars have claimed that Greenlandic has a basic temporal distinction between future andnonfuture. Especially, the suffix-ssa and handful of other suffixes have been claimed to be obligatory future markers.[74][75] However, at least for literary Greenlandic, the suffixes have been shown to have other semantics, which can be used to refer to the future by the strategies that have just been described.[76]
Greenlandic has anantipassive voice, which transforms the ergative subject into an absolutive subject and the absolutive object into an instrumental argument; it is formed mostly by the addition of the marker-(s)i- to the verb (the presence of the consonant being mostly phonologically determined, albeit with a few cases of lexically determined distribution) and, in small lexically restricted sets of verbs, by the addition of-nnig- or-ller- (the former being, however, more frequent because it is the one selected by the common verbal element-gi/ri- 'to have as').[44] It has also been analysed as havingpassive voice constructions, which are formed with the elements-saa- (composed of the passive participle suffix-sa- and-u- 'to be'),-neqar- (composed of the verbal noun suffix-neq- and-qar- 'to have') and-tit- (only to demote higher animate participants, also used with a reflexive causative meaning 'to cause, let [someone do something to one]'). In addition, an "impersonal passive" from intransitive verbs-toqar- (composed of intransitive agent suffix-toq- and-qar 'to have') has been identified.[77]
There is also a debate in the linguistic literature on whether Greenlandic hasnoun incorporation. The language does not allow the kind of incorporation that is common in many other languages in which a noun root can be incorporated into almost any verb to form a verb with a new meaning. On the other hand, Greenlandic often forms verbs that include noun roots. The question then becomes whether to analyse such verb formations as incorporation or as denominal derivation of verbs. Greenlandic has a number ofmorphemes that require a noun root as their host and formcomplex predicates, which correspond closely in meaning to what is often seen in languages that have canonical noun incorporation. Linguists who propose that Greenlandic had incorporation argue that such morphemes are in fact verbal roots, which must incorporate nouns to form grammatical clauses.[45][78][79][80][81][82] That argument is supported by the fact that many of the derivational morphemes that form denominal verbs work almost identically to canonical noun incorporation. They allow the formation of words with a semantic content that correspond to an entire English clause with verb, subject and object. Another argument is that the morphemes that derive denominal verbs come from historical noun incorporating constructions, which have become fossilized.[83]
Other linguists maintain that the morphemes in question are simply derivational morphemes that allow the formation of denominal verbs. That argument is supported by the fact that the morphemes are always latched on to a nominal element.[84][85][86] These examples illustrate how Greenlandic forms complex predicates including nominal roots:
Nouns are always inflected for case and number and sometimes for number and person of possessor. Singular and plural are distinguished and eight cases are used: absolutive, ergative (relative), instrumental, allative, locative, ablative, prosecutive (also called vialis or prolative) and equative.[87] Case and number are marked by a single suffix. Nouns can be derived from verbs or from other nouns by a number of suffixes:atuar- "to read" + -fik "place" becomesatuarfik "school" andatuarfik + -tsialak "something good" becomesatuarfitsialak "good school".
Since the possessive agreement suffixes on nouns and the transitive agreement suffixes on verbs in a number of instances have similar or identical shapes, there is even a theory that Greenlandic distinguishes between transitive and intransitive nouns as it does for verbs.[88][note 5]
There are personal pronouns for first, second, and third person singular and plural. They are optional as subjects or objects but only when the verbal inflection refers to such arguments.[89]
Personal pronouns
Singular
Plural
1st person
uanga
uagut
2nd person
illit
ilissi
3rd person
una
uku
Personal pronouns are, however, required in the oblique case:
Both grammatical core cases, ergative and absolutive, are used to express grammatical and syntactical roles of participant noun phrases. The oblique cases express information related to movement and manner.
Theinstrumental case is versatile. It is used for the instrument with which an action is carried out, for oblique objects of intransitive verbs (also calledantipassive verbs)[45][90][91] and for secondary objects of transitive verbs.[92]
The prosecutive case ending "-kkut" is distinct from the affix "-kkut" which denotes a noun and its companions, e.g. a person and friends or family:[95]
ex:
palasi-kkut
priest-and-companions-of
palasi-kkut
priest-and-companions-of
"the priest and their family"
Theequative case describes similarity of manner or quality. It is also used to derive language names from nouns denoting nationalities: "like a person of x nationality [speaks]".[94]
4. Absolutive possessive inflection for weak nouns
Possessor
Singular
Plural
1st person
singular
illora "my house"
illukka "my houses"
plural
illorput "our house"
illuvut "our houses"
2nd person
singular
illut "your house"
illutit "your houses"
plural
illorsi "your (pl) house"
illusi "your (pl) houses"
3rd person
singular
illua "his house"
illui "his houses"
plural
illuat "their house"
illui "their houses"
4th person
singular
illuni "his own house"
illuni "his own houses"
plural
illortik "their own house"
illutik "their own houses"
In Greenlandic,possession is marked on the noun that agrees with the person and the number of its possessor. The possessor is in the ergative case. There are different possessive paradigms for each different case.[96] Table 4 gives the possessive paradigm for the absolutive case ofillu "house". Here are examples of the use of the possessive inflection, the use of the ergative case for possessors and the use of fourth person possessors.
The orthography and the vocabulary of the Greenlandic language is governed byOqaasileriffik, the Greenlandic language secretariat, located in theIlisimatusarfik university campus inNuuk.
Most of Greenlandic'svocabulary is inherited fromProto-Eskimo–Aleut, but there are also a large number of loans from other languages, especially from Danish. Early loans from Danish have often become acculturated to the Greenlandic phonological system: the Greenlandic wordpalasi "priest" is a loan from the Danishpræst. However, since Greenlandic has an enormous potential for the derivation of new words from existing roots, many modern concepts have Greenlandic names that have been invented rather than borrowed:qarasaasiaq "computer" which literally means "artificial brain". The potential for complex derivations also means that Greenlandic vocabulary is built on very few roots, which, combined with affixes, form large word families.[6] For example, the root for "tongue"oqaq is used to derive the following words:
oqarpoq 'says'
oqaaseq 'word'
oqaluppoq 'speaks'
oqallissaarut 'discussion paper'
oqaasilerisoq 'linguist'
oqaasilerissutit 'grammar'
oqaluttualiortoq 'author'
oqaloqatigiinneq 'conversation'
oqaasipiluuppaa 'harangues him'
oqaatiginerluppaa 'speaks badly about him'
Lexical differences between dialects are often considerable because of the earlier cultural practice of imposing ataboo on words that had served as names for a deceased person. Since people were often named after everyday objects, many of them have changed their name several times because of taboo rules, another cause of the divergence of dialectal vocabulary.[6]
⟨b, c, d, h, w, x, y, z, æ, ø, å⟩ are used to spell loanwords, especially from Danish and English.[98][99] Greenlandic uses "..." and »...« asquotation marks.
From 1851 until 1973, Greenlandic was written in an alphabet invented bySamuel Kleinschmidt, which used thekra (⟨ĸ⟩, capitalised⟨K’⟩) which was replaced by⟨q⟩ in the 1973reform.[100] In the Kleinschmidt alphabet,long vowels andgeminate consonants were indicated bydiacritics on vowels (in the case of consonant gemination, the diacritics were placed on the vowel preceding the affected consonant). For example, the nameKalaallit Nunaat was spelledKalãlit Nunât orKalàlit Nunât. This scheme uses thecircumflex (◌̂) to indicate a long vowel (e.g.⟨ât, ît, ût⟩; modern:⟨aat, iit, uut⟩), anacute accent (◌́) to indicate gemination of the following consonant: (i.e.⟨ák, ík, úk⟩; modern:⟨akk, ikk, ukk⟩) and, finally, atilde (◌̃) or agrave accent (◌̀), depending on the author, indicates vowel length and gemination of the following consonant (e.g.⟨ãt/àt, ĩt/ìt, ũt/ùt⟩; modern:⟨aatt, iitt, uutt⟩).⟨ê, ô⟩, used only before⟨r, q⟩, are now written⟨ee, oo⟩ in Greenlandic. The spelling system ofNunatsiavummiutut, spoken inNunatsiavut in northeasternLabrador, is derived from the old Greenlandic system.
Technically, the Kleinschmidt orthography focused uponmorphology: the same derivational affix would be written in the same way in different contexts, despite its being pronounced differently in different contexts. The 1973 reform replaced this with a phonological system: Here, there was a clear link from written form to pronunciation, and the same suffix is now written differently in different contexts: for example⟨e, o⟩ do not represent separate phonemes, but only more open pronunciations of/i//u/ before/q//ʁ/. The differences are due to phonological changes. It is therefore easy to go from the old orthography to the new (cf. the online converter)[101] whereas going the other direction would require a full lexical analysis.
Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English:
"All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood."
^The CIAWorld Factbook has reported Greenlandic literacy as being 100 percent since at least 2007, when it also reported six other countries achieving one hundred percent literacy.[3] TheFactbook's most recently reported data for Greenland literacy was for 2015.[4]
^According to the Namminersornerullutik Oqartussat / Grønlands Hjemmestyres (Greenlands Home, official website): "Language. The official languages are Greenlandic and Danish.... Greenlandic is the language [that is] used in schools and [that] dominates in most towns and settlements".[11]
^For example the wordNalunaarasuartaatilioqateeraliorfinnialikkersaatiginialikkersaatilillaranatagoorunarsuarooq, which means something like "Once again they tried to build a giant radio station, but it was apparently only on the drawing board".
^That can be compared to the English rate, of slightly more than one morpheme per word.
^For example, the suffix with the shape-aa means "his/hers/its" when it is suffixed to a noun but "him/her/it" when it is suffixed to a verb. Likewise the suffix-ra means "my" or "me", depending on whether it is suffixed on a verb or a noun.
For affixes about which the precise meaning is the cause of discussion among specialists, the suffix itself is used as a gloss, and its meaning must be understood from context: -SSA (meaning either future or expectation), -NIKUU and -SIMA.
4:fourth (reflexive or obviative) personPART:participial moodEQU:equative caseCONT:contemporative moodINT:intransitiveINSTR:instrumental casePOSS:possessor
^Petersen, Robert,De grønlandske dialekters fordeling [The distribution of the Greenlandic dialects](PDF) (in Danish) – viaOqaasileriffik [Greenlandic Language Secretariat]
^Fortescue (1984, pp. 276–287) The dividing line between lexical aspect, aspect and still other functions that do not fit into those categories has yet to be clarified.
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Fortescue, Michael (1991a). "Switch reference anomalies and 'topic' in west greenlandic: A case of pragmatics over syntax". In Jef Verschueren (ed.).Levels of Linguistic Adaptation: selected papers of the International Pragmatics Conference, Antwerp, August 17–22, 1987. Vol. 2. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.doi:10.1075/pbns.6.2.05for.ISBN978-1-55619-107-7.
Fortescue, Michael; Lennert Olsen, Lise (1992). "The Acquisition of West Greenlandic". In Dan Isaac Slobin (ed.).The Crosslinguistic study of language acquisition. Vol. 3. Routledge. pp. 111–221.ISBN978-0-8058-0105-7.
van Geenhoven, Veerle (1998).Semantic incorporation and indefinite descriptions: semantic and syntactic aspects of noun incorporation in West Greenlandic. Stanford: CSLI Publications.ISBN978-1-57586-133-3.
van Geenhoven, Veerle (2002). "Raised Possessors and Noun Incorporation in West Greenlandic".Natural Language & Linguistic Theory.20 (4):759–821.doi:10.1023/A:1020481806619.S2CID189900856.
Goldbach, Ib; Winther-Jensen, Thyge (1988). "Greenland: Society and Education".Comparative Education.24 (2, Special Number (11)):257–266.doi:10.1080/0305006880240209.
Hagerup, Asger (2011).A Phonological Analysis of Vowel Allophony in West Greenlandic (Thesis). NTNU.hdl:11250/242778.
Jacobsen, Birgitte (2000). "The Question of 'Stress' in West Greenlandic:An Acoustic Investigation of Rhythmicization, Intonation, and Syllable Weight".Phonetica.57 (1):40–67.doi:10.1159/000028458.PMID10867570.S2CID202654006.
Jones, Michael; Olwig, Kenneth, eds. (2008).Nordic Landscapes: Region and Belonging on the Northern Edge of Europe. University of Minnesota Press.
Grønlands sprognævn (1992).Icelandic Council for Standardization. Nordic cultural requirements on information technology. Reykjavík: Staðlaráð Íslands.ISBN978-9979-9004-3-6.
Hayashi, Midori; Spreng, Bettina (2005)."Is Inuktitut tenseless?"(PDF). In Claire Gurski (ed.).Proceedings of the 2005 Canadian Linguistics Association Annual Conference. 2005 CLA Annual Conference. Archived fromthe original(PDF) on 2022-08-08. Retrieved2010-01-10.
Langgård, Karen (2009). "Grammatical structures in Greenlandic as found in texts written by young Greenlanders at the turn of the millennium". In Mahieu, Marc-Antoine; Tersis, Nicole (eds.).Variations on Polysynthesis: The Eskaleut languages. Typological Studies in Language. Vol. 86. pp. 231–247.doi:10.1075/tsl.86.15gra.ISBN978-90-272-0667-1.
Schmidt, Bodil Kappel (2003)."West Greenlandic Antipassive".Nordlyd.31 (2). Proceedings of the 19th Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics:385–399. Archived fromthe original on 2008-12-02. Retrieved2010-01-10.
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