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Yo.

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‹› · Ḿḿ Ńń Ĺĺ Śś Źź Ąą Ǫǫ Ųų Æ̨æ̨ Ǽǽ Œ̨œ̨ Œ́œ́ Ɣɣ Y̋y̋ Įį Şş Z̧z̧ θ
Āā Ēē Īī Ōō Ūū ↗ Ṭṭ C̣c̣ Łł Ḍḍ Ṣṣ Ẓẓ Ṇṇ Ŋŋ e˞ o˞ ʷ ʲ ʰ ə

Remember, V in the third person plural is realized as <p> /p/ when it comes after <q> /q/.



You got the ergatives wrong:



Also, same problem with the first set of answers.

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sup

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have some lessons

I noticed the 3PP thing myself when I corrected it on my own, but I didn't want to lie/cheat, as this was what I wrote initially. You've fooled me a bit with those. >:[

arfip, obviously. Duh. Oops.
I based kalaallitip on angutip here.

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‹› · Ḿḿ Ńń Ĺĺ Śś Źź Ąą Ǫǫ Ųų Æ̨æ̨ Ǽǽ Œ̨œ̨ Œ́œ́ Ɣɣ Y̋y̋ Įį Şş Z̧z̧ θ
Āā Ēē Īī Ōō Ūū ↗ Ṭṭ C̣c̣ Łł Ḍḍ Ṣṣ Ẓẓ Ṇṇ Ŋŋ e˞ o˞ ʷ ʲ ʰ ə

Lesson Three: Nouns!

Section One: the Urghgative. Urgh. Cause no one likes it.

This title embodies my hatred and bad spirits towards the making of this lesson.

What language lessons would be complete without mention of nominal morphology? That's right. None of them. Yo.

Greenlandic, as you may know already, is a (split) ergative-absolutive language, and the absolutive is the case that is unmarked. Every noun introduced thus so far have been in the absolutive case.

Now I'm sure most of you know how ergative alignments work, but just in case, here's a quick summary:

(1) The absolutive case marks direct objects and the subjects of intransitive verbs.
(2) The ergative marks the subjects of transitive verbs.

The ergative is actually used in possessive structures (it marks the possessor), but that's two lessons ahead. Patience!

So you are probably wondering, how do I mark the ergative case in Greenlandic?

Well, the postbase for it is p in the singular. Let's take a look at some nouns in the ergative:

kuup (abs. kuuk)
inuup (abs. inuk)
inussuup (abs. inussuk "inukshuk")

isigaap (abs. isigak)
assaap (abs. assak)

illoqarfiup (abs. illoqarfik)
oqaluffiup (abs. oqaluffik "church"

angutip (abs. angut "man")
eqqarsaatip (abs. eqqarsaat "thought")

puisip (abs. puisi)
tuttup (abs. tuttu "reindeer")

seqinerup (abs. seqineq "sun")
toqunerup (abs. tuqu "die" + niq "nominalizer" = toquneq "death")

kalaallip (abs. kalaalleq)
qimmip (abs. qimmeq)

As you can see, there are quite a few patterns to the ergative case; indeed, I believe it's the most unpredictable of all Greenlandic morphology. Here are observations about the ergative case:

(1) When a noun ending in a vowel is in the ergative, <p> /p/ is added to the noun without difficulty.
(2) When a noun ending in niq is in the ergative, the <q> /q/ morphs into a <r> /R/, and the ergative ending is realized as up.
(3) When a noun ending in <q> /q/ (but not in the case of niq), the <q> /q/ is removed, and the ergative ending <p> /p/ is added to the vocalic stem of the noun.
(4) When a noun ending in <k> /k/ is in the ergative, the <k> + <p> morphs into up. Remember, the vocalic sequence <iu> /iu/ [iju] exists (see footnote 1 at the end of this post), but *<au> /au/ does not. Can you figure out what /au/ changes to by looking at the example ergative words?
(5) When a noun ending in <t> /t/ is in the ergative, the ergative realization ip is tacked on to the consonantal stem.

There is a couple of words that go irregular (le gasp) when in the ergative case: the only one that I know of is qajaq (erg. qannaap).

Here are several useful transitive verbs:

tuni "give to"
uqalup "talk to"
tuquk "kill"
sana "make"
imiq "drink"
niri "eat"
iga "cook"
atuaq "read"
allat "write"
aqqutiG "travel along (lit. have as a road)"

Now you can say things! Translate these sentences.

"The Greenlander killed the seal."
"The man wrote a book."
"The kayak traveled along the river."
"The person cooked a seal."
"The reindeer killed the seal."
"The inukshuk saw you."



Now, here comes the part when I ask readers for advice. What should I cover next? Greenlandic's split-ergativity or the absolutive and ergative plurals? Actually, I've decided already.

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sup

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have some lessons

Utoqqatserpunga. :c

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sup

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have some lessons

Section Two: the Plural!

The Greenlandic plural is a nifty little thing. What's nice about it is that the ergative and absolutive plural endings are identical, and if you know the singular ergative endings, you basically only need to change them a little to get the plural endings.

To form the Greenlandic abs./erg. plural, we need to change the ergative -p ending into a -t with only one exception: if a root ends in a <k> /k/, instead of -ut the ending will be -it.

That's basically it!

What would be the abs./erg. plurals of the following words, then?

"person"
"dog"
"school"
"book"
"town"
"kayak" (careful on this one)



That was easy.

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sup

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have some lessons

I was wondering, would anyone like for me to keep writing these lessons? I'm all for it but I don't want to bother if no one wants it. If I continue, I'll consider making a PDF of the lessons so that it's not as difficult to find the lesson posts.

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sup

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have some lessons

This is probably about 6 or 7 months too late (I only joined this forum a few weeks ago, incidentally because I was looking for Kalaallisut resources and google turned up this thread), but this thread is awesome! I for one would love to learn more about Kalaallisut!

I'm glad you liked it. Unfortunately I'm not feeling up to write more lessons as of yet but you can always contact me with questions, and I'll do my best to answer.

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sup

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have some lessons

Hi Pirka!

Thanks for your reply. We're now a bit "after the event", I do realise...

I wonder what materials you've been using to learn Kalaallisut. I've been trying to find online materials as I live in Asia and won't be passing through Denmark, let alone Greenland, in the near future, but so far this thread is the most comprehensive introduction to the grammar I've come across.

I would be especially interested in finding a list of postbases, as I'm trying to raid the Kalaallisut inventory for ideas for my conlang. Would you know where I could find such a list, or better yet, an online grammar?

I really appreciate any help you can offer.

I can offer you three good resources.

1. Oqaaserpassualeriffik is the IT branch of Oqaasileriffik (the Institute of the Greenlandic Language) and has plenty of wonderful resources such as a dictionary and a word analyzer (it divides words into morphemes) that are being updated regularly. Check it out.
2. This is a nice introduction to West Greenlandic. It doesn't go very much into detail, but it makes up for that by being searchable and having a lengthy narrative text for you to study.
3. This is a deliciously detailed grammar, so much more so than number 2. However, due to the nature of the production it isn't searchable, but I have somewhat remedied that by undergoing a semi-Herculean effort to bookmark all the sections some two months ago. It was tedious but I think the end result was well worth it. I started retyping the grammar but I didn't get very far. Anyway, I like this grammar because it focuses a lot on the syntax of the language and it has a good list of postbases, as well as plenty of examples.

I basically used those three resources to construct these lessons as well as learn my share of Greenlandic.

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sup

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have some lessons

Wow! Awesomeness is not a word I like to use, but this time I think I shall:

Awesomeness!!!

Big thanks I won't be sleeping tonight, what with 396 pages of Kalaalisut grammar downloaded on my phone!!!

I too must agree that these lessons are awesome!! It does seem like it was a lot of effort so kudos to you my friend!!

One question, what's the stress pattern for the words? Because I'm trying to sound authentic but I stumble a bit over the long words... Anyway thanks! This is so cool Greenlandic seems like a very pretty and (at least judging by these lessons) very regular language. I'm sure that once you get over its polysynthesis then it gets quite easy.

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The Losna Project.