The Eskimo tribes / 51 (1887-1891) Author: Hinrich Rink - Tema: Greenland Table of Contents / Innehåll | << Previous | Next >>
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But here also the manner in which the endings are appended
is submitted to complicated rules requiring them to be divided in six
classes.

Examples are: nunâ his country, nunatâ his country’s, nunaga
my c., kivfâ his servant, kivfane his (own) servant, oqausia his word,
oqausertik their (own) words, ernera his (my) son, enerpit thy son’s
(subjective).

As to the (dependent) CASES WITH APPOSITIONS, the nouns
without suffixes are inflected as follows:

For	Singular	Plural
Localis . . . . .	me	ne
Ablative . . . . .	mit	nit
Vialis . . . . .	kut	tigut
Modalis . . . . .	mik	nik
Terminalis . . . . .	mut	nut

When they have to join on nouns with suffixes they are somewhat
transformed, but in both cases the rules are not so complicated
as those above alluded to.

Examples are: nuname on land, nunamit from the land, nunakut
by land, nâlagkamut to the master, siorqamik with or by (means of)
sand (sioraq).

The LABRADOR DIALECT only shows a few differences from
what is here slated. The irregular forms are partly wanting. Some
suffixes have an ng appended before them, f. i. kivfanga, kivfangit,
oqausinga for: kivfâ, kivfat, oqausia. It seems that the CENTRAL
DIALECTS also in this respect show nearer kinship to the Labrador
than to the Greenland tongue. In the MACKENZIE GRAMMAR we
also are able to trace almost all the Greenlandish forms, although
more or less disfigured by evident misunderstanding. The most
striking example of the latter is that of considering the subjective
merely as a genitive, without mentioning its relation to a transitive
verb. It is curious that the word tupeq (a tent) in Greenl. and
Mack. has the same anomalous plural tovqit, while in Labr. it has the
regular tupit. In the glossaries of the WESTERN DIALECTS we find
examples of flexional endings referring to number, possession and
appositions, with or without suffixes, but they are too incomplete
for deriving any general rule with regard to their relation to the
Eastern dialects.

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