Tense marking on NPs

[Florian Siegl]

Tense marking on NPs in Samoyedic languages is known (Samoyed / Uralic),
although detailed syntactic studies are unfortunately still missing.

Beside nouns, also adjectives, numerals, pronouns, and participles
(substantivized verbs) can be "conjugated" in singular, dual and plural.
Whereas all Samoyedic languages have a rather rich verbal morphology, these
explicit forms can occur only in the aorist and in the preterite; modal
markers can not be attached

These suffixes which are used to express tense on the NP are the same
markers as used in the so called subjective (intransitive) conjugation.



e.g. Enets:



1)

mod'i   ese-do'

I           father-aor.subj1sg


'I'm a father'



2)

mod'i ese-do-d'

I           father-pret.subj1sg

'I was a father'





Hajdu, Peter 1975. "Prädikative Nominalflexion in den samojedischen Sprachen
". Acta Linguistica Academiae Scientarum Hungaricae, Tomus 25. pp.1-30.


Hajdu, Peter 1968. Chrestomathia Samoiedica. Budapest p. 47 on Tundra
Nenets; p.141-142 on Selkup [in Hungarian; several reprints]


Salminen, Tapani 1997. Tundra Nenets inflection. SUST 227. Helsinki (p.130)


Künnap, Ago 1999. Enets. Languages of the World 186. Lincom (p.29-30)






b) A similar system is known in Erzya and Moksa Mordva (Volga / Finno-Ugric
/ Uralic).



Best wishes



Florian Siegl







Florian Siegl
Aleksandri 12-35
51004 Tartu / Estonia


florian.siegl at gmx.net



"Were a language ever completely "grammatical",
it would be a perfect engine of conceptual expression.
Unfortunately, or luckily, no language is tyrannically consistent.
All grammars leak... (Sapir, Language 1921 p.38)