DERIVATIONAL SUFFIXES AS/OR CLASSIFIERS? – THE WORD-FORMATION OF THE NGANASAN ADJECTIVES
The Nganasan langauge is rich in adjectival suffixes. Some of the adjectival suffixes simply have been considered as derivational suffixes of “adjectiveness” without any further function, however several earlier studies on the Nganasan language have previously mentioned some correlations of certain semantic domains and the morphology of their terms. The paper provides deeper analysis of the linguistic data and depicts its typological parallels and uniqueness. The domains referring value and age seem to appear as a part of the domain of physical characteristics and because of the low number of its members they have not became subjects of consideration. The correlation between domains and suffixes are not exclusive, e.g.: suffix of colour also occurs in dimension and physical characteristics, e.g. kolsajkuə ‘long’ etc. Suffixes -əgə and ńəəgə clearly cover their own domain. Among the causes of the overlapings the different productivity of the suffixes, the different degrees of semantic transparency of the derivated forms and the unclear origin of the suffixes with their unclear etymology can also be mentioned. Although the correlations are strong and show strict tendencies, the suffixes can not been considered as classifiers because they dominate only their “own” domain, but not exclusively.
Keywords: Nganasan, adjectives, derivation
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Issue: 4, 2014
Series of issue: Issue 4
Rubric: LINGUISTICS
Pages: 49 — 58
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