The Inuit languages, like other Eskimo–Aleut languages, exhibit a regular agglutinative and heavily suffixing morphology. The languages are rich in suffixes, making words very long and potentially unique. For example, in Nunavut Inuktitut:

This long word is composed of a root word tusaa- – to hear – followed by seven suffixes (a vowel-beginning suffix always erases the final consonant of the preceding consonant-ending suffix):

  • -tsiaq-: "well"
  • -junnaq- (or -gunnaq-): "be able to"
  • -nngit-: negation
  • -tu(q): indicative third-person singular (in fact a nominal form)
  • -alu(k)-: augmentative ("very")
  • -u-: "be"
  • -junga: indicative first-person singular (itself composed of the indicative morpheme -ju- and the first person marker -nga)

Note the consonant sandhi (see Inuit phonology): The /q/ from -tsiaq- followed by the /j/ from -junnaq- becomes ‹r› , a single consonant taking its point of articulation from /q/ and its manner of articulation from /j/. The /q/ from -junnaq- is assimilated into the /ŋŋ/ of -nngit-, because Inuktitut forbids triple length consonants, and because the morphophonological rules attached to -nngit- require it to delete any consonant that comes before it.

This sort of word construction is pervasive in Inuit languages and makes it very unlike English. In one large Inuktitut corpus – the Nunavut Hansard – 92% of all words appear only once, in contrast to a small percentage in most English corpora of similar size. This makes the application of Zipf's law quite difficult.

Furthermore, the notion of a part of speech can be somewhat complicated in Inuit languages. Fully inflected verbs can be interpreted as nouns. The word ilisaijuq can be interpreted as a fully inflected verb – "he studies" – but can also be interpreted as a noun: "student".

Because of the languages’ rich and complicated morphology, this article can present only a limited and unsystematic sample of its features. It is based largely on the Inuktitut dialects of north Baffin Island and central Nunavut. The morphology and syntax of Inuit language varies to some degree between dialects, but the basic principles will generally apply to all of them and to some degree to Yupik as well.

Nouns

Nouns (atiqausit) are the parts of speech that describe people, places, and things. Nouns are marked for number, case, and possession.

Noun declension

Inuktut has three numbers; singular, dual, and plural.

Inuktut has eight noun cases, all of which display various roles within the sentence.

The following is the declension of the noun (iglu, house)

{| class="wikitable"

! !! Singular !! Dual !! Plural

|-

! Nominative

| iglu

| rowspan="2" | igluuk

| rowspan="2" | iglut

|-

! Ergative

| igluup

|-

! Accusative

| iglumik

| iglungnik

| iglunik

|-

! Locative

| iglumi

| iglungni

| igluni

|-

! Ablative

| iglumit

| iglungnit

| iglunit

|-

! Allative

| iglumut

| iglungnut

| iglunut

|-

! Prolative

| iglukkut

| igluukkut

| iglutigut

|-

! Equative

| iglutut

| colspan="2" | iglutitut

|} Regardless, by analogy with more conventionally ergative languages, the -up, -k, -it endings described above are often called ergative suffixes which are taken to be indicative of the ergative case, while the -mik, -rnik, -nik endings (see Non-specific verbs – Objects) are called accusative. This usage is often seen in linguistics literature describing Inuktitut, and sometimes in pedagogic literature and dictionaries, but remains a quite foreign vocabulary to most Inuit.

The Inuktitut language also uses the ergative and the accusative cases in different forms: the ergative also appears as a genitive, marking the possessor of a noun. This ergative-genitive case is required to be used for the relation between two nouns. However, it is identical to the nominative in the dual and plural. Regardless, by analogy with more conventionally ergative languages, the -up, -k, -it endings described above are often called ergative suffixes which are taken to be indicative of the ergative case, while the -mik, -rnik, -nik endings (see Non-specific verbs – Objects) are called accusative. This usage is often seen in linguistics literature describing Inuktitut, and sometimes in pedagogic literature and dictionaries, but remains a quite foreign vocabulary to most Inuit.

See also

  • Greenlandic grammar

Notes