Klallam Grammar Main Menu Klallam Grammar Alphabet and Sounds Basics Grammar Introduction: How to Use This Grammar 1 Transitive and Intransitive Verbs 2 Past and Future Tense 3 Basic Speech Acts 4 Nouns and Articles 5 Possessive Pronouns 6 Adjectives 7 Object Pronouns 8 The Preposition and Word Order 9 Negative Words 10 More Negative Words 11 Self and Each Other 12 Questions: ‘Who?’ and ‘What?’ 13 Subordinate Subjects in Questions 14 Questions: ‘Whose?’ 15 Focus Pronouns and Answering Questions 16 Comparison 17 Conjunction: ‘And/with,’ ‘but/without,’ and ‘or’ 18 Questions: ‘When?’ 19 Time Expressions 20 More Time Expressions 21 Time Prefixes 22 Questions: ‘Where?’ 23 Some Place Expressions 24 Source, Way, and Destination 25 Serial Verbs 26 Questions: ‘How?’ and ‘How much?’ 27 While Clauses 28 Adverbial Expressions 29 Intensifier Auxiliaries 30 Conditional Clauses 31 Passive Sentences and Shifting Vowels 33 Collective Plural 34 Possessed Verbs 35 So Then ... 36 Reporting Verbs and Direct Quotes 37 Indirect Quotes 38 Questions: ‘Why?’ 39 Because 40 Cause 41 Speech Act Particles 42 The Actual: To Be Continuing 43 State, Result, and Duration 44 Participant Roles and Middle Voice 45 Recipient, Beneficiary, and Source Objects 46 Reflexive, Noncontrol Middle, and Contingent 47 Activity Suffixes 48 Relative Clauses 49 Verbal Prefixes 50 Movement and Development Suffixes 51 Nominalizing Prefixes 52 Adverbial Prefixes 53 More Demonstrative Articles 54 Objects of Intent, Emotion, Direction, and Success 55 More Reduplication Patterns 56 Interjections 57 Rare Suffixes 58 A Fully Annotated Text 59 Texts to Annotate 60 Conclusion Appendices Klallam Dictionary Klallam-English and English-Klallam sections only

32 Lexical Suffixes

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In this section we look at a feature of Klallam that is one of the most interesting and unique features of the native languages of northwest North America. Although lexical suffixes are found in all of the Salishan languages and in some of the native languages neighboring the Salishan family, there is nothing comparable to lexical suffixes in English or in any of the other European languages.

Basically, lexical suffixes are suffixes that have nounlike meaning. English suffixes like ‘‑s’ in ‘cats’ and ‘‑ed’ in ‘jumped’ have meanings like ‘plural’ and ‘past tense.’ Compare these with the Klallam lexical suffixes ‑éʔqʷ  ‘head’ and ‑sən ‘foot,’ which have more substantial, nounlike meanings. Most of the lexical suffixes refer to body parts, but there are many, like ‑iɬč ‘plant,’ that refer to other important categories. There are almost 100 lexical suffixes in Klallam, but only around 50 are regularly used.

Lexical suffixes are unusual in the languages of the world, but the concept is not particularly difficult. Many of the Klallam words, including some you already know, have lexical suffixes built into them. If you make the effort to learn a dozen or so lexical suffixes, your Klallam vocabulary will increase dramatically.

This section introduces a few of the most common and useful Klallam lexical suffixes. For a complete list of the Klallam lexical suffixes, see the Klallam Dictionary.

These are the lexical suffixes that will be used in these sections. You should learn these now:
‑ákʷtxʷ  (‑aʔítxʷ)                ‘dollar, round object’
‑áw̓txʷ                              ‘house, building, room’
‑áy (‑áyə, ‑áʔyə)                ‘container’
‑ay                                  ‘people’
‑ə́yəs (‑ʔáʔis)                     ‘eye’
‑éʔqʷ                               ‘head’
‑ə́qsən (‑əqs)                     ‘nose’
‑cəs (‑cs, ‑acs, ‑cís, ‑císən)  ‘hand’
‑íkʷs (‑íkʷən)                     ‘body, of a kind’
‑íɬč (‑əɬč, ‑aɬč, ‑ɬč)              ‘plant, bush, tree’
‑ínəs (‑íns, ‑éʔnəs)              ‘chest’
‑ɬšáʔ                                ‘multiple of ten’
‑sən (‑šən)                        ‘foot, shoe’
‑tən (‑ən)                          ‘instrument, tool’
‑ucən (‑cən, ‑cín,  úc)         ‘mouth, edge, language’

Many of the lexical suffixes have alternate pronunciations that depend on which vowel in a word has the stress. The alternate pronunciations in the list above are shown in parentheses.

An important thing to be aware of with lexical suffixes is that in some words, the lexical suffix is preceded by a short suffix, like ‑ʔəɬ, ‑a, ‑aw̓, -ay, -əʔ, or ‑əw, that has no meaning and no known function. These probably had meaning at some time in the distant history of the Klallam language, but now they have none. These are called simply stem extenders. You can find a complete list of them in the English-Klallam index of the Klallam Dictionary (page 717). From there, you can look up stem extender and see the words that use them.

There are three main ways that lexical suffixes are used: they can refer to the object of the verb, they can join with a root to form compound words, and they can be used with numbers for counting particular kinds of things.
 

This page has paths:

  1. Grammar Montler, et al.

Contents of this path:

  1. 32.1. Lexical suffixes as objects
  2. 32.2. Lexical suffixes in compounds
  3. 32.3. Lexical suffixes with numbers