SENĆOŦEN: A Grammar of the Saanich Language

37 Lexical Suffixes

Basically, lexical suffixes are ones that have noun-like meaning, such as the SENĆOŦEN lexical suffixes ‑I¸Ḱ  ‘head’ and ‑SEN ‘foot,’. In terms of meaning, they are like noun roots. However, unlike roots, which might stand alone and can have prefixes and suffixes attached to them, lexical suffixes must attach to a root, just as any suffix. Most of the lexical suffixes refer to body parts, but there are many, like ‑IȽĆ ‘plant,’ that refer to other important categories. There are around 70 lexical suffixes in SENĆOŦEN, but only around two dozen are regularly used.

Beyond the native languages of northwest North America, lexical suffixes are unusual in the languages of the world, but the concept is not particularly difficult. Many of the SENĆOŦEN words, including some that have already been presented here, have lexical suffixes built into them. If you make the effort to learn a few lexical suffixes, your SENĆOŦEN vocabulary will increase dramatically.

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

These 21 lexical suffixes (presented in alphabetical order) are the most frequent. You should learn these now:
‑AXEN (‑AXEN¸, ‑EXÁN, ‑EXEN, ‑EXEN)                  ‘arm’
‑Á¸LETW̱ (‑ÁLETW̱, ‑ÁȻETW̱)                                  ‘dollar’
‑ÁLE (‑ÁL¸E, ‑Á¸ELE, ‑ÍE¸)                                            ‘person’
‑ÁLE (‑HÁLE, ‑ÁLE¸, ‑ÁL¸E, ‑ELE, ‑ÍE)                         ‘container’
‑ÁSES (‑SES, ‑SIS, ‑ĆES, ‑SI)                                        ‘hand’
‑ÁW¸TW̱ (‑EW¸TW̱, ‑HÁW¸TW̱)                                 ‘house, room, building’
‑EḴSEN (‑IḴSEN, ‑ḴSEN, ‑EḴS, ‑E¸ḴS, ‑͸ḴSEN)         ‘nose, point’
‑ENEȻ (‑ENOȻ, ‑EN¸O¸Ȼ, ‑NOȻ, ‑ENEP, ‑EN¸EP)      ‘land, floor’
‑EWEĆ (‑EU¸ÁĆ, ‑OWEĆ, ‑EWÁĆ ‑WÁĆ)                 'bottom, base’
‑I¸Ḱ (‑E¸Ḱ, ‑IḰ, ‑EḰ)                                                       ‘head’
‑IȻES (‑ȻES, ‑IWES, ‑IWS, ‑IW¸ES, ‑IW¸S, ‑WES)      ‘body’
‑IȻEN (‑EȻEN, ‑EWEN, ‑IW¸EN¸)                             ‘mind, interior’
‑IȽĆ (‑HIȽĆ, ‑EȽĆ, ‑Á¸IȽĆ, ‑ȽĆ, ‑EȽP)                            ‘plant’
‑INES (‑IN¸ES, ‑I¸NES)                                                  ‘chest’
‑IU¸SE (‑IU¸S, ‑EU¸SE)                                                  ‘fire’
‑OLȻET (‑ELȻOT, ‑HOLȻET, ‑EL¸ȻOT)                          ‘clothing’
‑OLES (‑HOLES, ‑OL¸S, ‑ELO¸S)                                ‘eye, color, stone, round’
‑OS (‑ES)                                                                        ‘face’
‑OŦEN (‑EŦEN, ‑ŦI¸N, ‑OŦ, ‑EŦ)                                   ‘mouth’
‑SEN (‑SIN, ‑SEN¸, ‑ŚEN)                                              ‘foot’
‑TEN (‑TÁN, ‑EN, ‑EN¸)                                            ‘instrument, tool’

Many of the lexical suffixes have alternate pronunciations that depend on which vowel in a word has the stress. Some of 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 ‑EL, ‑O, ‑ÁL, -IL, and -I, that has no identifiable meaning and no known function. These probably had meaning at some time in the distant linguistic history of SENĆOŦEN, but now they have none. These are called simply stem extenders. There are 35 of these stem extenders that have been identified in SENĆOŦEN. They are all listed in the suffix index of the SENĆOŦEN dictionary.

There are three ways that lexical suffixes are used: 1) they can refer to the object of the verb, 2) they can join with a root to form compound words, and 3) they can be used with numbers for counting particular kinds of things.
 

This page has paths:

Contents of this path:

This page has tags: