SENĆOŦEN: A Grammar of the Saanich Language Main Menu Contents Preface Acknowledgments PART 1 Introduction The organization of this grammar The Place of SENĆOŦEN in the Salishan Language Family Basics of the SENĆOŦEN word Useful phrases PART 2 The SENĆOŦEN Alphabet and Sounds Consonants Vowels and Diphthongs Notes on Pronunciation PART 3 SENĆOŦEN Grammatical Patterns 1 Transitive and Intransitive Verbs 2 Past and Future Tense 3 Basic Speech Acts 4 Nouns and Articles 5 Possessive Pronouns 6 Adjectives 7 Basic Word Order 8 The Preposition 9 Serial Verbs 10 Auxiliaries 11 Conjunction: ‘And/with’ and ‘but/without’ 12 No and Not 13 Self and Each Other 14 More Negative Words 15 Questions: ‘Who?,’ ‘What?,’ ‘Someone,’ ‘Something’ 16 Questions: ‘Do what?,’ ‘Say what?,’ and ‘Which one?’ 17 Subordinate Subjects in Questions 18 Questions: ‘Whose?’ 19 Every, All, Any, and Some 20 Comparison 21 Questions: ‘When?’ 22 Numbers 23 Time Expressions 24 Time Prefixes 25 Questions: ‘Where?’ 26 Location Expressions 27 Paths 28 Questions: ‘How?’ and ‘How much?’ 29 Adverbial Expressions 30 Conditional Clauses 31 Should, Must, Ought to, Want to 32 Object Pronouns 33 Passive 34 Strong, Weak, and Zero Stems 35 Participant Roles and Middle Voice 36 Recipient, Beneficiary, and Other Participants 38 Questions: ‘Why?’ 39 Because 40 Cause 41 Collective Plural 42 The Actual Aspect 43 State, Result, and Duration 44 Activity Suffixes 45 Reflexive, Inchoative, and Noncontrol Middle 46 Ȼ Clauses 47 Relative Clauses 48 Speech Act Modifiers 49 Possessed Verbs 50 Summary of Particles with Ȼ 51 So Then ... 52 Reporting Verbs and Direct Quotes 53 Indirect Quotes 54 Verbal Prefixes 55 Nominalizing Prefixes 56 Adverbial Prefixes 57 More Demonstrative Articles 58 Objects of Intent and Emotion 59 More Reduplication Patterns 60 Interjections 61 Politeness Expressions 62 Rare Prefixes and Suffixes 63 A Fully Annotated Text 64 Texts to Annotate Appendix A: Technical Description of SENĆOŦEN Sounds Appendix B: SENĆOŦEN Pronouns Appendix C: Demonstrative Articles Appendix D: SENĆOŦEN Kin Terms Appendix E: Index to Technical Linguistic Topics Appendix F: Vocabulary Bibliography SENĆOŦEN Dictionary Basic SENĆOŦEN Dictionary without root and affix indexes

37 Lexical Suffixes

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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:

  1. PART 3 SENĆOŦEN Grammatical Patterns Montler, et al.

Contents of this path:

  1. 37.1. Lexical suffixes as possessed objects
  2. 37.2. Lexical suffixes in compounds
  3. 37.3. Lexical suffixes with numbers

This page has tags:

  1. 52 Reporting Verbs and Direct Quotes Montler, et al.
  2. 56.2. W̱- ‘location’ Montler, et al.
  3. 16.3. ‘Which one?’ Montler, et al.