Menominee Language - Morphology

Morphology

Nouns exist in two classes, animate and inanimate, which are marked in the plural inflection.

• Animate nouns take the plural ending -ak (enɛ:niwak men)
• Inanimate nouns take the plural ending -an (we:kewaman houses)

Gender is also marked in referential inflection, such as in verb inflection which marks the gender of the actor. (The animate/inanimate distinction usually, but not necessarily, coincides with whether an object is animate or inanimate in the world)

There are four personal prefixes used to modify nouns and in personal pronouns:

• 1st person: nɛ-

• 2nd person: kɛ- (also used for inclusive 1st person plural)

• 3rd person: o-

• indefinite: mɛ-

Certain nouns occur only in possessed forms, typically referring to body parts or relatives, such as okiːqsemaw, "son"; kese:t, "your (s.) foot"; mese:t, "someone's foot". These affixes are used to indicate possession (e.g. neme:h "my older sister"; neta:qsɛnem, "my stone"). They are also used in the inflection of verbs to indicate the actor.

The personal pronouns formed by these prefixes are as follows:

1st person singular ("I"): nenah

1st person exclusive ("we"): nenaq

1st person inclusive ("we"): kenaq

2nd person singular ("you"): kenah

2nd person plural ("you"): kenuaq

3rd person singular ("he/she/it"): wenah

3rd person plural ("they"): wenuaq

Nouns and nearly all pronouns are inflected for singular and plural. Some nouns occur only as singulars, typically denoting liquids or other uncountable substances (e.g. kahpeːh, coffee). The singular is often used for a representative meaning, e.g. ɛːsespemaːteset omɛːqnomeneːw, "the way the Menomini lives".

Nouns can also be inflected for locality:

weːkewam, "house"

weːkewameh, "in a house"

yoːm, "this"

yoːs, "right here"

Diminutives can be formed from any noun by suffixing -æshs

Agent nouns (i.e., nouns that mean one who does the action of the verb, such as "worker" from "work", "talker" from "talk", in English) are homonymous with the third person inflected verb. So,

anohkiːw, "he works" or "worker"

moːhkotaːqsow, "he whittles" or "carpenter"