Selknam

Language

Selknam

Family

Chon

Ethnologue

ona

ISO

ona

glottolog_id

onaa1245

Verbs table

gloss	layer	m cert	f cert	n cert	m foc	f foc	n foc	m	f	n
I see X	lexeme	tahjqenn	tahjqeèn	hahjqn				tahjqeştj	tahjqeştn	hahjqeştn
I see X	prefix	t	t	h	t	t	h	t	t	h
I see X	suffix	nn	en	n	nn	en	n	j	n	n
X ran	lexeme	okèʔnn	okèʔèn						okèʔştn
X ran	prefix	zero	zero	zero	zero	zero	zero	zero	zero	zero
X ran	suffix	nn	en	n	nn	en	n	j	n	n

Selknam notes

• Gender (manifested through suffix agreement) is lexically specified. Male and female animates belong to masculine and feminine gender, respectively (Najlis 1973: 17f), but there are inanimates in both genders, alongside a third, neuter, gender. Gender agreement is manifested both as prefixes and suffixes. Rojas Berscia (2014) describes the prefixes as animacy markers rather than gender markers ( they always conflate masculine + feminine), but this would imply e.g. that an inanimate feminine noun should take a feminine suffix and an inanimate prefix, which is contradicted by such examples in Najlis (1973: 41), where inanimates have contrasting prefixes that agree with their lexical gender:

  k-àştèr-èn	nèj-n	sorèn
  M/F.FOC-narrow-F	pres-F/N	bag(F)
  'the bag is narrow'

  h-àştèr-n	nèj-n	Ɂòlj
  N-narrow-N	pres-F/N	dress(N)
  'the dress is narrow'

  (Note that Najlis 1973 identifies the identical prefixes used as noun formatives as animate/inanimate.) - Verbs agree in gender and animacy with the absolutive argument; the pattern of gender agreement is sensitive to the distinction between certitive mood forms and other forms (Najlis 1973: 19). - Verbs fall into two classes: those that take gender prefixes and those that do not. According to Rojas Berscia (2014), the copula and verbs of motion are typically non-prefixing, while most other verbs take prefixes.

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References

Najlis, Elena. 1973. Lengua Selknam (Filologia y lingüística 3.). Buenos Aires: Instituto de Filología y Lingüística, Universidad del Salvador.

Rojas Berscia, Luis Miguel. 2014. A Heritage Reference Grammar of Selk'nam. M.A. thesis, Radboud University.