Tlingit grammar

Possession and alienability Nouns in Tlingit can be divided into two open classes, possessable and unpossessable. This division is based on whether a particular noun may have a possessed relationship with another noun, both syntactically and semantically. In Tlingit the names for people and places are unpossessable, while other nouns may be either optionally or obligatorily possessed (called alienable and inalienable, respectively). Most nouns in Tlingit are alienable, i.e., they may be used alone or may be possessed by another noun. In contrast, inalienable nouns cannot appear without a possessor. Inalienable nouns commonly refer to kinship terms and body parts. A notable feature of inalienable nouns is that they are not normally marked for possession; that is, they do not take the possessed suffix, as the possessive relationship is implicit in the meaning of the noun. However, if the possessed suffix is used on an inalienable noun, the meaning changes from being part of a body to a body part that is somehow separated from the rest of the body. Thus means "a bear's head", but means "a bear's head (detached from its body)". Plural A plural suffix exists which may be attached to most nouns, however it is not usually used. A few nouns are treated as singular/plural pairs, e.g. "person"/"people", "his child"/"his children". ==Pronominals==

Tlingit has a complex system of pronominals, or pronouns, which vary depending on their relationship to syntactic categories including the verb, The subject pronominals are incorporated into the verb in its subject slot. : The first and second person pronominals both have a distinction between singular and plural. although the plural is often communicated in other ways. The indefinite pronominals are a type of fourth person and distinguish between human and non-human referents. but there are three classes of third person object (neutral, recessive, and salient). This system of object pronominals exist in parallel to similar systems (called "anaphora") in many Athabaskan languages, including in Navajo. although Tlingit has a particularly complex system. Saliency is only considered when the following criteria are met: Consider a situation where the protagonist of a story (who has the most agency) is the object of a sentence, while someone else (with less agency) is the subject. Then a translation of "He found her" would be: {{interlinear|lang=tli|indent=3 In the opposite situation, where the subject has more agency than the object, a translation of the same sentence would be: {{interlinear|lang=tli|indent=3 But if that same speaker sat on another person, one would say: {{interlinear|lang=tli|indent=3 ==Postpositions==

Nominal cases in Tlingit are designated by postpositions, however they usually behave morphologically like suffixes. Other postpositions function as separate words, and include: • — "without" • — "away from" • — "for" • — "like, as much as, according to" • — "more than" • — "less than" ==Directionals==

In Tlingit, directionals are a semantic category which indicate direction relative to some stated position. The stated position can be some element of the natural environment, a structure, or a person or group of people. Syntactically, directionals are a subcategory of nouns because, like nouns, they can be arguments of verbs and objects of postpositions. Some examples of directionals can be seen below. : == Verbs ==

Template Classifier The classifier is a shared and defining feature of the Na-Dene languages. In all members, it has functions related to valency and voice, while in Tlingit it has the additional function of communicating stativity. The classifier has a misleading name, as its function is not a classificatory one. However, the terminology is conventional in both Tlingit and Athabaskan linguistics. The table below represents the sixteen base forms of the Tlingit classifier, each of which is assigned a positive or negative value of S, D, and I (called components). A positive value represents presence of the component, while a negative value represents absence of the component. The broad functions of these components, respectively, are valency (S), voice (D), and stativity (I). : ==Particles==

Particles function as neither noun nor verb. They are restricted to positions relative to phrases in the sentence. Focus particles The focus particles follow the left periphery of a sentence. Many of them may be suffixed with a demonstrative (), and they may also be combined with the interrogative (). For example: • — focus • — interrogative (< + ) • — second hand information, "I hear...", "they say..." (< + ) • — contrastive, "however" • — hypothetical, "as if", "even if", "if only" The focus particle is obligatory in forming wh-question phrases. Phrasal particles Phrasal particles may be either pre-phrasal or post-phrasal, meaning they are restricted to a position either before or after the phrase they modify, respectively. For example: • — "also" • — "now", "this time" • — "only", "just" • — "very" Mobile particles These particles may occur before or after any phrase in a clause. For example: • — "just," "simply," "just then" • — "already," "by now" • — "again", "still", "some more" Note that both the sentence "I need more coffee" and the sentence "I also need coffee" are acceptable, with and differentiated only on the basis of tone. Sentence-initial particles These particles may only occur at the front of a sentence. For example: • , l — negative, "not" • — dubitative, "perhaps" • — optative, "hopefully" • — contrary, "actually", "in fact" • — "I thought..." ==Syntax==

Word order Tlingit is by default an SOV language, but nevertheless word order is quite flexible. The SOV order is most apparent when object and (non-pronominal) agent phrases both exist in the sentence. However, there is a tendency to restrict the arguments of the verb phrase to a single non-pronominal noun phrase, with any other arguments being integrated into the verb. This can cause the appearance of an OSV word order, but it has been shown that this is not a correct analysis of Tlingit syntax. ==References==