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A grammar of Pite Saami, 2014

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6.4 Interrogative pronouns<br />

Table 6.7: Interrogative pronouns with non-human referents<br />

sg pl<br />

nom mij ma(h)<br />

gen man mej<br />

acc mav mejd∼majd<br />

ill masa mejda<br />

iness manne majdne<br />

elat masste majsste<br />

com majna mej<br />

stem gåb- limits the selection to one or two choices. These are described in the<br />

following two sections.<br />

6.4.3.1 General selection using mikkir-<br />

Interrogative pronouns based on the stem mikkir- are used to enquire about a<br />

choice or selection in general. They inflect for the number (singular and plural)<br />

<strong>of</strong> their referent and for case. These forms are listed in Table 6.8 on the next page.<br />

Note that the inessive forms are not attested in the corpus. Two examples are<br />

provided in (10) and (11).<br />

(10) mikkirist<br />

mikkir-ist<br />

lä<br />

lä<br />

which-elat.sg be\3sg.prs<br />

‘What is that made o?’<br />

dat<br />

dágaduvvum?<br />

d-a-t<br />

dága-duvv-um<br />

dem-dist-nom.sg make-pass-prf<br />

[pit110521b1.203]e<br />

(11) nå,<br />

nå<br />

mikkira<br />

mikkir-a<br />

lidjin<br />

lidji-n<br />

dan<br />

d-a-n<br />

Ákabakten?<br />

Ákabakte-n<br />

well which-nom.pl be-3pl.pst dem-dist-iness.sg Ákkabakkte-iness.sg<br />

‘Well which (people) were in Ákkabakkte?’<br />

[pit080924.032]<br />

They can also modify the head <strong>of</strong> an NP, and are then a ‘pro-adjective’ 4 enquiring<br />

after a further characterization <strong>of</strong> the referent. In this case, they do not<br />

inflect for number or case (as is true <strong>of</strong> all attributive adjectives), and so the form<br />

is always mikkir, as illustrated by the examples in (12) and (13).<br />

4 Cf. Schachter & Shopen (2007: 31–34) for more on non-pronoun ‘pro-forms’.<br />

121

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