A grammar of Pite Saami, 2014

7.2 Predicative adjectives
v
vi
vii
The bare stem in the singular predicative form, an additional final -is
for the attributive form and -a for the plural predicative form. Number
marking like class IIIa nouns.
The singular and plural predicative forms differ only in the choice of
stem allomorph (in the consonant center), while the attributive form is
in the ‘weak’ grade (like predicative plural) but with a stem-final gis.
Only one example in the corpus; number marking like a class Ie noun.
The predicative forms have a stem-final -t or -s, which is lacking in the
attributive form. The plural predicative form is marked with a final -a.
In the case of galbma, the attributive form and plural predicative form
have the ‘strong’ stem form, as opposed to the singular predicative form,
which is ‘weak’. Number marking like class IIIa nouns.
Despite the similarities with nouns described above, it is important to point out
that there are a number of predicative adjectives which do not inflect for number.
Moreover, this lack of number marking cannot be assigned to any specific noun
class, particularly since noun classes with similar segmental structures exhibit
clear number marking strategies. Examples of such predicative adjectives are
presented in Table 7.5 on the following page.
The paradigms in Table 7.5 are divided into two sub-groupings, again based on
the relationship between the attributive form and the predicative forms. They
are summarized here:
viii The attributive form ends in -a, while the predicative form ends in -e. 3
ix All forms are syncretic. The first two examples have a closed final syllable,
while the last three examples have an open final syllable.
The variety evident in morphological correlations between the attributive and
the predicative forms indicates that there is no regular form-to-function relationship
between the attributive and predicative forms. Therefore, on formal grounds,
the attributive and predicative forms of these property words are assigned to different,
though formally and semantically related, adjectival lexemes, as argued
for in the following section (§7.3).
3 Cf. §7.6 for more details on unna/unna and smáve/smáve, the words for ‘small’.
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