A grammar of Pite Saami, 2014

8 Verbs
8.5 Inflectional classes for verbs
Verbs in Pite Saami can be grouped into inflectional classes based on recurring
patterns across inflectional paradigms. 11 Each verb is marked by a class suffix
which is attached directly after the verb stem and precedes inflectional suffixes
(cf. Figure 1 on page 149). Unlike nouns, the potential to have umlaut alternations
and/or consonant gradation present for a given verb is dependent on the verb’s
membership in a specific class. However not every verb in the umlaut/gradation
classes is subject to these alternations, as that is determined by whether the phonemes
occupying the V1 position and the consonant center of the final foot, respectively,
are susceptible to umlaut and/or consonant gradation. Furthermore,
some derivational suffixes (such as the diminutive suffix -tj) can block consonant
gradation and umlaut from occurring in the derived form. Membership in
a specific verb class does not seem to be semantically motivated.
As described in the previous section, Pite Saami verb paradigms present complex
combinations of linear morphology (inflectional suffixes) and non-linear
morphology (consonant gradation, umlaut, vowel harmony), and consist of a
minimum of 21 finite forms and several non-finite forms. This minimum includes
1 st , 2 nd and 3 rd person forms for singular, dual and plural in both present and
past, as well as singular, dual and plural forms for imperative. 12 These are by far
the most common forms in non-elicited data from the corpus. Furthermore, the
three non-finite forms infinitive, connegative and perfect were also considered
in determining inflectional classes. The non-elicited portions of the Pite Saami
Documentation Project corpus are simply too limited to even come close to providing
complete paradigms for even a single verb, and so a majority of the verb
forms composing the paradigms for the current study are from elicitation sessions.
Approximately 30 more or less complete verb paradigms were recorded,
which provides sufficient data to posit five inflectional classes. However, the
true extent and finer details of the morphophonological patterns found across
verb paradigms in Pite Saami must be left to future study; it is possible that, with
more research, more verb classes may result, or that the present classes may need
revision. As a result, what follows must be considered of a preliminary nature.
There are five main criteria for positing five different verb classesː
11 I am indebted to phonologist and Lule Saami scholar Bruce Morén-Duolljá for inspiring me to
consider an approach to the data involving post-stem class marking morphology.
12 Because of insufficient data concerning the potential forms of verbs, but also due to their
regular predictability across classes (cf. §8.4.3), these were not considered in determining inflectional
classes for verbs.
168