A grammar of Pite Saami, 2014

8.5 Inflectional classes for verbs
post-stem vowel is also å, just as the nouns in noun Class Id (also marked by å).
Table 8.18 summarizes the gradation pattern, class suffixes and locations for
vowel harmony for Class II verbs; here, V stands for the vowel which marks the
infinitive form (a for Class IIa and å for Class IIb). Note that umlaut alternations
align with consonant gradation alternations.
Table 8.18: The consonant gradation pattern, inflectional verb class suffixes and
vowel-harmony features for Class II
singular dual plural
prs 1 st wk -V- str -i- +VH str -V-
2 nd wk -V str -V- str -V-
3 rd str -a str -V- str -e +VH
pst 1 st str -i- +VH wk -V- wk -V-
2 nd str -e +VH wk -V- wk -i-
3 rd wk -V- wk -V- str -i- +VH
imp 2 nd wk -V str -e- str -i- +VH
inf str -V- conneg wk -V
prf str -V-
8.5.3 Class III
Verbs in Class III are characterized as follows:
• a bisyllabic infinitive form with a class suffix -e
• potentially subject to consonant gradation, umlaut and vowel harmony
Twelve forms are subject to vowel harmony (the same six as for Class II verbs,
plus six more). The verb basset ‘fry’ is provided in Table 8.19 on the next page as
an example for a Class III verb. Other examples of Class III verbs include: vádtset
‘go’, adnet ‘have, possess’, diehtet ‘know’, båhtet ‘come’, buälldet ‘ignite, burn’
and máhttet ‘can’. When the consonant center of a Class III stem consists of a
single segment in the 1sg.prs and 2sg.prs forms and the V1 vowel is neither á nor
ua/uä/uo, the class marking vowel is á instead of a, as illustrated in Table 8.19.
Table 8.20 on the following page summarizes the gradation pattern, class suffixes
and locations for vowel harmony for Class III verbs. Note that umlaut alternations
align with consonant gradation alternations.
173