A grammar of Pite Saami, 2014

10 Derivational morphology
tion sessions, and these are marked accordingly. Unlike examples in the other
chapters, in which references indicate a particular utterance of a recording, references
here may not be not more specific than the recording name alone because
the relevant data were obtained during the course of a longer discussion, and not
just in a single utterance. References referring to the Wordlist Project’s database
consist only of the four-digit entry number.
10.1 Nominal derivation
Nouns can be derived from verbs, adjectives, or other nouns. Some of the more
common derivational suffixes are -tj, -k, -o, -däddje, -vuohta, and these are discussed
in the following sections. The bases they can be applied to are summarized
in Table 10.1.
Table 10.1: The nominal derivation suffixes discussed here and the bases these can
suffix to
suffix nominal verbal adjectival
-tj ✓
-k ✓ ✓ ✓
-o ✓
-däddje ✓ ✓
-vuohta ✓ ✓
10.1.1 The diminutive suffix -tj
The diminutive suffix -tj (glossed as dim) can be affixed to a nominal base to
form a denominal noun with a diminutive meaning. Examples can be found in
(1) through (6).
(1) vájbmo → vájmu-tj ‘little heart’
heart\nom.sg heart-dim\nom.sg [pit110413a]e
(2) guolla → guola-tj ‘little testicle’
testicle\nom.sg testicle-dim\nom.sg [pit110413a]e
(3) guolle → guolá-tj ‘little fish’
fish\nom.sg fish-dim\nom.sg [pit110413a]e
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