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74-585: Storuman ( Southern Sami : Luspie , Ume Sami : Lusspie ) is a locality and the seat of Storuman Municipality in Västerbotten County , province of Lapland , Sweden with 2,207 inhabitants in 2010. It is situated by the Ume River , at the southeastern end of Lake Storuman . It is believed that the first Swedish people who came to the area, were from Vilhelmina to the south and settled here around 1741. The place became known as 'Luspen', derived from

148-522: A nasal and a stop . Examples of Nganasan consonant gradation can be seen in the following table (the first form given is always the nominative singular, the latter the genitive singular): The original conditions of the Nganasan gradation can be shown to be identical to gradation in Finnic and Samic; that is, radical/syllabic gradation according to syllable closure, and suffixal/rhythmic gradation according to

222-470: A coronal obstruent /s š t/ : muistua 'to remember' → muissan 'I remember', matka → matan 'trip' (nom. → gen.). This development may be by analogy of the corresponding liquid clusters. On the other hand, some Karelian dialects (such as Livvi or Olonets ) do not allow for gradation in clusters beginning on nasals. Thus, the Olonets Karelian equivalent of Finnish vanhemmat (cf. vanhempi 'older')

296-520: A few books have been published for the language, one of which is an adequate-sized Southern Sámi–Norwegian dictionary. This language has had an official written form since 1978. The spelling is closely based on Swedish and Norwegian and uses the following Latin alphabet : In 1976, the Sámi Language Council recommended the use of ⟨æ⟩ and ⟨ö⟩, but in practice the latter is replaced by ⟨ø⟩ in Norway and

370-475: A full overview of the alternations: On the other hand, Southern Sámi is the only Sami language that does not have consonant gradation . Hence, consonants in the middle of words never alternate in Southern Sámi, even though such alternations are frequent in its relatives. Compare, for instance, Southern Sámi nomme 'name' : nommesne 'in the name' to Northern Sámi namma  : namas , with

444-492: A gradation pattern /s/  : /z/ here ( pezäd ). Veps and Livonian have largely leveled the original gradation system, and reflect both weak and strong grades of single stops as /b d ɡ/ ; this may be an archaism or a substitution of voiced stops for fricatives due to foreign influence (Russian for Veps, Latvian for Livonian). Except for northernmost Veps dialects, both grades of geminate stops are also reflected as /p t k/ . Finnish consonant gradation generally preserves

518-399: A local river of the same name. Until 1912, the population of the village was about 40 inhabitants living in eight farms, but that changed when a railway station was built ( Inland Line ) around 1924. The village quickly grew and became known as an important centre for hydroelectric power and the timber industry. It later became a popular tourist spot as well. The heraldic shield (the weapon of

592-565: A nasal. This change may have occurred already in Proto-Finnic , but is not found in Livonian and Veps . The fricatives later underwent further changes, and the dental and velar fricatives have been lost altogether in most Finnic varieties. The weakened grades of geminate consonants did not merge with the strong grades of the singleton consonants in Proto-Finnic, and still counted as geminates for

666-455: A number of alternations between continuants which are short in the 'weak' grade, and geminates in the 'strong' grade ( kassā 'to sprinkle/water' vs. kasan 'I sprinkle/water'), as well as more voicing alternations between palatalized stops, and the alternations between nasal+consonant~nasal+chroneme found in Finnish. Votic also includes alternations in which the 'strong' grade is represented by

740-425: A number of developments towards the situation in Finnish and Karelian have occurred, such as the change of unlengthened *t to /ð/ . Northern Sami has a system of three phonological lengths for consonants, and thus has extensive sets of alternations. Quantity 3 is represented as lengthening of the coda part of a geminate or cluster, which is absent in quantity 2. Quantity 1 consists of only an onset consonant, with

814-400: A plural object in the nominative: dellie then manne 1 . SG . NOM naarra-h snare- NOM . PL tjeegk-i-m set.up- PST - 1SG dellie manne naarra-h tjeegk-i-m then 1.SG.NOM snare-NOM.PL set.up-PST-1SG "Then I set up snares." Subject and agent are always marked identically, while the marking of the object depends on definiteness. The verb agrees with

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888-608: A set of fully voiced stops, which Paul Ariste ( A Grammar of the Votic Language ) describes as being the same as in Russian. Thus, in addition to quantitative alternations between /pː tː kː/ and /p t k/ , Votic also has a system of qualitative alternations in which the distinguishing feature is voicing , and so the voiceless stops /p t k/ are known to alternate with /b d ɡ/ . As in Estonian, Karelian, and Eastern dialects of Finnish,

962-585: A short consonant, while the 'weak' grade is represented by a geminate: ritõlõn vs. riďďõlla . For comparison, the Finnish equivalents of these is riitelen 'I quarrel' vs. riidellä 'to quarrel'. Though otherwise closely related to Votic, consonant gradation in Estonian is quite different from the other Finnic languages. One extremely important difference is the existence of three grades of consonants (alternations like strong grade pada 'pot (nom.)', weak grade paja 'pot (gen.)', overlong grade patta 'pot (ill.)'). This can be said to generally correlate with

1036-403: A singular or plural entity, and some also adapt to different cases. Demonstratives distinguish between three degrees of distance relative to the speaker. Southern Sámi verbs inflect for person (first, second, and third) and number (singular, dual, and plural, where dual is an optional category). There are also two finite inflectional categories, the present and the past tense. Subject suffixes are

1110-433: A stressed syllable. In the case of verbs like tulla 'to come', the earlier form was * tul-ðak , but the *ð was assimilated to the /l/ according to the patterns described above. The original strong grade was preserved in verbs like hais-ta 'to stink' since gradation did not take place when a consonant followed /s/. The situation appears differently in the many verbs ending in -ata/ätä . These verbs seem to have preserved

1184-461: A vowel), while the lenis weak grade appears in historically closed syllables (ending in a consonant). The exact realisation of the fortis–lenis distinction differs between the branches. In the Samic languages it was realised through fortition , specifically lengthening, in the strong grade. In the Finnic and Samoyedic languages, there was instead lenition in the weak grade. Thus, the exact realization of

1258-400: Is vahne mb at . The Karelian phoneme inventory also includes the affricate /tʃ/ (represented in the orthography as č ), which may be found geminated and is such subject to quantitative gradation: meččä 'forest' → mečäššä 'in (the) forest'. Votic has two quantities for consonants and vowels, which basically match up with the Finnish counterparts. The Votic phoneme inventory includes

1332-415: Is -h in the nominative case, otherwise -i/j-, to which the case endings are added. There are five different inflection classes but no declension classes. All nouns take the same case markers. The function of the nominative is to mark the subject, and the accusative marks the object. The nominative plural can also be used to mark plural (direct) objects, a feature called differential object marking , and here

1406-426: Is also found after a stressed syllable, however, in the exceptional monosyllabic root *mees  : *meehe- "man"; and in a fossilized form, in the postpositions lähellä "near" vs. läsnä "present", reflecting the adessive and the essive of a root *läse- "vicinity". In cases of root-internal *s , this pattern is not normally found (e.g. Finnish pesä 'nest' : plural pesät ), though Votic later reintroduced

1480-632: Is different from the gradation found in the Finnic languages in some important aspects: Similar to the cases of Veps and Livonian within Finnic, the Southern Sami language at the westernmost end of the Sami language continuum has lost all gradation. In the remaining Sami languages, the strong grade of the singletons merged with the weak grade of geminates, creating a three-quantity distinction between short, long and overlong consonants. In Kildin and Ter Sami , this merger did not affect stops and affricates, due to

1554-646: Is possible to study Southern Sámi at Nord University in Levanger Municipality , Umeå University in Umeå Municipality , and Uppsala University in Uppsala Municipality. In 2018, two master's degrees were written in the language at Umeå University. Language courses are also offered at different Sámi-language centres throughout the Southern Sámi area. Southern Sámi is one of the eight Sámi languages that have an official written standard, but only

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1628-499: Is quite similar to Finnish: *β *ð *ɣ have been lost in a fashion essentially identical to Eastern Finnish (and may have occurred in the common ancestor of the two), with the exception that assimilation rather than loss has occurred also for *lɣ and *rɣ. E.g. the plural of jalka 'foot' is jallat , contrasting with jalat in Finnish and jalad in Estonian. Karelian still includes some gradation pairs which Finnish does not. The consonants /t k/ undergo consonant gradation when following

1702-458: Is still the case for similar clusters such as /sp/ , /st/ , /tk/ ). However, gradation pairs ht : *hð and hk : *hɣ were at one point introduced. The first of these patterns remains common in modern Finnish, e.g. vahti : vahdit 'guard(s)'. The second is only found in a limited number of words, e.g. pohje : pohkeet 'calf : calves', but rahka : rahkat ' quark (s)'. Usage varies for some words with /hk/ , e.g. for

1776-603: The -da infinitive has the opposite grade from the present ( hakata 'to begin', lugeda 'to read'). The system of gradation has also expanded to include gradation of all consonant clusters and geminate consonants (generally quantitative), when occurring after short vowels, and vowel gradation between long and overlong vowels, although these are not written except for the distinction between voiceless stops and geminate voiceless stops (e.g. overlong strong grade tt with weak grade t ). E.g. linn [linːː] , 'city (nom.)' vs. linna [linːɑ] 'city (gen.)'. In consonant clusters, in

1850-488: The Finnic , Samic and Samoyedic branches. It originally arose as an allophonic alternation between open and closed syllables , but has become grammaticalised due to changes in the syllable structure of the languages affected. The term "consonant gradation" refers to a word-medial alternation of consonants between fortis and lenis realisations. The fortis strong grade appears in historically open syllables (ending in

1924-607: The Finnic and Samic peoples on one hand, and the Nganasans on the other, leads Helimski to reject the second option of these. The original effect of gradation in the Finnic languages can be reconstructed as a lenition of the consonant at the beginning of a closed syllable. Lenition resulted in geminate (long) stops and affricates being shortened, and in short voiceless obstruents /*p *t *k/ becoming voiced, while short voiced obstruents /*b *d *g/ became fricatives: Only stops and affricates were affected, not other consonants. Moreover, only

1998-656: The Proto-Finnic pattern fairly well. The conditioning of syllable structure is still visible in most cases, but it is no longer productive: gradation has become a grammatical feature. These changes have made qualitative gradation become more complex, especially in the case of k . In standard Finnish, k is the phoneme with the most possible changes. It can disappear as in jalka 'foot' → jalan 'foot-Gen', or: /j/ has been lost in this position in Southeastern Tavastian, Northern Bothnian and Eastern dialects, resulting in kurki (crane) : kuren (crane's) instead of

2072-453: The above with the exception of the essive). A demonstrative pronoun without specific deictic bias is employed as the third-person pronoun, treating dual and plural forms as indistinguishable. Additional pronouns encompass pronominal and adnominal demonstratives, along with interrogative and relative pronouns, reflexive, logophoric, reciprocal, and a variety of indefinite pronouns. The majority of these pronouns change based on whether they refer to

2146-524: The additional preaspiration found on original geminates. In the others, the merger affected stops and affricates as well, with the strong grade of singletons receiving secondary preaspiration. In the Western Samic languages, geminate nasals became pre-stopped, which affected the strong grade of singletons as well (outside Southern Sami) due to the historical merger of these grades. In the languages in closest contact to Finnic ( Northern , Inari and Skolt ),

2220-403: The basic structure SOV (Subject-Object-Verb). Only the copula ('to be') and auxiliary verbs appear second. The case-alignment system is nominative-accusative. However, plural objects are also sometimes marked with the nominative. Objects in the nominative plural get an indefinite reading, while objects in the accusative plural are definite. This applies for nouns as well as pronouns. An example of

2294-549: The clusters /ht/ and /hk/ with a voicing-neutral first member, but also further clusters, even several ones introduced only in Russian loans. The alternations involving the voiced affricate dž are only found in the Eastern dialects. In the Western dialects, there are several possible weak grade counterparts of tš : Further minor variation in these gradation patterns was found down to the level of individual villages. Votic also has

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2368-582: The conditional. In the verbum, a distinction must be made between odd-syllable and even-syllable verbs; in the latter, there are six different stem classes. An overview of the forms of the ie stems using the example of båetedh 'to come': The morphology of adjectives is restricted to comparative and superlative forms. Some have different forms in attributive and predicative position, but most are invariable. Southern Sámi verbs conjugate for three grammatical persons : Southern Sámi verbs conjugate for three grammatical numbers : Southern Sámi, like Finnish,

2442-501: The consonant from a geminate * -tt- to a single * -t- , and later loss of -k resulted in the final form -ata/ätä . However, even though this is now a single consonant, it was originally a geminate and therefore triggers the weak grade on the syllable before it. So whereas the infinitive may be for example hypätä 'to jump', its original stem was * hyppät- , as can be seen in the first-person singular form hyppään 'I jump', from earlier * hyppäðen with loss of *-ð- . An opposite effect

2516-430: The consonant gradation mm  : m . Southern Sámi has eight cases : Southern Sámi nouns inflect for singular and plural and have eight cases: nominative, accusative, genitive, illative, locative, elative, comitative, and essive, but number is not distinguished in the essive. Inflection is essentially agglutinative, but the case endings are not always the same in the plural and in the singular. The plural marker

2590-594: The contrast is not crucial. The language groups differ in regard to their treatment sequences of a vowel followed by j or w in Proto-Uralic. In the Samic languages, the second part of these remains phonologically a consonant, and can thus close the syllable before it, triggering the weak grade. It also takes part in gradation itself, lengthening in the strong grade. In Finnic, on the other hand, these were treated as diphthongs, and were equivalent to long vowels in terms of syllable structure. Consequently, they did not close

2664-428: The essive marks a state or a function. Four stem classes can be distinguished: ie-stems, e-stems, a-stems, and oe-stems. An overview of the modern inflection of guelie 'fish': Earlier, in the comitative singular and in the plural, besides the nominative i, umlaut of the root vowel to öö took place: Gen. Pl. göölij etc. Personal pronouns inflect for three numbers (singular, dual, and plural) and seven cases (all of

2738-479: The existence of three degrees of consonant length (e.g. d , t , and tt ), but since the alternation d ~ t occurs only after heavy syllables, and the alternations d ~ tt and t ~ tt occur only after light syllables, there is no single paradigm that has this simple alternation. However, weak grades like v , j , or ∅ that alternate with stops like b , d , or g originate from the weak grade of these stops, and these may still synchronically alternate with

2812-495: The following apostrophe marking the over-long grade is not used in the official orthography, although it is generally found in dictionaries. Some gradation triads include the following: Nganasan , alone of the Samoyedic languages (or indeed any Uralic languages east of Finnic), shows systematic qualitative gradation of stops and fricatives . Gradation occurs in intervocalic position as well as in consonant clusters consisting of

2886-876: The former by ⟨ä⟩ in Sweden. This is in accordance with the usage in Norwegian and Swedish , based on computer or typewriter availability. The ⟨Ï ï⟩ represents a back version of ⟨I i⟩ ; however, many texts fail to distinguish between the two. ⟨C c⟩ , ⟨Q q⟩ , ⟨W w⟩ , ⟨X x⟩ , and ⟨Z z⟩ are only used in words of foreign origin. Long sounds are represented with double letters for both vowels and consonants. Southern Sámi has fifteen consonant and eleven vowel phonemes; there are six places of articulation for consonants and six manners of articulation. There are also two dialects, northern and southern. The phonological differences are relatively small;

2960-413: The genitive and the partitive singular are formed by adding -e , but the genitive takes the weak form ( leh-e ), while the partitive takes the strong form ( leht-e ). In the end, the types of generalizations that can be made are that some inflectional categories always take the strong form (e.g. partitive plural, -ma infinitive), some always take the weak form (e.g. -tud participle), some forms may take

3034-582: The gradation. For example, in Northern Sami, the only difference between giella and giela ("language", nominative and genitive singular respectively) is the grade; the consonant that originally closed the syllable in the genitive form has disappeared. Even in Finnish, which is relatively conservative with respect to consonants, there are many cases of strong grades in closed syllables and weak grades in open syllables, e.g. sade and sateen ("rain", nominative and genitive singular). These, again, are

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3108-399: The home' (from earlier * kotihin , from koti ). This explains why kotiin retains a strong grade even though a closed syllable follows it. The Pohjanmaa dialect of Finnish retains the -h- , however. Words that now end in -e are in fact very similar to those ending in -s . These originally ended with -k or -h so that the nominative ended in a consonant just as kuningas and therefore

3182-415: The language from its closest relatives, like SOV instead of SVO as basic constituent order, no stem gradation, and a genitive possessive. Nevertheless, most features of Southern Sámi are commonly found in other Uralic languages. Consonant gradation Consonant gradation is a type of consonant mutation (mostly lenition but also assimilation ) found in some Uralic languages , more specifically in

3256-410: The last member of a consonant cluster was subject to gradation, and single stops and affricates were only affected if they were not adjacent to another obstruent. Thus, two-obstruent combinations like kt , st and tk did not undergo lenition, nor did obstruent-sonorant combinations like kl and tr . The voiced stops *b *d *g generally lenited to fricatives /β ð ɣ/ unless they were preceded by

3330-460: The loss of -h- then resulted in the modern form kuninkaan . The intermediate steps are seen in mies 'man'. Here, following a stressed syllable, the -h- was not lost, so that its genitive is miehen . Similar changes affected the illative ending, which was -hVn where V was the same as the vowel preceding the ending. The h is preserved after stressed syllables, as in maahan 'into the land' (from maa ), but lost otherwise as in kotiin 'into

3404-425: The modern Finnish infinitive ending, which was historically * -tak/täk . The final * -k triggered gradation, so that the ending normally became * -dak/däk . In turn, following the loss of d between unstressed vowels, and the loss of final * -k only * -aˣ/äˣ remained. Thus, hakea (originally * hakedak ) has only -a as the d was lost. But in verbs like juo-da 'to drink' the /d/ remained since it followed

3478-405: The northern dialect are the following; orthographic counterparts are given in italics: The non-high vowels /e/ , /æ/ , /o/ , and /ɑ/ contrast in length : they may occur as both short and long. High vowels only occur short. The vowels may combine to form ten different diphthongs : In Southern Sámi, all consonants occur as geminates in word-medial position. In Southern Sámi, the vowel in

3552-458: The noun gets an indefinite reading, while the accusative plural marks definite direct objects. The genitive is used in adnominal possession and marks the dependent of postpositions. The illative is a spatial case marking the recipient; while the locative and elative are also spatial cases, the locative is additionally used in existential constructions and the elative in partitive constructions. The comitative expresses participation and instrument, and

3626-441: The original syllable closure can be seen in sandhi effects: these classes of words can still be analyzed to contain the assimilative word-final 'consonant' ˣ, realized as lengthening of the next word's initial consonant. Therefore, hae side varastosta 'get a bandage from storage!' is pronounced [hɑe‿sːide‿ʋːɑrɑstostɑ] , where the weak grades indeed occur in closed syllables. The loss of -k combined with loss of d gave rise to

3700-448: The other Sámi languages, and Estonian, has a negative verb . In Southern Sámi, the negative verb conjugates according to tense (past and non-past), mood (indicative and imperative), person (first, second, and third), and number (singular, dual, and plural). This differs from some other Sámi languages, e.g. Northern Sámi , which do not conjugate according to tense. Like Skolt Sámi and unlike other Sámi languages, Southern Sámi has

3774-458: The over-long grades ( pp , tt , kk ) within the same paradigm, giving paradigms with three underlying grades. Another extremely important feature of Estonian gradation is that, due to the greater loss of word-final segments (both consonants and vowels), the Estonian gradation is an almost entirely opaque process, where the consonant grade (short, long, or overlong) must be listed for each class of wordform. So, for example, embus 'embrace' has

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3848-541: The overlong form (some partitive singulars, short illative singular), while other inflectional categories are underdetermined for whether they occur with weak or strong grade. In this last case, within a paradigm some forms are constrained to have the same grade and others are constrained to have the opposite grade; thus all present tense forms for the same verb have the same grade, though some verbs have strong ( hakkan 'I begin', hakkad 'you begin', etc.) and others have weak ( loen 'I read', loed , 'you read', etc.), and

3922-606: The phonemic system of the northern dialect is explained below. The typical word in Southern Sámi is disyllabic, containing a long stem vowel and ending in a vowel, as in the word /pa:ko/ 'word'. Function words are monosyllabic, as are the copula and the negative auxiliary. Stress is fixed and always word-initial. Words with more than three syllables are given secondary stress in the penultimate syllable. The eleven vowel phonemes comprise four phonologically short and long vowels (i-i:, e-e:, a-a:, u-u:) and three vowel phonemes which do not distinguish length (ø, æ, o). The vowel phonemes of

3996-413: The plural of nahka 'leather, hide', both nahat and nahkat are acceptable. Quantitative consonant gradation has expanded to include in addition to the pairs kk : k , pp : p , tt : t , also gg : g and bb : b (but not dd : d ) in a number of recent loanwords, such as blogata : bloggaan 'to blog'; lobata : lobbaan 'to lobby'. One important change

4070-536: The preceding syllable having no coda. In addition, most dialects of Northern Sami feature coda maximisation , which geminates the last member of a cluster in various environments (most commonly in two-consonant clusters of quantity 2, in which the first member is voiced). Most sonorants and fricatives are only subject to quantitative gradation, but nasals, stops, affricates and the glide /j/ are subject to both quantitative and qualitative changes. Some words alternate between three grades, though not all words do. Note that

4144-511: The preceding syllable was in the weak grade. But after an ending was added, the weak grade g appeared, which eventually disappeared just as h did. While syllabic gradation remains generally productive, the distortions of its original phonetic conditions have left it essentially a morphologically conditioned process. This is particularly visible in forms that display a strong grade where a weak would be historically expected, or vice versa. Possessive suffixes , in particular, are always preceded by

4218-414: The purposes of syllabification. There remained for a period an intermediate quantity, half-long * -t̆t- , which still closed the preceding syllable. Consequently, a syllable ending with a geminate in the weak grade still triggered a weak grade on the preceding syllable as well. In Finnish, the half-long consonants eventually merged with the strong-grade singleton consonants, but in most other Finnic languages,

4292-554: The result of changes in syllable structure, with the original Proto-Finnic *sadek and *sategen following the rules more obviously. In addition, not all Finnish words have gradation, so that the occurrence of gradation is not even morphologically predictable anymore, it is a property of each individual word. There is no consensus view on the ultimate origin of consonant gradation in the Uralic languages. Three broad positions may be distinguished: In all three groups, consonant gradation has

4366-489: The same across the tenses, and there are three different inflectional classes based on the thematic vowels and their behaviour in inflection. Furthermore, there are 4 non-finite forms: the perfect participle, the progressive, the infinitive, and the connegative and imperative form. Meanwhile, verbs express the TAM categories present indicative, past indicative, perfect, pluperfect, progressive, and imperative. The copula also inflects for

4440-442: The same conditioning, the distinction between open and closed syllables. In this light, and in the absence of any evidence of the same system having existed in any unrelated language in the world, Helimski (1995) has argued that the latter two options should be rejected as implausible. If a connection exists, it is also disputed what its nature may be, again allowing for three broad positions: The great geographical distance between

4514-422: The same form for all cases (e.g. genitive embuse ), while hammas 'tooth' has weak grade mm in the nominative hammas and partitive hammast , but strong form mb in the genitive hamba and all other cases of the singular. There is a large number of cases in which inflectional endings are identical except for how they affect the consonant grade, e.g. leht 'leaf' belongs to a declension class in which both

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4588-430: The second syllable of a word causes changes to the vowel in the first syllable, a feature called umlaut . The vowel in the second syllable can change depending on the inflectional ending being attached, and the vowel in the first vowel will likewise alternate accordingly. Often there are three different vowels that alternate with each other in the paradigm of a single word, for example as follows: The following table gives

4662-539: The standard form kurjen . Short t also has developed more complex gradation due to various assimilations. Patterns include t  : d (tie t ää : tie d än), rt  : rr (ke rt oa : ke rr on), lt  : ll (pe lt o : pe ll on), and nt ~ nn (a nt aa ~ a nn an). Alternation patterns for p include p  : v (ta p a : ta v an) and mp  : mm (la mp i : la mm en). The consonant clusters /ht/ and /hk/ were, comprising two obstruents, not originally subject to gradation (as

4736-433: The strong grade in the infinitive ending, going counter to the rules of gradation. However, historically it is in fact a weak grade: the stem of the verb itself ended in * -at/ät- , and this is still visible in the 3rd person imperative ending -atkoon/ätköön . Thus, when combined with the infinitive ending, the verb ended in * -attak/ättäk (similar to the origin of the -ton/tön suffix described above). The -k then weakened

4810-474: The strong grade the first consonant is lengthened, e.g. must [musːt] , 'black (nom.)' vs. musta [mustɑ] 'black (gen.)'. Before single consonants, long vowels and diphthongs also become overlong in strong forms and remain merely long in weak forms, e.g. kool [koːːl] , 'school (nom.)' vs. kooli [koːli] 'school (gen.)'. Gradation was present in Proto-Samic , and is inherited in most Samic languages. It

4884-652: The strong grade, even if the suffix may cause the syllable to be closed. For example, 'our bed' is sänkymme , not ˣsängymme . Strong grades may also be found in closed syllables in contractions such as jotta en → jotten . Several recent loans and coinages with simple /p, t, k/ are also left entirely outside of gradation, e.g. auto (: auton ) 'car', eka (: ekan ) 'first', muki (: mukin ) 'mug', peti (: petin , sometimes pedin ) 'bed', söpö (: söpön ) 'cute'. A number of proper names such as Alepa , Arto , Malta , Marko belong in this class as well. Suffixal gradation has been largely lost, usually in favor of

4958-418: The strong-grade singletons underwent a secondary lenition which prevented this merger. Gradation later expanded to include a pattern *s ~ *h , presumed to reflect a former pattern *s ~ *z . This type of gradation only systematically appears in cases of word-final *s , which between vowels uniformly becomes *h : Finnish pensas 'bush' has the genitive pensaan < * pensahen . An example

5032-452: The subject in person and number. The TAM categories mentioned above are based on non-finite verb forms and are expressed in periphrastic constructions with an auxiliary. The subject agrees with the auxiliary, but it is not obligatory. It is either marked on the pronoun or inferred from context. The imperative second singular uses the same non-finite irrealis form also used in negation constructions. Southern Sámi has some features that separate

5106-458: The syllable and did not affect gradation. Consonant gradation is understood to have originally been a predictable phonological process . In all languages that retain it, however, it has evolved further to a less predictable system of consonant mutation , of morphophonological or even purely morphological nature. This is a consequence of later changes in the structure of syllables, which made closed syllables open or vice versa, without adjusting

5180-420: The town) is a Wild man, based on the name of the village and the symbols of the strength and determination of the people of Lapland. Southern Sami language In Sweden, Saami is one of five recognized minority languages, but the term "Saami" comprises different varieties/languages, and they are not individually recognized. In Norway, Southern Sámi is recognized as a minority language in its own right. It

5254-534: The weak grade *ð of /t/ in inherited vocabulary has been lost or assimilated to adjacent sounds in Votic; the weak grade *β of /p/ has similarly become /v/ , or assimilated to /m/ in the cluster /mm/ . However, the weak grade of /k/ survives, as /ɡ/ before a back vowel or /j ~ dʲ ~ dʒ/ before a front vowel. A noticeable feature of Votic is that gradation has been extended to several consonant clusters that were not originally affected. As in Finnish, this includes

5328-639: The weak grade. While the partitive plurals of kana 'hen' and lakana 'bedsheet' still show distinct treatment of the original *-ta ( kanoja , lakanoi t a ), the partitive singulars in modern Finnish both have the weak grade ( kanaa , lakanaa ), although in several dialects of older Finnish the form lakanata occurred for the latter. Similarly the participle ending *-pa is now uniformly -va , even after stressed syllables; e.g. syö-vä 'eating', voi-va 'being able'. (The original forms may remain in diverged sense or fossilized derivatives: syöpä 'cancer', kaikki-voipa 'almighty'.) Karelian consonant gradation

5402-431: Was caused by the loss of * h and * ð between unstressed vowels. Loss of h affected nouns and adjectives ending in * -s or * -h , such as kuningas 'king'. In the nominative, this -s appeared as usual, and as the preceding syllable was closed, the weak grade ng appeared. But when a case ending such as the genitive -(e)n was added, the result was originally * kuninkasen , which was then weakened to * kuninkahen , and

5476-496: Was the loss of word-final *-k and *-h early on in the history of Finnish. This resulted in many open syllables with weak grades. In particular, the majority of nouns ending in -e are affected by this, with a weak grade in the nominative form. The imperative form of verbs also ended in a now-lost -k . For examples, side 'bandage', from * siðe , earlier * siðek (cf. Veps sideg , Eastern Votic sidõg ); hakea 'to get' → hae! 'get! (imp.)' from * haɣe , earlier * haɣek . Traces of

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