The paper is concerned with the meaning of two modal
postbases in Uummarmiutun, hungnaq ‘probably’ and ȓukȓau
‘should’. Uummarmiutun is an Inuktut dialect spoken in the
Western Arctic. The analyses are founded on knowledge shared
by native speakers of Uummarmiutun. Their statements and
elaborations are quoted throughout the paper to show how they
have explained the meaning nuances of modal expressions in
their language. The paper also includes a comparison with
cognates in Utkuhikšalingmiutut, w…
Read moreThe paper is concerned with the meaning of two modal
postbases in Uummarmiutun, hungnaq ‘probably’ and ȓukȓau
‘should’. Uummarmiutun is an Inuktut dialect spoken in the
Western Arctic. The analyses are founded on knowledge shared
by native speakers of Uummarmiutun. Their statements and
elaborations are quoted throughout the paper to show how they
have explained the meaning nuances of modal expressions in
their language. The paper also includes a comparison with
cognates in Utkuhikšalingmiutut, which belongs to the eastern
part of the Western Canadian dialect group (Dorais, 2010).
Using categories from Cognitive Functional Linguistics (Boye,
2005, 2012), the paper shows which meanings are covered by
hungnaq and ȓukȓau. This allows us to discover subtle
differences between the meanings of Uummarmiutun hungnaq
and ȓukȓau and their Utkuhikšalingmiutut cognates
respectively.
