Suffixaufnahme

Grammatical categories
Affect Polarity Agreement Animacy Argument/Complement/Adjunct Associated motion Associativity Boundedness Branching Classifier Clusivity Comparison Construct state Contrast Countability/Uncountability Dative construction/Quirky subject Dative shift Declension Definiteness Evidentiality Feature Focus Genitive construction Aspect Case Conjugation Grammatical gender/Noun class Mood Number Person Tense Honorifics Incorporation Inflection Lexical aspect (Aktionsart) Modality Markedness Mirativity Negation Pluractionality Polypersonal agreement Possession Predicate Reciprocity Serial verb construction Singulative-Collective-Pluractive Specificity Subject/Object Suffixaufnahme (Case stacking) Telicity Tense–aspect–mood Thematic relation (Agent/Patient) Topic and Comment Transitivity Valency Voice Volition

Suffixaufnahme (German: [ˈzʊfɪksˌaʊfˌnaːmə], "suffix resumption"), also known as case stacking, is a linguistic phenomenon used in forming a genitive construction, whereby prototypically a genitive noun agrees with its head noun. It was first recognized in Old Georgian and some other Caucasian and ancient Middle Eastern languages as well as many Australian languages, and almost invariably coincides with agglutinativity.

A subject, for instance, would be marked with a subjective affix as well as a genitive affix. So, for example, in Old Georgian perx-ni k'ac-isa-ni (foot-NOM.PL man-GEN-NOM.PL) 'a man's feet', the genitival noun phrase agrees in case (nominative) and number (plural) with the head noun.

However, while such a possessive construction is most frequently found in suffixaufnahme, other nominal constructions may also show similar behavior. In Old Georgian, a postpositional phrase modifying a noun could take on that noun's case and number features: "Ra turpa prinvelia!" c'amoidzaxa ert-ma bavshv-ta-gan-ma [one-ERG child-GEN.PL-from-ERG] ("'What a wonderful bird!' exclaimed one of the children") has the ergative (also called narrative) case -ma on ertma repeated in the modifying postpositional phrase, headed by -gan.

Occurrence

Living languages

• Awngi (one of the Cushitic languages, which are a primary branch of the Afro-Asiatic languages)
• Basque
• Bats (one of the Nakh languages, which are a primary branch of the Northeast Caucasian languages)
• Chukchi (Chukchi–Kamchatkan languages)
• Dyirbal (one of the Dyirbalic languages, which are a primary branch of the Pama-Nyungan languages)
• Guugu Yalandji a.k.a. Gugu-Yalanji (one of the Yalanjic languages, which are a primary branch of Pama-Nyungan)
• Kanyara-Mantharta languages (a primary branch of Pama-Nyungan)
  • Kanyara languages, e.g.
    • Thalanyji a.k.a. Dhalandji
  • Mantharta
• Kayardild (one of the Tangkic languages)
• Korean
• Some dialects of Romany
• Tsakhur (one of the Lezgic languages – a primary branch of Northeast Caucasian)
• Yidiny (a primary branch of Pama-Nyungan)

Dead languages

• Jiwarli
• Martuthunira

Ancient languages

• Old Georgian
• Elamite
• Hurrian
• Urartian
• Lycian
• Etruscan
• Lemnian
• Sumerian

See also

• Grammar
• Genitive
• Declension

Further reading

• Plank, Frans (ed.), Double Case: Agreement by Suffixaufnahme. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995 ISBN 0-19-508775-5

External links

• Paper on suffixaufnahme (in PDF format)
• Abstract to "Double Case: Agreement by Suffixaufnahme"

"Grammatical Features - Associativity". www.grammaticalfeatures.net.