ABSTRACT
West Greenlandic nouns are not marked for gender, but they have different singular and plural forms. In addition, nouns can take different case suffixes to indicate the role that they play in the sentence in question. West Greenlandic has eight different noun cases. The absolutive case is the basic form of the noun that the people find in a dictionary. It is used for the subject of an intransitive clause or the object of a transitive clause. West Greenlandic nouns are divided into weak stems and strong stems. Weak q-stems can have gemination (consonant doubling) in the stem, and all weak k-stems geminate. Vowel-stems can occasionally have gemination as well. There are additional weak-stem patterns which feature gemination plus a further consonant change. Noun possession in West Greenlandic is expressed by means of possessive suffixes attached to the possessum. West Greenlandic has several suffixes that can be attached to nouns and convey the meaning of ‘a group of’.
