Wiktionary:About Greenlandic

This is a Wiktionary policy, guideline or common practices page. Specifically it is a policy think tank, working to develop a formal policy. Policies – Entries: CFI - EL - NORM - NPOV - QUOTE - REDIR - DELETE. Languages: LT - AXX. Others: BLOCK - BOTS - VOTES.

Main category: Greenlandic language

This policy is not to be taken as final; on the contrary, it may be modified, preferably after discussion.

Inclusion

When the meaning of a certain word follows directly from its constituents, it may be difficult to decide whether it is worthy of an entry. However, this medium places no realistic technical limitations on number of entries, and we may allow ourselves a much larger degree of inclusivity than other dictionaries; for comparison, there are currently 759,720 English lemmas and counting. If a word exists but you do not feel it should be included, bring it to RFD.

If you are not convinced it exists, bring it to RFVN. As Greenlandic is an LDL, two requirements for existence exist, a lax and a strict one, as described in CFI. If it passes only the lax, and not the strict one, the entry or sense must be marked with {{LDL}} or {{LDL-sense}}.

"Greenlandic" only includes the standard form, i.e. Kalaallisut/West Greenlandic. Tunumiisut and Inuktun words/forms are included as separate languages, under those names and under the codes esx-tut and esx-ink, respectively.

Spellings belonging to obsolete orthographies (whether Kleinschmidt's orthography or previous orthographies) should be included if attested. However, a page in the modern orthography should always be created, even if the word went out of use in the meantime and isn't attested in the modern orthography. The modern-spelling entry should then be made the main entry, and the obsolete spellings linked under the header Alternative forms.

Parts of speech

Nominals

There exist two templates for nominals: {{kl-noun}} for the headword-line, and {{kl-decl}} for fuller declension (case and number, but not possessor).
Adjectives are not recognized as a part of speech. Currently we distinguish between nouns, proper nouns, numerals and pronouns.

Verbs

Conjugation tables will be found here. Since the exact meaning of the intransitive form does not always follow from the transitive and vice versa, it is probably best to treat e.g. nerivaa/nerivoq and piareersarpaa/piareersarpoq as independent lemmas.

Suffixes (uiguutit)

There is {{kl-suffix}}, which lets you specify the morphological behaviour of the suffix.

• Suffixes are added with a single hyphen in front, including the verbal(izing) ones. The chief advantage of this is that {{af}} works properly, whereas if we put a hyphen on both ends, they are interpreted as interfixes (if desired, we could probably make a variant of {{af}} that ignores tailing hyphens).
• Verbal and verbalizing suffixes should not contain an inflectional ending (e.g. -u, not uvoq or avoq).
• Recessive suffixes should be lemmatized to the r-less variant (e.g. -suaq and not -rsuaq).
• e and o should not be normalized to i and u, respectively (Katersat does this).
• The fourth historical vowel (written by Nielsen as <ǝ>, by Fortescue p. 314 as <(i)>, by Bjørnum as <i₂>, by Katersat as <e>) has been written in this dictionary as ï, e.g. -niutï -- mainly for ease of typing.
• When an suffix has several forms (as on -vik), we choose one as the main form and make the others soft redirects. Etymology sections should only use the main form, such that we categorize all words using the suffix in one place.
• Suffixes beginning with a consonant that becomes -s- intervocalically and -t- most other places have been entered by the -t- spelling (e.g. -tar). Nielsen simply uses T to denote this historical consonant.

Enclitics

These are the ones that go after inflectional endings, e.g. -lu, -li. Enter them as {{head|kl|enclitic}}.

Roots

Morphemes that act like either nominals or verbs, but cannot be used on their own: pi and su.

Tasks

• Revamp the template {{kl-decl}}, so that the table of contents does not push the declension table down from the header if the table of contents is placed to the right.

Resources

• Word Analyser - decomposes words into morphemes
• DAKA - a two-way Danish-Greenlandic dictionary
• timarit.is - issues of Atuagagdliutut, bilingual newspaper, from 1861 to 1999