Adverbial Derivational

Position 17: Adverbial/Derivational  (derivational)

A very large class of morphemes most having to do with,

"manner, location, direction, or relation of an action to something," (Tenenbaum 1978:37).

qa     =     refers to noise, always used with the `du' morpheme of Position 17.

un     =     come

many others     see Section 470, page 174

Derivational and Inflectional Morphology

If the addition of an affix (prefix or suffix) changes the category of the word,

the process is called derivational morphology.  If the addition of the affix does not change

the category of the word, it is called inflectional morphology. For example, in English

to add 'ism' to 'magnet' changes 'magnet' to 'magnetism' yet both are still nouns.  

Thus, the addition of "ism" is said to be inflected.  However, to add 'ize' to make 'magnetize'

turns the noun into a verb which is a derivational process.

     Because affixes play such an important role in Dena'ina grammar, the process of inflectional

and derivational verb morphology is extremely important in Dena'ina.  

These features give the language the basis for its rich nuance of meaning.