Kutenai III: Morpheme Distributions (Prefix, Theme, Suffix)

1. Kutenai utterances consist of one or more words occurring in potentially free relative order. Certain types of relative order are preferred but not obligatory-other types of relative order occur and are often used for special effect: n?innekustata ... Christopher was ... (preferred word order), kusta'ta n?inneit was Christopher (special effect). Words may consist of one or more morphemes: ?inco'k? mouse, qothat; ?-u?-nethere isn't any. The criterion for the inclusion of more than one morpheme in one word is relative order: the order of words within a word is fixed; word boundaries are set up between morphemes with free relative order. This criterion becomes important when contour boundaries1 and word boundaries do not coincide, i. e., where a contour contains more than one word. In these cases, monosyllabic and nonsyllabic morphemes and morpheme sequences occurring in the same contour with polysyllabic words are considered separate words if their order of occurrence with regard to each other and with regard to the polysyllabic word is free: pal n?inseindeed he was, ?at'un?e.kulne. I do drink, pal ?at kyunatla there were many tents indeed B 74.34,2 ?at pal kqakisq?anminuqlo' the two of them were white on each side B 80.181, cin ma.k? n?inqaptaksethere were only bones left B 64.92, cin ?inqaptakse' ma'k?e's left were only his bones B 82.10.