7 - Locatives, dimensionals, and temporal adverbs

Summary

In this chapter we will examine three related classes of words – locatives, dimensionals and temporal adverbs. In some cases, a single root can function in all three classes, distinguished, in part, by the syntactic arrangement of affixes, and in other cases only by pragmatics.

Locatives

Locative expressions can be separated into two classes, the first of which is tied historically to the second. The first class – a class of bound roots that deals entirely with deixis and location – is used to express primitive notions like ‘proximate/distal,’ ‘up/down,’ ‘front/back,’ and so on. Such roots never occur without the intervention of locative suffixes (see §4.4 for a treatment of these suffixes).

The second class is really a special class of nouns that have been referred to by some as ‘relator nouns’ (Starosta 1985). I deal with them here because of their close semantic and evolutionary ties to the locative class. There are important similarities in syntactic behavior too. Like the special class of locative roots and unlike regular nouns, locative suffixes are an obligatory part of the morphological structure of relator nouns.

Deictic primitives

There are nineteen bound locative roots, ten of which I will refer to as ‘deictic primitives.’ The ten primitives serve as bases in simple expressions like ‘this/that,’ ‘here/there,’ etc. They also serve as bases for more complex locations utilizing locative root strings like ‘this/that side of the river.’