Language/Classical-quechua/Grammar/Gramatical-generalities

GRAMATICAL GENERALITIES OF QUECHUA

Typology

- Quechua belongs to the group of agglutinating languages ​​in which a root can be followed by one or more suffixes

Quechua	Spanish	English
Rumi	Piedra	Stone
Rumiwan	Con la piedra	With the Stone
Rumi-lla-wan	Sólo con la piedra	Onlv with the Stone
Rumi-lla-wan-raq	Sólo con la piedra todavía	Only with the stone yet

In this way a series of sentences can be formed with any root. In some cases the suffix chu indicates the interrogative form

Takinkichu	Vas a cantar?	Will you sing?
Riymanchu	Puedo ir?	Shall i go?

    

The suffix wan equals to:

Mamaywan

Con mi madre

With my mother

The suffix lla equals to,:

Ñoqalla

Solamente yo

Only me

GRAMMATIC UNITS

Morfema

- It is the minimum unit of speech with its own meaning.

In Quechua there are two kinds of morphemes: free and linked. Free are those that constitute words by themselves with a specific meaning, eg:

Uma

Cabeza

Head

Morpheme linked is the one that never appears only but linked to another morpheme to have meaning:

Uma-sapa

Cabezón

Big-headed

    

As you can see, the sapa particle has no meaning if it is not linked to another morpheme, which does not happen with one that can appear alone. These linked morphemes are called suffixes. In a Quechua sentence there may be three or more suffixes linked to free morpheme ej:

Wawa	Criatura	Babv
Wawa-kuna-man	A las criaturas	To the babies
Wawa-kuna-man-raq	A las criaturas, primero	To the babies first

Root

- It is called like this some morphemes that do not carry suffixes. They are more numerous and have, in general, a greater number of phonemes, eg:

Paya	Vieja	Old woman
Mallki	Arbol	Tree

 

Topic

- It is a root stripped of inflectional suffixes or bearing derivation suffixes, as in the case of Quechua, ex:

Mihuy	Comer	To eat
Mihuna	Comida	Food
Qhaway	Mirar	To look
Qhawana	Mirador	Watch-tower

Word

- It is the morpheme that can be used independently. In Quechua it can consist of a simple root, ex:

Karu	Lejos	Far
Wayna	Joven	Young man

Or also in a root with derivative and inflectional suffixes. ex:

Karumanta hamuni

Vengo de lejos

I come from far off

Prayer

- Prayer is a syntactically independent unit. It is simple when it has only one verb, eg: It is said that the sentence is composed when it has more than one verb, ex:

Ñañay takiyta munan

Mi hermana quiere cantar

My sister wants to sing