Tlingit grammar

Nouns in Tlingit can be divided into two open classes, possessable and unpossessable. This division is based on whether a particular noun may have a possessed relationship with another noun, both syntactically and semantically. In Tlingit the names for people and places are unpossessable, while other nouns may be either optionally or obligatorily possessed (called alienable and inalienable, respectively). Most nouns in Tlingit are alienable, i.e., they may be used alone or may be possessed by another noun. In contrast, inalienable nouns cannot appear without a possessor. Inalienable nouns commonly refer to kinship terms and body parts.

A notable feature of inalienable nouns is that they are not normally marked for possession; that is, they do not take the possessed -ÿi suffix, as the possessive relationship is implicit in the meaning of the noun. However, if the possessed suffix is used on an inalienable noun, the meaning changes from being part of a body to a body part that is somehow separated from the rest of the body. Thus xóots shá means "a bear's head", but xóots shayí means "a bear's head (detached from its body)".

A plural suffix -xʼ exists which may be attached to most nouns, however it is not usually used. A few nouns are treated as singular/plural pairs, e.g. khaa/khaaxʼw "person"/"people", du yádi/du yátxʼi "his child"/"his children".

Nominal cases in Tlingit are designated by postpositions, however they usually behave morphologically like suffixes.

Other postpositions function as separate words, and include:

• g̱óot — "without"
• náḵ — "away from"
• yís — "for"
• yáx̱ — "like, as much as, according to"
• yánáx̱ — "more than"
• ḵín — "less than"

In Tlingit, directionals are a semantic category which indicate direction relative to some stated position. The stated position can be some element of the natural environment, a structure, or a person or group of people. Syntactically, directionals are a subcategory of nouns because, like nouns, they can be arguments of verbs and objects of postpositions.^[13] Some examples of directionals can be seen below.

	Noun	N-dei	N-naa	Adverb (+15)
up above	(di-)kée	(di-)kín-dei	(di-)kee-naa	kei, kéi
down below	(di-)yée	(di-)yín-dei	(di-)yee-naa	yei, yéi, yaa
upstream	naakée	nán-dei	naa-nyaa ~ naa-naa	–
downstream	ix-kée, éex	íx-dei	ixi-naa	–
from landshore, interior	dáaḵ	dáḵ-dei	daḵi-naa	daaḵ
from seashore, out to sea	dei-kí	dák-dei	daki-naa ~ diki-naa	daak
inside	neil	neil-dei	—	neil
outside	gáan	gán-dei	—	—

The classifier is a shared and defining feature of the Na-Dene languages. In all members, it has functions related to valency and voice, while in Tlingit it has the additional function of communicating stativity. The classifier has a misleading name, as its function is not a classificatory one. However, the terminology is conventional in both Tlingit and Athabaskan linguistics.

The table below represents the sixteen base forms of the Tlingit classifier, each of which is assigned a positive or negative value of S, D, and I (called components). A positive value represents presence of the component, while a negative value represents absence of the component. The broad functions of these components, respectively, are valency (S), voice (D), and stativity (I).

		-D		+D
		-I	+I	-I	+I
-S	ø	ø-	ya-	da-	di-
+S	l	la-	li-	l-	dli-
	s	sa-	si-	s-	dzi-
	sh	sha-	shi-	sh-	ji-

Particles function as neither noun nor verb. They are restricted to positions relative to phrases in the sentence.

The focus particles follow the left periphery of a sentence. Many of them may be suffixed with a demonstrative (-yá, -hé, -wé, -yú), and they may also be combined with the interrogative (-gé). For example:

• á — focus
• ágé — interrogative (< á + gé)
• ásgé — second hand information, "I hear...", "they say..." (< ásé + gé)
• ḵu.aa — contrastive, "however"
• óosh — hypothetical, "as if", "even if", "if only"

The focus particle sá is obligatory in forming wh-question phrases.

Phrasal particles may be either pre-phrasal or post-phrasal, meaning they are restricted to a position either before or after the phrase they modify, respectively. For example:

• tsú — "also"
• déi — "now", "this time"
• chʼas — "only", "just"
• tlax̱ — "very"

These particles may occur before or after any phrase in a clause. For example:

• tlei — "just," "simply," "just then"
• déi — "already," "by now"
• tsu — "again", "still", "some more"

Note that both the sentence káaxwei tsu eetéenaxh xhat yatee "I need more coffee" and the sentence káaxwei tsú eetéenaxh xhat yatee "I also need coffee" are acceptable, with tsu and tsú differentiated only on the basis of tone.

These particles may only occur at the front of a sentence. For example:

• tléik, l — negative, "not"
• gwál — dubitative, "perhaps"
• gu.aal — optative, "hopefully"
• ḵaju, x̱aju — contrary, "actually", "in fact"
• ḵashde — "I thought..."