Seefloth's Paradigm

Seefloth's Paradigm is a verbal inflectional paradigm reconstructed by the German linguist Uwe Seefloth for Uralo-Siberian in 2000 on the ground of data from Uralic and Eskimo-Aleut.

The paradigm

The paradigm encodes the person and number of the subject, and for transitive verbs, also the number of the object. The exact shape of the paradigm is not explicitly given in Seefloth's paper, but it can be summarized as this:

	Intransitive	Sg. object	Du. object	Pl. object
1sg.	-mV/-kV	-mV	-k-mV	-t-mV
2sg.	-tV/-nV	-tV	-k-tV	-t-tV
3sg.	-0	-sa	-k-sa	-i-sa
1du.	-mV-k/-kV-k	-mV-k	-k-mV-k	-t-mV-k
2du.	-tV-k/-nV-k	-tV-k	-k-tV-k	-t-tV-k
3du.	-k	-sa-k	-k-sa-k	-i-sa-k
1pl.	-mV-t/-kV-t	-mV-t	-k-mV-t	-t-mV-t
2pl.	-tV/-nV-t	-tV-t	-k-tV-t	-t-tV-t
3pl.	-t	-sa-t	-k-sa-t	-i-sa-t

Argumentation

Seefloth argues that Uralic and Eskimo-Aleut are "archaic peripheral languages" of the Uralo-Siberian group which allows to reconstruct a model of the morphosyntax of the simple clause on the basis of data from these two families. There were two nominal number markers, dual *-k and plural *-t/i. In the latter case, the form *-t was taken in word-final ("absolute") position and *-i when another morpheme, such as a possessive marker, followed ("construct" position). The oldest enclitics are possessive markers, 1sg. *-m/ka, 2sg. *-t/n and 3sg. *-sa. The duals of these were formed by suffixing *-k and the plural by suffixing *-t.

According to Seefloth, the resulting nominal possessive paradigm then became a verbal one by expressing sentences like I killed the reindeer (pl.) as The reindeer (pl.) are my killed ones, wherein my killed ones has the form killed-PL-1SG. The result is the paradigm given above.

Evidence

For Northern Samoyedic, the following paradigm can be reconstructed:

	Intransitive	Sg. object	Du. object	Pl. object
1sg.	-m	-mə	-kVj-i-nə	-i-nə
2sg.	-n(-tə)	-rə (< -tə)	-kVj-i-tə	-i-tə (< -i-t-tə)
3sg.	-0	-ta (< -sa)	-kVj-i-ta	-i-ta (< -i-sa)
1du.	-mi-ñ	-mi-ñ	-kCj-i-ni-ñ	-i-ni-ñ
2du.	-ti-ñ	-ti-ñ	-kCj-i-ti-ñ	-i-ti-ñ
3du.	-kə-ñ	-ti-ñ (< -si-ñ)	-kVj-i-ti-ñ	-i-ti-ñ (< -i-si-ñ)
1pl.	-ma-t	-ma-t	-kVj-i-na-t	-i-na-t
2pl.	-ta-t	-ta-t	-kVj-i-ta-t	-i-ta-t
3pl.	0-t	-to-n (< -so-n)	-kVj-i-to-n	-i-to-n (< -i-so-n)

A similar paradigm can be reconstructed for Proto-Eskumo-Aleut:

	Intransitive	Sg. object	Du. object	Pl. object
1sg.	-[tk]-m-ka	-[m]-ka	-k-[m]-ka	-t-[m]-ka
2sg.	-[tk]-ən	-n	-kə-n	-tə-n
3sg.	-0	-sa	-k	-i-sa
1du.	-[tk]-mə-k	-mə-k	-k-mə-k	(=sg.)
2du.	-[tk]-tə-k	-tə-k	-k-tə-k	(=sg.)
3du.	-0-k	-sa-k	-kə-k	-i-sa-k
1pl.	-[tk]-mə-t	-mə-t	-k-mə-t	(=sg.)
2pl.	-[tk]-tə-t	-tə-t	-k-tə-t	(=sg.)
3pl.	-0-t	-sa-t	-kə-t	-i-sa-t

Object person?

Three groups of Uralo-Siberian languages - Mordvinic, Chukotko-Kamchatkan and Eskimo-Aleut - also inflect their transitive verbs for the person of the object. It remains to be examined whether these markers are cognate, or separate innovations. If the turned out to be cognate, the dimension of object person would be to be added to the paradigm.