Southern Sámi

The 11 vowel phonemes comprise four phonologically short and long vowels (i-i:, e-e:, a-a:, u-u:) and three vowel phonemes which do not distinguish length (ø, ae, o).

The vowel phonemes of the northern dialect are the following; orthographic counterparts are given in italics:

The non-high vowels /e/, /æ/, /o/ and /ɑ/ contrast in length: they may occur as both short and long. High vowels only occur as short.

The vowels may combine to form ten different diphthongs:

In South Sámi, all consonants occur as geminates in word medial position.

In Southern Sámi, the vowel in the second syllable of a word causes changes to the vowel in the first syllable, a feature called umlaut. The vowel in the second syllable can change depending on the inflectional ending being attached, and the vowel in the first vowel will likewise alternate accordingly. Often there are three different vowels that alternate with each other in the paradigm of a single word, for example as follows:

• ⟨ae⟩ ~ ⟨aa⟩ ~ ⟨ee⟩: vaedtsedh 'to walk' : vaadtsam 'I walk' : veedtsim 'I walked'
• ⟨ue⟩ ~ ⟨ua⟩ ~ ⟨öö⟩: vuelkedh 'to leave' : vualkam 'I leave' : vöölkim 'I left'

The following table gives a full overview of the alternations:

On the other hand, Southern Sami is the only Sami language that does not have consonant gradation. Hence consonants in the middle of words never alternate in Southern Sami, even though such alternations are frequent in other Sami languages. Compare, for instance, Southern Sami nomme 'name' : nommesne 'in the name' to Northern Sami namma : namas, with the consonant gradation mm : m.

Southern Sami has eight cases:

Southern Sami's nouns inflect for singular and plural and has eight cases: nominative, accusative, genitive, illative, locative, elative, comitative and essive, but number is not distinguished in the essive. The inflection is essentially agglutinative, but the case endings are not always the same in the plural as in the singular. The plural sign is -h in the nominative case, otherwise -i/j-, to which the case endings are added. There are five different inflection classes but no declension classes. All nouns take the same case markers.

The function of the nominative is to mark the subject and the accusative marks the object. The nominative plural is also used to mark plural objects, also called differential object marking and here, the object gets an indefinite reading, while the accusative plural marks definite objects. The genitive is used in adnominal possession and marks the dependet of postpositions. Illative is a spatial case marking the recipient, while locative and elative are also spatial cases, but the locative is also used in existential constructions and the elative in partitive constructions. And comitative expresses participation and instrumental and the essive marks a stare or a function.

Four stem classes can be distinguished: ie-stems, e-stems, a-stems, and oe-stems.

Overview of the modern inflection of guelie 'fish':

Earlier, in the comitative singular and in the plural, besides the nominative i, umlaut of the root vowel to öö took place: Gen. Pl. göölij etc.

The personal pronouns inflect for singular, dual and plural and seven cases which are all of the above with exception of the essive. A demonstrative pronoun without specific deictic bias is employed as the third person pronoun, treating dual and plural forms as indistinguishable. Additional pronouns encompass pronominal and adnominal demonstratives, along with interrogative and relative pronouns, reflexive, logophoric, reciprocal and a variety of indefinite pronouns. The majority of these pronouns change based on whether they refer to a singular or plural entity, and some also adapt to different cases. Demonstratives make distinctions across three distances relative to the speaker.

The South Sami verbs inflect for person and number, singular, dual and plural, whereby, dual is an optional category. And, there are also two finite inflectional categories, the present and the past tense. The subject suffixes are the same and there are three different inflectional classes which are based on the thematic vowels and their behaviour in inflection. Furthermore, there are 4 non-finite forms, the perfect participle, the progressive, the infinitive and the connegative and imperative form. Meanwhile, the verbs express the TMA categories present tense indicative, past tense indicative, perfect, pluperfect, progressive and imperative but additionally, the copula also inflects for the conditional.

In the verbum, a distinction must be made between odd-syllable and even-syllable verbs; in the latter, there are six different stem classes.

Overview of the forms of the ie stems using the example of båetedh 'to come':

The morphology of adjectives is restricted to comparative and superlative forms. Some have different forms in attributive and predicative position but the most are invariable.

Southern Sámi verbs conjugate for three grammatical persons:

• first person
• second person
• third person

Southern Sámi verbs conjugate for three grammatical numbers:

• singular
• dual
• plural

Southern Sámi, like Finnish, the other Sámi languages, and Estonian, has a negative verb. In Southern Sámi, the negative verb conjugates according to tense (past and non-past), mood (indicative and imperative), person (1st, 2nd and 3rd) and number (singular, dual and plural). This differs from some other Sámi languages, e.g. from Northern Sámi, which do not conjugate according to tense.