Pronominal clitics

In her Lake Miwok grammar, Callaghan reports that one speaker distinguishes between 1st person dual inclusive ʔoc and exclusive ʔic. Another speaker also remembers that this distinction used to be made by older speakers.^[5]

Case inflection

Nouns can be inflected for ten different cases:

• the Subjective case marks a noun which functions as the subject of a verb. If the subject noun is placed before the verb, the Subjective has the allomorph -n after vowel (or a vowel followed by /h/), and -Ø after consonants. If the noun is placed after the verb, the Subjective is -n after vowels and -nu after consonants.^[6]

• the Possessive case is -n after vowels and -Ø after consonants.^[8]

• the Objective case marks a noun which functions as the direct or indirect object of a verb.^[10] It has the allomorph -u (after a consonant) or -Ø (after a vowel) when the noun is placed immediately before a verb which contains the 2nd person prefix ʔin- (which then has the allomorph -n attached to the noun preceding the verb; compare the example below) or does not contain any subject prefix at all.^[10]

It has the allomorph -Ø before a verb containing any other subject prefix:^[11]

If the object noun does not immediately precede the verb, or if the verb is in the imperative, the allomorph of the Objective is -uc:^[11]

• the allative case is -to after a consonant, before the first person dual prefix or the second person singular prefix, or after a vowel if the noun is at the end of the phrase:^[13]

If the allative case appears after a vowel, most often in non-final position, it appears as -t:^[13]

The allative case has a variety of meanings, but often expresses direction towards a goal.^[13]

The allative case is also often used with the suffix -(m)pa meaning "onto, to, toward":^[15]

• the locative case -m gives a less specific designation of locality than the Allative, and occurs more rarely, generally only with an additional locational nominal suffix, such as -wa.^[16] An example:

• the ablative case is -mu or -m depending on the context, and marks direction out of, or away from, a place.^[18] An example:

• the instrumental case -ṭu marks instruments, e.g. tumáj-ṭu "(I hit him) with a stick".
• the comitative case -ni usually translates as "along with", but can also be used to coordinate nouns, as in kaʔunúu-ni ka ʔáppi-ni "my mother and my father".
• the vocative case only occurs with a few kinship terms, e.g. ʔunúu "mother (voc)" from ʔúnu "mother".
• the Appositive case is the citation form of nouns.

Possessive clitics

Lake Miwok uses pronominal clitics to indicate the possessor of a noun. Except for the 3d person singular, they have the same shape as the nominative pronominal clitics, but show no allomorphy.

The reflexive hana forms have the same referent as the subject of the same clause, whereas the non-reflexive forms have a different referent, e.g.:

• hana háju ʔúṭe – "He sees his own dog"
• ʔiṭi háju ʔúṭe – "He sees (somebody else's) dog"