Affix Ordering in West Greenlandic Derivational Processes

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0. Derivation by affixation1 is central to the description of Eskimo grammar, and yet the relative ordering of the some 300 to 400 productive affixes that can be found within complex verb forms (i.e., minimal sentences) has long resisted formalization. The reasons are not mysterious: the sheer number of possible combinations is phenomenal. At first sight, it seems as if nearly any affix can follow almost any other. And such attempts as have been made to list coenvironments for even the most common affixes2 are inevitably incomplete and even misleading insofar as no distinction is maintained between combinations of affixes that have a compound meaning which differs from a simple sum of the parts (i.e., when lexicalization is involved) and combinations that are very common but cannot be said to have a meaning different from the sum of the parts (i.e., when semilexicalization is involved). This latter phenomenon 1 Generally referred to as suffixation in grammars of West Greenlandic or as infixation by Canadian Inuktitut grammarians. In Alaska, the term postbase is preferred. It is simply a terminological matter (e.g., as to whether a suffix can be followed by an inflection). I have chosen the most neutral term.