Comitative-additive polysemy in the Pur dialect of Forest Nenets

This article examines two functions of the suffix -samæ in the Pur dialect of Forest Nenets based on fieldwork data: comitative (expression of jointness: ‘with X’) and scalar additive (focus particle with the meaning ‘even X’). The comitative use of the suffix -samæ primarily marks an inanimate companion. However, its use is also possible with other types of participants, in particular, if they form a natural or situational set (for example, an object and its part, a family member or a pragmatically related object, etc.). In such contexts, an interpretation of unexpectedness often arises, serving as the basis for the grammaticalization of -samæ into a scalar additive operator. The suffix marks a secondary participant whose presence in the situation is least expected (‘even with X’). At the same time, although -samæ in its scalar additive function is semantically and pragmatically analogous to the specialized focus marker -xăλt°-, it retains the syntactic properties of a comitative secondary predicate. Thus, the participant marked by -samæ agrees with the predicate in the plural, reflecting semantic agreement with the secondary participant and the (unexpressed) main participant of the comitative construction (e.g., ‘Even Vera arrived (= [They] even arrived with Vera)’). The article compares the Forest Nenets suffix with the comitative -ge in Hill Mari, for which a similar polysemy has been described, and argues that -samæ can be considered an example of a more complete development from jointness to scalar additivity, since the semantics of a set is not obligatory for it.