many separate meaningful parts (morphemes). In fact, a single word can be an entire sentence. CSY is also an ergative-absolutive language, in contrast to the nominative-accusative structure of English and many Indo-European languages. Most Siberian Yupik words consist of a "base" or "stem", followed by zero or more "postbases", followed by one "ending", followed by zero or more "enclitics": Generally, the “base” or “stem” contains the root meaning of the word , while the “postbases,” which are suffixing morphemes, provide additional components of the sentence (see example above). As shown, postbases include items with adjectival and verbal qualities, among other elements. The “ending” (Woodbury’s term) is an inflectional suffix to the right of the postbase that contains grammatical information such as number, person, case, or mood. Enclitics are bound suffixes that follow the inflectional ending of a word. An attached enclitic affects the meaning of the entire sentence, not just the element to which it is attached. The exception is the enclitic ‘llu,’ shown above, which has a basic meaning of ‘and.’ Bases The base forms the lexical core of the word and belongs to one of three main classes: noun bases, verb bases and particle bases. Noun bases (N) Ordinary noun bases (intransitive, transitive) Independent pronoun bases (intransitive) Demonstrative bases (D) (intransitive) Adjectival noun bases Inflecting as ordinary noun bases (intransitive, transitive) Independent relative bases Quantificational bases (Q) Numeral (NM) bases: cardinal (intransitive); ordinal (transitive) Specifier (SP) bases: cardinal (intransitive); partitive (transitive) Locational bases Demonstrative adverb (DA) bases (intransitive) Positional (PS) bases (transitive) Temporal bases Temporal noun bases (intransitive, transitive) Temporal particle bases Verb bases (V) Exclusively intransitive (Vi) Exclusively transitive (Vt) Ambivalent Particles Independent particles Sentence particles Phrasal participles Enclitics Noun endings indicate number (singular, dual, or plural), case, and whether or not the noun is possessed. If the noun is possessed, the ending indicates the number and person of the possessor. Siberian Yupik has seven noun cases: absolutive relative (ergative-genitive) ablative-modalis localis terminalis vialis aequalis Absolutive Case Noun Endings As in other ergative-absolutive languages, absolutive case is used to mark nouns that are generally the subjects of intransitive verbs or the objects of transitive verbs. Relative/Ergative Case Noun Endings Ergative case identifies nouns as a subject of a transitive verb and acts as the genitive form in ergative-absolutive languages. Ablative-Modalis Case Noun Endings The ablative case is used to indicate the agent in passive sentences, or the