486

The distributions of the two suffixes are not identical,
however. Unlike most final suffixes, including -xa, -ka
has not occurred before -lla ~ -ya politive in data
analyzed so far. And, in some cases, Yapita would replace
~ka by either -xa topic/attenuator or the demonstrative
uka as syntactic summarizer (7-4.3).

As will be seen in the examples that follow, -ka
seems to function both as topic marker and as a summarizer
of what precedes it in a sentence. The latter function
is fulfilled in all Aymara dialects (including those that
have -ka topic/summarizer) by the demonstratives uka and
(to a lesser extent) aka. In all Aymara dialects, also,
aka and uka act like suffixes in phrases such as naya.n
uka 'my house', literaliiy ‘mine, that' but conveying the
sense of the French chez moi.

In the data analyzed for this study, -ka occurs
only on nouns of the open class or the demonstratives
aka and uka and usually only when they occur sentence-
initially or -finally. On the demonstratives, -ka recalls
the noun suffix -:ka that occurs on demonstratives in
La Paz and Socca and possibly elsewhere (see 5-3.12.6).
In one case in Calacala -ka ({ga]) is obviously a re-
duced form of uka 'chez', being followed by the noun
suffix -na ‘in, of': padre.[ga]l.n ‘at the priest's
(house)'. The suffix -ka might therefore be considered

a noun suffix, but for the fact that when it occurs