Eskimo-Aleut

Eskimo-Aleut Eskaleut
Geographic distribution:	Alaska, Canadian Arctic, Nunavik, Nunatsiavut, Greenland, eastern Siberia
Genetic classification:	Eskimo-Aleut
Subdivisions:	Eskimo Aleut
ISO 639-5:	esx
Eskimo-Aleut languages spoken in United States, Canada and Greenland

Eskimo-Aleut is a language family native to Alaska, the Canadian Arctic, Nunavik, Nunatsiavut, Greenland, and the Chukchi Peninsula on the eastern tip of Siberia. It is also known as Eskaleut, Eskaleutian, Eskaleutic, Eskimoan, and Macro-Eskimo.^[1]

The Eskimo-Aleut language family is divided into two branches, the Eskimo languages and the Aleut language.

The Aleut language family consists of a single language, Aleut, spoken in the Aleutian Islands and the Pribilof Islands. Aleut is divided into several dialects.

The Eskimo languages are divided into two branches, the Yupik languages, spoken in western and southwestern Alaska and in easternmost Siberia, and the Inuit language, spoken in northern Alaska, in Canada, and in Greenland. The Inuit language, which covers a huge range of territory, is divided into several dialects.

The proper place of one language, Sirenik, within the Eskimo family has not been settled. Some linguists list it as a branch of Yupik,^[2] others as a separate branch of the Eskimo family, alongside Yupik and Inuit.^[3]

It is thought that the common ancestral language of the Eskimo languages and of Aleut divided into the Eskimo and Aleut branches around 2000 BCE, that is, around 4,000 years ago.

The Eskimo language family divided into the Yupik and Inuit branches around 1000 CE, that is, around 1,000 years ago.

The Eskimo-Aleut languages are one of the native languages of the Americas. However, this is a geographical category, not a linguistic one. The Eskimo-Aleut languages are not demonstrably related to the other language families of North America.

Classification of the family

Eskimo-Aleut languages

Aleut

Western-Central dialects: Atkan, Attuan, Unangan, Bering (60-80 speakers)

Eastern dialects: Unalaskan, Pribilof (400 speakers)

Eskimo languages (or Yupik-Inuit languages)

Yupik languages (or Yup'ik languages)

Central Alaskan Yup'ik (10,000 speakers)

Yugtun

Alutiiq or Pacific Gulf Yup'ik (400 speakers)

Central Siberian Yupik or Yuit (Chaplinon and St. Lawrence Island, 1400 speakers)

Naukanski (70 speakers)

Qawiaraq language (Seward Peninsula)

Chaplinski

Sirenik (extinct) (viewed as an independent branch by some)

Inuit language (98,000 speakers)

Inupiaq or Inupiat (northern Alaska, 3,500 speakers)

Inuvialuktun (western Canada, 765 speakers)

Kangiryuarmiutun (Ulukhaktok sometimes listed as Inuinnaqtun)

Siglitun (Paulatuk, Sachs Harbour, Tuktoyaktuk)

Uummarmiutun (Aklavik, Inuvik from Inupiaq)

Inuktitut (eastern Canada; together with Inuktun and Inuinnaqtun, 40,000 speakers)

Nunatsiavummiutut (Nunatsiavut, 550 speakers)

Inuttitut (Nunavik)

Kalaallisut (Greenland, 54,000 speakers)

Inuktun (Avanersuarmiutut)

East Greenlandic (Tunumiit oraasiat)

Position among the world's language families

Eskimo-Aleut does not have any genetic relationship to any of the world's other language families that is generally accepted by linguists at the present time. (In linguistics, "genetic relationship" means descent from the same ancestral language, and does not have anything to do with the science of genetics.) There is, however, general agreement that it is not closely related to the other language families of North America. The more credible proposals on the external relations of Eskimo-Aleut all concern one or more of the language families of northern Eurasia. One of the first such proposals was made by the pioneering Danish linguist Rasmus Rask in 1818, upon noticing similarities between Greenlandic Eskimo and Finnish. Perhaps the most fully developed such proposal to date is Michael Fortescue's Uralo-Siberian hypothesis, published in 1998. More recently Joseph Greenberg (2000-2002) has suggested grouping Eskimo-Aleut with all of the language families of northern Eurasia, with the exception of Yeniseian, in a proposed language family called Eurasiatic. Such proposals remain controversial.

Notable features

The Eskimo-Aleut languages are affixally polysynthetic^[4] and exclusively suffixing.

Every word must have only one root (free morpheme) always at the beginning^[5]. Eskimo-Aleut languages have a relatively small number of roots - in the case of Central Alaskan Yup'ik around two thousand^[6]. Following the root is a number of postbases, which are bound morphemes that add to the basic meaning of the root. If the meaning of the postbase is to be expressed alone, a special neutral root (in the case of Central Alaskan Yup'ik pi) is used.

Following the postbases are non-lexical suffixes that indicate case on nouns and person and mood on verbs. The number of cases varies, with Aleut languages having a greatly reduced case system compared to Eskimo. The Eskimo languages are ergative-absolutive in nouns and in Yup'ik languages, also in verbal person marking. All Eskimo-Aleut languages have obligatory verbal agreement with agent and patient in transitive clauses, and there are special suffixes used for this purpose in subordinate clauses, which makes these languages, like most in the North Pacific, highly complement deranking.

At the end of a word there can be one of a small number of clitics with meanings such as "but" or indicating a polar interrogative.

Phonologically, the Eskimo-Aleut languages resemble other languages of northern North America and far eastern Siberia. There are usually only three vowels, a, i and u, though some Yup'ik dialects also have ə. There are no ejectives, but there are voiceless plosives at the bilabial, coronal, velar and uvular positions in all languages except Aleut, which has lost the bilabial stops but retained the nasal. There are contrasting voiced and voiceless fricatives at the same positions, and in the Eskimo subfamily a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative is also present. A rare feature of many dialects of Yup'ik and Aleut is contrasting voiceless nasals.

Vocabulary comparison

This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. (November 2008)

The following is a brief comparison of cognates among the basic vocabulary across the Eskimo-Aleut language family (about 60 words). Note that empty cells do not imply that a particular language is lacking a word to describe the concept, but rather that the word for the concept in that language is formed from another stem and is not a cognate with the other words in the row. Also, there may be shifts in the meaning from one language to another, and so the "common meaning" given is only approximate. In some cases the form given is found only in some dialects of the language. Forms are given in native Latin orthographies unless otherwise noted.

See also

• Proto-Eskimo language
• Proto-Eskimo-Aleut language

Notes

1. ^ Cf. Fleming 1987:189.
2. ^ "Ethnologue report for Yupik Sirenk." Retrieved 2008-08-25.
3. ^ "Alaska Native Languages - An Overview". Retrieved 2008-08-25.
4. ^ See Mattissen, Johanna; "Ontology and Diachrony of Polysynthesis"; in Wunderlich, Dieter; Advances in the Theory of the Lexicon; pp. 291-294; ISBN 3110190192
5. ^ Mattissen, Johanna; Dependent-Head Synthesis in Nivkh: A Contribution to a Typology of Polysynthesis; p. 282; ISBN 9027229651
6. ^ Garry, Jane and Rubino, Carl R. Galvez; Facts about the World's Languages: An Encyclopedia of the World's Major Languages; pp. 842-844; ISBN 0824209702

Bibliography

• Bernet, John W. 1974. An Anthology of Aleut, Eskimo, and Indian Literature of Alaska in English Translation. Fairbanks, Alaska.
• Conference on Eskimo Linguistics, and Eric P. Hamp. 1976. Papers on Eskimo and Aleut Linguistics. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.

• Dumond, Don E. 1965. On Eskaleutian Linguistics, Archaeology, and Prehistory.

• Fleming, Harold C. 1987. "Towards a definitive classification of the world's languages." Diachronica 4.1/2:159-223.

• Fortescue, Michael D. 1984. Some Problems Concerning the Correlation and Reconstruction of Eskimo and Aleut Mood Markers. København: Institut for Eskimologi, Københavns Universitet. ISBN 8787874105

• Fortescue, Michael D., Steven A. Jacobson, and Lawrence D. Kaplan. 1994. Comparative Eskimo Dictionary with Aleut Cognates. Fairbanks, Alaska: Alaska Native Language Center, University of Alaska, Fairbanks. ISBN 1555000517

• Fortescue, Michael. 1998. Language Relations across Bering Strait: Reappraising the Archaeological and Linguistic Evidence. London and New York: Cassell. ISBN 0-304-70330-3

• Greenberg, Joseph H. 2000. Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family, Volume 1: Grammar. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.

• Greenberg, Joseph H. 2002. Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family, Volume 2: Lexicon. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.

• Marsh, Gordon H. 1956. The Linguistic Divisions of the Eskimo-Aleut Stock.

• Swift, Mary D. 2004. Time in Child Inuktitut: A Developmental Study of an Eskimo-Aleut Language. Studies on Language Acquisition 24. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 3110181207

External links

• Alaska Native Language Center