The language family containing the Eskimoan and Aleut languages.
|
Results for Eskimo-Aleut
|
On this page:
|
The language family containing the Eskimoan and Aleut languages.
For more information on Eskimo-Aleut languages, visit Britannica.com.
Bibliography
See K. Bergslund, A Grammatical Outline of the Eskimo Language of West Greenland (1955) and Aleut Dialects of Atha and Attu (1959); L. L. Hammerich, The Eskimo Language (1970); M. E. Krauss, Alaskan Native Languages (1980).
The noun has one meaning:
Meaning #1:
the family of languages that includes Eskimo and Aleut
Synonym: Eskimo-Aleut language
Eskimo-Aleut is a language family native to Greenland, the Canadian Arctic, Alaska, and parts of Siberia. Also called Eskaleut (Eskaleutian, Eskaleutic), Eskimoan or Macro-Eskimo, it consists of the Eskimo languages (known as Inuit in the north of Alaska, Canada and Greenland, and as Yupik/Yup'ik in western and southwestern Alaska and in Siberia), and the single Aleut language of the Aleutian and Pribilof Islands.
Eskimo is an exonym of Algonquian origin and is a deprecated name, but is retained to speak of the Yuit-Yup'ik-Inuit as a whole. Within Canada, Inuit is preferred. In Alaska, Yup'ik, Inupiaq, or Inuit is preferred, depending on who is being referred to.
Traditionally, the Eskimo language family was divided into the Inuit group and the Yup'ik (or Yup'ik-Yuit) group. However, recent research suggests that Yup'ik by itself is not a valid node, or, equivalently, that the Inuit dialect continuum is but one of several languages of the Yup'ik group. However, although it may be technically correct to replace the term Eskimo with Yup'ik in this classification, this would not be acceptable to most Inuit. Also, the Alaskan-Siberian dichotomy appears to have been geographical rather than linguistic.
Eskimo-Aleut
According to Joseph Greenberg's highly controversial classification of the languages of Native North America, Eskimo-Aleut is one of the three main groups of Native languages spoken in the Americas, and represents a distinct wave of migration from Asia to the Americas. The other two are Na-Dené (which includes Athabaskan and a small number of related tongues) and Amerind (Greenberg's most controversial classification, which includes every language native to the Americas that is not Eskimo-Aleut or Na-Dené).
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
Join the WikiAnswers Q&A community. Post a question or answer questions about "Eskimo-Aleut" at WikiAnswers.
Copyrights:
![]() | Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more | |
![]() | Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more | |
![]() | Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/ Read more | |
![]() | WordNet. WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. Read more | |
![]() | Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Eskimo-Aleut languages". Read more |
Mentioned In: