The Eskaleut (), Eskimo–Aleut or Inuit–Yupik–Unangan languages are a
language family native to the northern portions of the North American continent and a small part of northeastern Asia. Languages in the family are indigenous to parts of what are now the United States (
Alaska
Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U.S ...
); Canada (
Inuit Nunangat including
Nunavut,
Northwest Territories (principally in the
Inuvialuit Settlement Region),
northern Quebec (
Nunavik), and northern
Labrador (
Nunatsiavut);
Greenland; and the
Russian Far East
The Russian Far East (russian: Дальний Восток России, r=Dal'niy Vostok Rossii, p=ˈdalʲnʲɪj vɐˈstok rɐˈsʲiɪ) is a region in Northeast Asia. It is the easternmost part of Russia and the Asian continent; and is admin ...
(
Chukchi Peninsula). The language family is also known as ''Eskaleutian'', ''Eskaleutic'' or ''Inuit–Yupik–Unangan''.
The Eskaleut language family is divided into two branches: the
Eskimoan languages
The Eskaleut (), Eskimo–Aleut or Inuit–Yupik–Unangan languages are a language family native to the northern portions of the North American continent and a small part of northeastern Asia. Languages in the family are indigenous to parts of ...
and the
Aleut language. The Aleut branch consists of a single language, Aleut, spoken in the
Aleutian Islands
The Aleutian Islands ( ; ; ale, Unangam Tanangin, "land of the Aleuts"; possibly from the Chukchi ''aliat'', or "island")—also called the Aleut Islands, Aleutic Islands, or, before 1867, the Catherine Archipelago—are a chain of 14 main, ...
and the
Pribilof Islands. Aleut is divided into several
dialect
The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena:
One usage refers to a variety of a language that ...
s. The Eskimoan languages are divided into two branches: the
Yupik languages, spoken in western and southwestern Alaska and in Chukotka, and the
Inuit languages, spoken in northern Alaska, Canada and Greenland. Inuit languages, which cover a huge range of territory, is divided into several varieties. Neighbouring varieties are
quite similar, although those at the farthest distances from the centre in the
Diomede Islands
The Diomede Islands (; russian: острова́ Диоми́да, translit=ostrová Diomída), also known in Russia as Gvozdev Islands (russian: острова́ Гво́здева, translit=ostrová Gvozdjeva), consist of two rocky, mesa-like i ...
and
East Greenland are quite divergent.
The proper place of one language,
Sirenik
Sirenik Yupik, Sireniki Yupik (also Old Sirenik or Vuteen), Sirenik, or Sirenikskiy is an extinct Eskimo–Aleut language. It was spoken in and around the village of Sireniki (Сиреники) in Chukotka Peninsula, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, ...
, within the Eskimoan family has not been settled. While some linguists list it as a branch of Yupik, others list it as a separate branch of the Eskimoan family, alongside the Yupik and Inuit languages.
History
The
Alaska Native Language Center
The Alaska Native Language Center, established in 1972 in Fairbanks, Alaska, is a research center focusing on the research and documentation of the Native languages of Alaska. It publishes grammars, dictionaries, folklore collections and research ...
believes that the common ancestral language of the Eskimoan languages and of Aleut divided into the Eskimoan and Aleut branches at least 4,000 years ago.
The Eskimoan language family split into the Yupik and Inuit branches around 1,000 years ago.
The Eskaleut languages are among the
native languages of the Americas. This is a geographical category, not a
genealogical one. The Eskaleut languages are not demonstrably related to the other language families of North America
and are believed to represent
a separate, and the last, prehistoric migration of people from Asia.
Alexander Vovin (2015) notes that northern
Tungusic languages
The Tungusic languages (also known as Manchu-Tungus and Tungus) form a language family spoken in Eastern Siberia and Manchuria by Tungusic peoples. Many Tungusic languages are endangered. There are approximately 75,000 native speakers of the doz ...
, which are spoken in eastern
Siberia
Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part o ...
and northeastern China, have Eskaleut loanwords that are not found in Southern Tungusic, implying that Eskaleut was once much more widely spoken in eastern Siberia. Vovin (2015) estimates that the Eskaleut loanwords in Northern Tungusic had been borrowed no more than 2,000 years ago, which was when Tungusic was spreading northwards from its homeland in the middle reaches of the
Amur River
The Amur (russian: река́ Аму́р, ), or Heilong Jiang (, "Black Dragon River", ), is the world's tenth longest river, forming the border between the Russian Far East and Northeastern China ( Inner Manchuria). The Amur proper is long ...
. Vovin (2015) considers the homeland (''
Urheimat
In historical linguistics, the homeland or ''Urheimat'' (, from German '' ur-'' "original" and ''Heimat'', home) of a proto-language is the region in which it was spoken before splitting into different daughter languages. A proto-language is the r ...
'') of Proto-Eskaleut to be in Siberia rather than in Alaska.
Internal classification
;Eskaleut
:
Aleut
The Aleuts ( ; russian: Алеуты, Aleuty) are the indigenous people of the Aleutian Islands, which are located between the North Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea. Both the Aleut people and the islands are politically divided between the U ...
(''Unangam Tunuu'') (40–80 speakers)
::Western–Central dialects:
Atkan,
Attuan † (1997),
Bering † (2021),
Unangan
::Eastern dialects:
Unalaskan,
Pribilof
The Pribilof Islands (formerly the Northern Fur Seal Islands; ale, Amiq, russian: Острова Прибылова, Ostrova Pribylova) are a group of four volcanic islands off the coast of mainland Alaska, in the Bering Sea, about north of ...
:Eskimoan
::
Sirenik
Sirenik Yupik, Sireniki Yupik (also Old Sirenik or Vuteen), Sirenik, or Sirenikskiy is an extinct Eskimo–Aleut language. It was spoken in and around the village of Sireniki (Сиреники) in Chukotka Peninsula, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, ...
(''Uqeghllistun'') † (1997)
::
Yupik or Western Eskimoan
:::
Alutiiq
The Alutiiq people (pronounced in English; from Promyshlenniki Russian Алеутъ, " Aleut"; plural often "Alutiit"), also called by their ancestral name ( or ; plural often "Sugpiat"), as well as Pacific Eskimo or Pacific Yupik, are a s ...
or Pacific Gulf Yupik (ca. 80 speakers)
::::
Koniag Alutiiq (''Alutiit’stun'')
::::
Chugach Alutiiq (''Sugt’stun'')
:::
Central Alaskan Yup'ik Central Alaskan Yup'ik may refer to:
* Central Alaskan Yup'ik people
* Central Alaskan Yup'ik language
Central is an adjective usually referring to being in the center of some place or (mathematical) object.
Central may also refer to:
Direction ...
(5,000 speakers ±50%)
::::
General Central Alaskan Yup'ik (''Yugtun'')
::::
Chevak Cupꞌik (Cugtun)
::::
Nunivak Cupʼig (Cugtun) (5–25 speakers)
:::
Naukan (''Nuvuqaghmiistun'') (70 speakers)
:::
Central Siberian Yupik (''Yuit''/''Yupigestun'') ("Yuit" in Russia, "Yupigestun" in Alaska; Chaplino and
St. Lawrence Island)
::::
Chaplino (Chaplinski) Yupik (''Ungazighmiistun'') (ca. 200 speakers)
::::St. Lawrence Island Yupik (Sivuqaghmiistun) (400–750 speakers)
::
Inuit
Inuit (; iu, ᐃᓄᐃᑦ 'the people', singular: Inuk, , dual: Inuuk, ) are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic and subarctic regions of Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories, ...
or Eastern Eskimoan (ca. 100,000 speakers)
:::
Iñupiaq or Inupiat (northern Alaska, 5,000 speakers ±50%)
::::
Qawiaraq or
Seward Peninsula
The Seward Peninsula is a large peninsula on the western coast of the U.S. state of Alaska whose westernmost point is Cape Prince of Wales. The peninsula projects about into the Bering Sea between Norton Sound, the Bering Strait, the Chukchi ...
Inupiaq
::::
Inupiatun/Iñupiatun or Northern Alaska Inupiaq (including
Uummarmiutun (
Aklavik,
Inuvik
Inuvik (''place of man'') is the only town in the Inuvik Region, and the third largest community in Canada's Northwest Territories. Located in what is sometimes called the Beaufort Delta Region, it serves as its administrative and service ce ...
))
:::
Inuvialuktun
Inuvialuktun (part of ''Western Canadian Inuit/Inuktitut/Inuktut/Inuktun'') comprises several Inuit language varieties spoken in the northern Northwest Territories by Canadian Inuit who call themselves ''Inuvialuit''. Some dialects and sub-diale ...
(western Canada; 1,020 speakers, 2016 census)
::::
Siglitun (
Paulatuk,
Sachs Harbour,
Tuktoyaktuk)
::::
Inuinnaqtun
Inuinnaqtun (; natively meaning ''like the real human beings/peoples''), is an indigenous Inuit language. It is spoken in the central Canadian Arctic. It is related very closely to Inuktitut, and some scholars, such as Richard Condon, believe t ...
(in
Ulukhaktok also known as
Kangiryuarmiutun
''Kangiryuarmiutun'' (sometimes ''Kangirjuarmiut(un)''), is a dialect of Inuit language spoken in Ulukhaktok, Northwest Territories, Canada by the Kangiryuarmiut, a Copper Inuit group. The dialect is part of the Inuvialuktun language. The pe ...
)
::::
Natsilingmiutut
Netsilik , Natsilik, Nattilik, Netsilingmiut, Natsilingmiutut, Nattilingmiutut, or Nattiliŋmiutut is an Inuit language variety spoken in western Nunavut, Canada, by Netsilik Inuit.
''Natsilingmiut'' (ᓇᑦᓯᓕᖕᒥᐅᑦ "people from Natsil ...
(
Netsilik area,
Nunavut)
:::
Inuktitut
Inuktitut (; , syllabics ; from , "person" + , "like", "in the manner of"), also Eastern Canadian Inuktitut, is one of the principal Inuit languages of Canada. It is spoken in all areas north of the tree line, including parts of the provinces o ...
(eastern Canada; 36,000 speakers, 2016 census)
::::
Inuttitut
Inuttitut, Inuttut, or Nunatsiavummiutitut is a dialect of Inuktitut. It is spoken across northern Labrador by Inuit, whose traditional lands are known as Nunatsiavut.
The language has a distinct writing system, created in Greenland in the 1760s ...
or Nunatsiavummiutut (
Nunatsiavut, 550 speakers)
::::
Nunavimmiutitut
Inuktitut (; , syllabics ; from , "person" + , "like", "in the manner of"), also Eastern Canadian Inuktitut, is one of the principal Inuit languages of Canada. It is spoken in all areas north of the tree line, including parts of the provinces o ...
(
Nunavik)
::::
Qikiqtaaluk nigiani
Inuktitut (; , syllabics ; from , "person" + , "like", "in the manner of"), also Eastern Canadian Inuktitut, is one of the principal Inuit languages of Canada. It is spoken in all areas north of the tree line, including parts of the provinces o ...
(South Baffin)
::::
Qikiqtaaluk uannangani
The North Baffin dialect (''Qikiqtaaluk uannangani'' or ''Iglulingmiut'') of Inuktitut is spoken on the northern part of Baffin Island, at Igloolik and the adjacent part of the Melville Peninsula, and in other Inuit communities in the far north of ...
or Iglulingmiut (North Baffin)
::::
Aivilingmiutut (east-central Nunavut)
::::
Kivallirmiutut
Kivalliq, also known as ''Kivallirmiutut, Caribou Eskimo,'' or formerly as ''Keewatin'', is a dialect of Eastern Canadian Inuktitut which is spoken along the northwestern shores of Hudson Bay in Nunavut.
Location
The Kivalliq dialect is most ...
(Southeast Nunavut)
::::
Inuktun
Inuktun ( en, Polar Inuit, kl, avanersuarmiutut, da, nordgrønlandsk, polarinuitisk, thulesproget) is the language of approximately 1,000 indigenous Inughuit (Polar Inuit), inhabiting the world's northernmost settlements in Qaanaaq and the sur ...
or Avanersuaq (Polar Eskimo, Greenland, 800 speakers)
:::
Greenlandic (Greenland: 50,000 speakers Greenland, 7,000 Denmark)
::::
Kalaallisut (West Greenlandic, 44,000 speakers)
::::
Tunumiisut (East Greenlandic, 3,000 speakers)
Position among the world's language families
Eskaleut does not have any
genetic relationship to any of the world's other language families, this being generally accepted by linguists at the present time. There is 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 Eskaleut all concern one or more of the language families of northern
Eurasia
Eurasia (, ) is the largest continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. Primarily in the Northern and Eastern Hemispheres, it spans from the British Isles and the Iberian Peninsula in the west to the Japanese archipelag ...
, such as
Chukotko-Kamchatkan
The Chukotko-Kamchatkan or Chukchi–Kamchatkan languages are a language family of extreme northeastern Siberia. Its speakers traditionally were indigenous hunter-gatherers and reindeer-herders. Chukotko-Kamchatkan is endangered. The Kamchatkan ...
just across the
Bering Strait. One of the first such proposals, the
Eskimo–Uralic hypothesis, was suggested by the pioneering Danish linguist
Rasmus Rask in 1818, upon noticing similarities between
Greenlandic and
Finnish. Perhaps the most fully developed such proposal to date is
Michael Fortescue
Michael David Fortescue (born 8 August 1946) is a British-born linguist specializing in Arctic and native North American languages, including Kalaallisut, Inuktun, Chukchi and Nitinaht. He gained his PhD in Linguistics from the University of ...
's
Uralo–Siberian hypothesis, published in 1998 which links Eskaleut languages to
Yukaghir and the
Uralic languages
The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) form a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian (w ...
.
More recently
Joseph Greenberg
Joseph Harold Greenberg (May 28, 1915 – May 7, 2001) was an American linguist, known mainly for his work concerning linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages.
Life Early life and education
Joseph Greenberg was born on M ...
(2000–2002) suggested grouping Eskaleut with all of the language families of northern Eurasia (Indo-European, Uralic, Altaic, Korean, Japanese, Ainu, Nivkh/Gilayak, and Chukchi–Kamchatkan), with the exception of
Yeniseian, in a proposed language family called
Eurasiatic. Such proposals are not generally accepted. Criticisms have been made stating that Greenberg's hypothesis is
ahistorical, meaning that it lacks and sacrifices known historical elements of language in favour of external similarities.
Although the Eurasiatic hypothesis is generally disregarded by linguists, one critique by
Stefan Georg and
Alexander Vovin stated that they were not willing to disregard the theory immediately although ultimately agreed that Greenberg's conclusion was dubious. Greenberg explicitly states that his developments were based on the previous macro-comparative work done by
Vladislav Illich-Svitych and Bomhard and Kerns.
By providing evidence of lexical comparison, Greenberg hoped that it would strengthen his hypothesis.
Despite all these efforts, the Eurasiatic language theory was overruled on the basis that mass comparison is not accurate enough an approach. In
comparative linguistics
Comparative linguistics, or comparative-historical linguistics (formerly comparative philology) is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their history, historical relatedness.
Genetic relat ...
, the comparative method bases its validity on highly regular changes, not occasional semantic and phonological similarities, which is what the Eurasiatic hypothesis provides.
In the 1960s
Morris Swadesh suggested a connection with the
Wakashan languages. This was picked up and expanded by Jan Henrik Holst (2005).
Notable features
Every word must have only one
root
In vascular plants, the roots are the organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often below the sur ...
(
free morpheme
In linguistics, a bound morpheme is a morpheme (the elementary unit of morphosyntax) that can appear only as part of a larger expression; a free morpheme (or unbound morpheme) is one that can stand alone. A bound morpheme is a type of bound form ...
) always at the beginning. Eskaleut languages have a relatively small number of roots: in the case of Central Alaskan Yup'ik, around two thousand. Following the root are a number of ''
postbases'', which are
bound morpheme
In linguistics, a bound morpheme is a morpheme
A morpheme is the smallest meaningful constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology.
In English, morphemes are often but not ...
s 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 and Inuktitut ''pi'') is used.
The basic word schema is as follows: root-(affixes)-inflection-(enclitic). Below is an example from Central Siberian Yupik.
There are a total of three affixes internal to the word 'angyagh.' The root (or free morpheme) 'angyagh' and the inflection '-tuq' on the right consist of the indicative mood marker plus third person singular. The enclitic –lu ‘also’ follows the inflection.
[
Following the postbases are non-lexical suffixes that indicate ]case
Case or CASE may refer to:
Containers
* Case (goods), a package of related merchandise
* Cartridge case or casing, a firearm cartridge component
* Bookcase, a piece of furniture used to store books
* Briefcase or attaché case, a narrow box to c ...
on nouns and person
A person (plural, : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of pr ...
and mood
Mood may refer to:
*Mood (psychology), a relatively long lasting emotional state
Music
*The Mood, a British pop band from 1981 to 1984
* Mood (band), hip hop artists
* ''Mood'' (Jacquees album), 2016
* ''Moods'' (Barbara Mandrell album), 1978
...
on verbs. The number of cases varies, with Aleut languages having a greatly reduced case system compared to Eskimoan. The Eskimoan languages are ergative–absolutive in nouns and in Yup'ik languages, also in verbal person marking. All Eskaleut 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 clitic
In morphology and syntax, a clitic (, backformed from Greek "leaning" or "enclitic"Crystal, David. ''A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a ...
s with meanings such as "but" or indicating a polar question.
Phonologically, the Eskaleut languages resemble other language families of northern North America ( Na-Dene and Tsimshianic
The Tsimshianic languages are a family of languages spoken in northwestern British Columbia and in Southeast Alaska on Annette Island and Ketchikan. All Tsimshianic languages are endangered, some with only around 400 speakers. Only around 2,1 ...
) and far-eastern Siberia (Chukotko-Kamchatkan
The Chukotko-Kamchatkan or Chukchi–Kamchatkan languages are a language family of extreme northeastern Siberia. Its speakers traditionally were indigenous hunter-gatherers and reindeer-herders. Chukotko-Kamchatkan is endangered. The Kamchatkan ...
). There are usually only three vowels—, , —though some Yup'ik dialects also have . All Eskaleut languages lack ejectives
In phonetics, ejective consonants are usually voiceless consonants that are pronounced with a glottalic egressive airstream. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated, voiced and tenuis consonants. So ...
, in which they resemble the Siberian languages more than the North American ones. Eskaleut languages possess voiceless
In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, it is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word phonation implies v ...
plosives at four positions ( bilabial, coronal, velar and uvular) in all languages except Aleut, which has lost the bilabial stops (though it has retained the nasal
Nasal is an adjective referring to the nose, part of human or animal anatomy. It may also be shorthand for the following uses in combination:
* With reference to the human nose:
** Nasal administration, a method of pharmaceutical drug delivery
** ...
). There are usually contrasting voiced and voiceless fricative
A fricative is a consonant manner of articulation, produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two Place of articulation, articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the ba ...
s at the same positions, and in the Eskimoan subfamily a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative
The voiceless alveolar lateral fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents voiceless dental, alveolar, and postalveolar lateral fricatives is , ...
is also present. A rare feature of many dialects of Yup'ik and Aleut is contrasting voiceless nasals.
Phonology
Eskimoan
The following vowels and consonants were taken from Michael Fortescue et al., 2010
Vowels
Eskimoan /ə/ corresponds to Aleut /i/.
Consonants
Inuit allows only a single initial consonant and no more than two successive consonants between vowels.
Yupik lacks the consonant assimilation process so common to Inuit.
Consonants in parentheses are non-Proto-Eskimoan phonemes.
Aleut
The following vowels and consonants were taken from Knut Bergsland, (1997).
Vowels
The Aleut language has six vowels in total: three short vowels /i/, /u/, /a/, and three long vowels /iː/, /uː/, /aː/. Orthographically, they would be spelled ''ii'', ''uu'', and ''aa''. There are no diphthongs in Aleut vowels. The length of the vowel is dependent upon three characteristics: stress, surrounding consonants, and in particularly Eastern Aleut, surrounding vowels. Short vowels are in initial position if a following consonant is velar or labial. For example: the demonstratives ''uka'', ''ika'', and ''aka''.
Long vowels are lower than their short counterpart vowels, but are less retracted if they make contact with a uvular consonant. For example: ''uuquchiing'' 'blue fox,' ''qiiqix̂'' 'storm-petrel', and ''qaaqaan'' 'eat it!'
Consonants
The Aleut consonants featured below include single Roman letters, digraphs, and one trigraph. Phonemes in parenthesis are found only in Russian and English loanwords, the phoneme in italics is found only in Eastern Aleut, and the bold phonemes are a part of the standard Aleut inventory.
Aleut lacks labial stops and allows clusters of up to three consonants as well as consonant clusters in word initial position.
Noteworthy phonological features: lack of a and its voiceless nasals
Morphology
Language type
Polysynthetic language
Eskaleut is polysynthetic, which features a process in which a single word is able to contain multiple post-bases or morphemes. The Eskaleut languages are exclusively suffixing (with the exception of one prefix in Inuktitut that appears in demonstratives). Suffixes are able to combine and ultimately create an unlimited number of words. Some of the morphemes that are able to attach contain features such as carrying nominal subjects and objects, adverbial information, direct objects, and spatial noun phrases. Polysynthetic languages are said to be a form of extreme agglutination
In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes, each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglutinative la ...
, which allows single words to carry the same information that another language expresses in whole clauses. For example, in central Alaskan Yupik, one can say:
As a polysynthetic language, Eskaleut is concerned with what "each morpheme means, which categories it can attach to, whether there is any category change, etc. and what type of morphophonological effect occurs to the left as it attaches to the stem".[
]
Morphosyntactic alignment
''Ergative–absolutive language:''
Eskaleut follows the basic word order of subject–object–verb (SOV).
Eskimoan is an ergative–absolutive language. This means subjects of intransitive verbs and objects of transitive verbs are marked with the absolutive case, while subjects of transitive verbs are marked with the ergative case.
Aleut is not an ergative–absolutive language. It does not matter if the verb is transitive or intransitive—subjects and objects are not marked differently.
If a transitive object or an object of possession is openly communicated, ergative case marking will not be expressed. If a transitive object or object of possession is not openly communicated, then ergative case marking will be expressed.
Example of case marking in Aleut:
Syntax
The syntax of Eskaleut is concerned with the functional use of its morphological structure. The two language branches, although part of the same family, have separated and detached themselves in relation to grammatical similarities. Bergsland states that Aleut, which was once a language more similar to Proto-Eskimoan than the current Eskimoan languages themselves, has distanced itself from the ancient language.
The case inflections, "relative *-m, instrumental *-mEk/meN, and locative *-mi have undergone phonological merger and led to a completely different explanation of ergative morphology in Proto-Eskimoan.
In order to further explain the profound changes that have occurred in Aleutian syntax, Bergsland proposed the Domino Effect, which is ultimately the chronological order of Aleut’s unique features. Below is a step by step list of the 'domino effect':
''The Domino Effect:''
# The phonological reduction of final syllables and the ensuing syncretism of locative, relative, and instrumental case markers;
# The collapse of the ergative system and of the distinction between relative and locative case in postpositional constructions;
# The development of the unusual Aleut anaphoric reference system from the debris of this collapse, going hand in hand with a strict fixation of SOV word order;
# The simple 3rd person forms when the original morphemes began to refer to any anaphoric (non-overt) referent, and;
# The spread of such a referent's own number (including that of a possessor of some overt argument) to the final verb of the (complex) sentence, overriding agreement with the subject.
Vocabulary comparison
The following is a comparison of cognate
In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words in different languages that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymological ancestor in a common parent language. Because language change can have radical e ...
s among the basic vocabulary across the Eskaleut language family (about 122 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.
Cognates of the Eskimoan languages can be found in Michael Fortescue et al., 2010.
Cognates of the Aleut language can be found in Knut Bergsland, 1997.
; Persons
; Pronouns
There are two types of pronouns: independent pronouns and pronominal pronouns.
;; Pronouns in relation to nouns
In Eskaleut languages, singular, dual
Dual or Duals may refer to:
Paired/two things
* Dual (mathematics), a notion of paired concepts that mirror one another
** Dual (category theory), a formalization of mathematical duality
*** see more cases in :Duality theories
* Dual (grammatical ...
, and plural nouns are marked by inflectional suffixes, and if they are possessed, the number marker is followed by pronominal suffixes that specify the (human) possessor. There are no genders, and this can be seen in the four persons: ''my, your, his/her, his/her own''.
"His/her own" specifies ownership, in contrast with "his/her", which does not. E.g., ''his'' house vs. ''his own'' house. (See Possessive determiner § Semantics.)
;; Pronouns in relation to verbs
Aleut uses independent pronouns, instead of pronominal marking on verbs. On the other hand, Eskimoan languages have four persons and three numbers marked by pronominal suffixes.
; Independent pronouns
; Pronominal suffixes
; Interrogative words
; Body parts
; Animals
; Other nouns
; Adjectives
;
See also
* Proto-Eskimoan language
* Proto-Eskaleut language
* Eskimology
*Uralo-Siberian
Uralo-Siberian is a hypothetical language family consisting of Uralic, Yukaghir, Eskaleut, possibly Nivkh, and formerly Chukotko-Kamchatkan. It was proposed in 1998 by Michael Fortescue, an expert in Eskaleut and Chukotko-Kamchatkan, in his book ...
* Eskimo-Uralic
Notes
Bibliography
* Bergsland, Knut (1997). ''Aleut Grammar: Unangam Tunuganaan Achixaasix̂''. United States of America: Alaska Native Language Center.
* Bernet, John W. 1974. ''An Anthology of Aleut, Eskimo, and Indian Literature of Alaska in English Translation.'' Fairbanks, Alaska.
* Booij, Geert; Lehmann, Christian; Mugdan, Joachim; Skopeteas, Stavros (2004). ''Morphologie / Morphology''. Walter de Gruyter.
* Conference on Eskimo Linguistics, and Eric P. Hamp. 1976. ''Papers on Eskimo and Aleut Linguistics.'' Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.
* Crowley, Terry; Bowern, Claire (2010). ''An Introduction to Historical Linguistics''. New York: Oxford University Press.
* 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.
* 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.
* Fortescue, Michael. 1998. ''Language Relations across Bering Strait: Reappraising the Archaeological and Linguistic Evidence.'' London and New York: Cassell.
* 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.
* Gutman, Alejandro; Avanzati, Beatriz (2013). "Eskimo–Aleut Languages"
* Holst, Jan Henrik 2005. ''Einführung in die eskimo-aleutischen Sprachen.'' Hamburg: Buske.
*
* Marsh, Gordon H. 1956. ''The Linguistic Divisions of the Eskimo–Aleut Stock.''
* Miyaoka, Osahito (2012). ''A grammar of Central Alaskan Yupik (cay)''. Mouton Grammar Library.
* 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.
External links
Alaska Native Language Center
{{DEFAULTSORT:Eskaleut Languages
Agglutinative languages
Language families
Aleut culture
Indigenous languages of Alaska
Languages of Russia