Eskimo-Aleut Research Articles

Remarks on a west greenlandic verbal paradigm

Abstract Eskimo languages, as is well known, are ergative-absolutive .with respect to the case marking of the nominal terms of the clause: there is a special morphological case that marks the agent of a transitive clause, while the object of the transitive and the subject of an intransitive are in a different case. The case of the transitive agent is traditionally called the relative in Greenlandic studies (following Kleinschmidt 1968 (1851)), but I will refer to it as the ergative, since that is the term that is now more generally used in typological studies. The case of the transitive object and intransitive subject is the absolutive.

A Japanese and Ainu linguistic feast

It is a shame that English does not have a dual number: if it did, the pressure on Masayoshi Shibatani to make this volume have a title that shared the plural rather than dual number of the titles of the other Cambridge Language Surveys might have been enough to cause him to include in it not just Japanese and the nearly extinct Ainu language, but also Ryiikyfian.' He excludes Ryukyuian on the grounds that 'the genetic relationship between Japanese and Ryuikyuian has been proven and the transparency of the relationship is such that the latter is now considered as a dialect (group) of Japanese by most scholars', a rationale that I find unconvincing, since the differences between Ryiikyuian and mainland Japanese are greater than those between Spanish and Portuguese, and a sketch of Ryuikyuian more substantial than the six pages devoted to it in the chapter on dialects would fill a major gap in the western-language literature on Japan, particularly if it were done by a scholar as perceptive and accomplished as Shibatani. However, I will not press this complaint, since I realize that a decision to include Ryuikyulan would have substantially delayed the completion of this most welcome volume and might have forced the author to shorten the parts on Ainu and Japanese, both of which contain little material that I regard as expendable. The chapters on Ainu (I-86) give a lucid portrait of a language whose syntax and morphology are in many respects quite exotic. Ainu has incorporation of the sort found in Eskimo languages (except that not only nouns but also adverbs can be incorporated into the verb) and also an 'applicative' construction reminiscent of the Bantu languages, and the interactions between the two are the subject of one of the more fascinating sections of the Ainu part of this volume. It is possible both to incorporate an underlying oblique noun that has been made into a direct object by the applicative construction, and to form an applicative of a verb with incorporated object, turning an oblique NP into a new direct object:

Eskimo word order variation and its contact-induced perturbation

Eskimo languages are commonly characterized as displaying rather ‘free’ word order as compared to the major western European languages. Nevertheless, there is in West Greenlandic at least a clearly dominant, pragmatically neutral ordering pattern. Deviation from this – when possible at all – results in specifiable contextual marking (the factors involved will be discussed and illustrated in section 2). In fact, the degree of ‘freedom’ involved may vary considerably from dialect to dialect (and from language to language), also through time and according to register/medium. Specifically I shall be claiming thatnoEskimo dialect is of the purely pragmatically based word order type (lacking a syntactic ‘basic order’) which Mithun claims is typical for polysynthetic languages with inflected verbs that can stand as independent sentences (Mithun, 1987: 323). Unlike the type of language that Mithun describes, which includes (Iroquoian) Cayuga and (‘Penutian’) Coos, for example, I shall argue that West Greenlandic (WG), a highly polysynthetic language, behaves more like Slavic languages in this respect, though the ‘neutral’ pattern there is of course SVO rather than SOV. Much as described for Czech and Russian by the Prague School functionalists, word order in WG seems to reflect the common ‘functional sentence perspective’ whereby – ignoring postposed ‘afterthought/clarificatory’ material – early position in the sentence is associated with given material of low communicative dynamism, whereas later position is associated with new or important material of high communicative dynamism (see Firbas, 1974). This is the reverse of the situation described by Mithun.

Language and Educational Policy in the North: Status and Prospectus Report on the Eskimo-Aleut Languages from an International Symposium

Language and Educational Policy in the North: Status and Prospectus Report on the Eskimo-Aleut Languages from an International Symposium

The development of morphophonemic complexity in Eskimo languages

Abstract As I have recently argued (Fortescue, forthcoming 1992), the Eskimo-Aleut languages appear to have developed from an earlier, more agglutinative stage towards full-blown polysynthesis hand in hand with increasing mor-phophonemic complexity, the latter having today reached - especially in Alaskan Yupik - a daunting degree of complexity. I discuss there in “teleological” terms why this perhaps unexpected linkage might have come about without generalization of individual allomorphs having continually counteracted the complications resulting from normal phonological drift. The purpose of the present article is to sketch the route whereby this state of affairs was reached. The reconstruction is based upon the now virtually complete first version of the Comparative Eskimo Dictionary (Fortescue et al., forthcoming) and the recent comparative Eskimo-Aleut work by Knut Bergsland (especially Bergsland 1986 and 1989).

Differences and similarities in the prosodic systems of Western and Eastern Eskimo

Abstract Western Eskimo makes great use of an intensive stress, totally lacking in Eastern Eskimo. While Eastern Eskimo has a tidy system of syllable weight which produces rhythm, words in Western Eskimo can sound prosodically very different triggered entirely by the shape of the initial syllable. And yet, these differences exist across a spectrum. All Eskimo languages recognize a syllable with a long vowel or diphthong as heavy, but the ability of the closed syllable to show prominence differs, hypothetically, due to particular associated processes in each variety of Eskimo.

Greenlandic: political development of an Inuit language

Greenlandic: political development of an Inuit language

A Reexamination of Eskimo‐Aleut Prehistory

Linguistic, biological, and archeological data are reconciled to suggest the following: Northeast Asian peoples, Eskimo‐Aleuts, and most Northwest Coast Indians are related through post‐Pleistocene ancestors, some of whom were present in the New World before 8000 B.C. Speakers of ancestral Eskimo‐Aleut languages probably began to appear in the New World only around 2500 B. C. Entering as two waves that were separated in time, they divided themselves between the present zones of Aleut and Eskimo speech, within each of which later internal population movements created the cultural and linguistic uniformity known historically.

The Absolutive Configuration in English

T HE terms ERGATIVE and ABSOLUTIVE have been familiar to theoretical linguists for many years; they have been used to describe the grammatical case configuration found in languages as diverse as Basque, Hurrian, Sumerian, Tibetan, Eskimo, and numerous indigenous languages in the Caucasus, Siberia, Australia, the South Pacific, and North and South America. (For a review of the terminology and the phenomenon itself see respectively Seely 1977 and Dixon 1979.) As foreign as these terms and languages might be, the ergative-absolutive can explain a number of phenomena in English. In contrast to the nominative-objective system in English, the so-called ERGATIVE languages have an ergative-absolutive configuration. The two systems are contrasted accordingly:

The Stress Conspiracy and Stress-Repelling Bases in the Central Yup'ik and Siberian Yupik Eskimo Languages

0. Introduction. There are two major phonological differences between the Yupik Eskimo languages and Inupiaq Eskimo.' One is the presence in Yupik of a fourth vowel, schwa, which is not found in Inupiaq (except marginally in Seward Peninsula Inupiaq). The other difference is that the Yupik languages all have ryhthmic systems in which alternating syllables are stressed subject to various modifications depending on the particular Yupik language and dialect within that language. Inupiaq has no such rhythmic stress system (although Seward Peninsula Inupiaq has a rhythmic process of consonant weakening paralleling the rhythmic stress system in neighboring Yupik areas).2 Central Yup'ik rhythmic stress was first touched on by Hinz (1944:5) and Swadesh 1955:34), discussed more by Bergsland (1967:211-12), and described in detail by Miyaoka (1971); it is further described by Reed et al. (1977). Siberian Yupik rhythmic stress is described by Krauss (1975). Alutiiq rhythmic stress has been extensively researched by Leer (ms.). Central Yup'ik rhythmic stress will be elaborated on by Miyaoka (forthcoming), and the three systems will be discussed together with the Siberian Yupik variants and Seward Peninsula Inupiaq in Krauss (forthcoming). In this article I discuss one very important aspect of the Yupik stress systems which results in morphologically conditioned modification of the

Whitman and the Crowd

Sciences of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Academy of Sciences of the USSR met in Moscow to arrange continued cooperation between scholars of the two countries. The protocol then signed includes the field of literature and language and identifies the following areasfor attention: of the history of American and Russian literatures and their mutual relations; the work of William Faulkner, Walt Whitman; literature and national consciousness; semiotics in literature and linguistics; exchange of scholarly materials regarding Eskimo languages. Accordingly, two Soviet scholars participated in the Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture of the University of Mississippi in the summer of 1982. And, as the second step in this infant endeavor, four Americans participated in the Walt Whitman Conference held at the A. M. Gorky Institute of World Literature in Moscow in October 1982. I was one of the four. The building occupied by the Gorky Institute was formerly a nobleman's palace and figures in War and Peace. It retains a sense of its former days, although one who comes into the foyer and faces the shallow slope of the broad stairs for the first time is primarily aware of having entered an institution. The stately details are there, but the initial glance reveals a concierge's desk, metal coatracks, and the familiar, tired wood of nineteenth-century educational edifices the world round. The conference took place in a large, second-floor room, once, I guessed, a ballroom. A long rectangular table extended across one end of the room, and during the conference the Americans and Soviets satfacing one another over it. The rest of the room was filled with chairs arranged in rows, but if the

A comparative manual of affixes for the Inuit dialects of Greenland, Canada, and Alaska

The information gathered in the present work is aimed at use both by students of the Eskimo languages and by Inuit speakers wishing to comprehend and communicate more directly with speakers of dialects other than their own. Productive affixes for fourteen dialect areas from East Greenland to North Alaska are presented for the first time in one place and in common orthographical form. These morphological elements, often difficult to isolate and subject to continual innovation within individual dialects, represent one of the most problematic areas for mutual comprehension.Particular emphasis has been placed on divergences from Central West Greenlandic in three other cardinal dialects, namely Tarramiut for the eastern Canadian Arctic, Copper for the western Canadian Arctic (where the author carried out field work in the summer of 1980), and North Slope Iriupiaq for Alaska. For each of these dialects comprehensive lists containing morphophonemic information and English glosses are arranged in parallel columns according to twenty-six easily comparable semantic groups. Divergences from the main lists for the remaining ten dialects are presented in alphabetical lists. The introductory sections describe the phonological correspondences between the dialects (plus important grammatical differences) and explain how the book can be used in practical terms. To this end a translation into West Greenlandic is included. Linguistic isogloss maps and examples of usage of affixes with no direct equivalent in West Greenlandic are supplied, as is a short sample text for each dialect treated (with English glosses). Further, there is included an overview of the various orthographic systems to be encountered for material in Canada and Alaska, an essay on successive affix ordering, and, for the sake of comparison, a similarly organized list of affixes for Central Alaskan Yupik.

Matthew A. Henson (1866-1955)

America's only famous Negro polar explorer was the co-author to the major geographical quest of the century - the search for the North Pole. ... At the age of 12 he escaped a loveless home - he never knew his mother, who died when he was two - and found his way to Baltimore and the benign Captain Childs, master of the ship Katie Hines. Befriending the frail, hungry, frightened boy, Capt. Childs bent the rules in signing Matt on as cabin boy; he recorded Henson's age as 15 rather than the illegal age of 12. In the five years that Matt sailed on the Katie Hines, Childs taught the young Negro reading, writing, mathematics, navigation, and general proficiency at the sailor's varied trade. These skills would ultimately prove indispensable in Henson's travels with Robert Peary. ... After proving his value to Peary during a year in the Nicaraguan jungle, Henson worked alongside him in a Philadelphia shipyard until Peary took another leave of absence to return to Greenland in 1891. Henson joined the party. His ocher-coloured skin, far from an asset in the racist U.S., helped him in the Arctic. To the Eskimo, Henson was not a white man but a prodigal brother who had forgotten his native tongue and the ways of survival in the harsh northern environment. In successive expeditions, his rapidly growing skills in speaking the Eskimo language, driving dogsleds, hunting, and trading for dogs and furs proved invaluable. In a short time Miy Paluk, as the Eskimos called him, was to become hero and legend. He was the most important member of the seven expeditions spread over a period of 18 years. One expedition alone lasted four years, during which Matt's courage, sacrifice and physical strength saved Peary's life and the lives of others more than once. ... In 1898 the Navy granted Peary a four-year leave of absence to search for the Pole once more. Peary planned to approach his goal this time via the frozen arctic sea. ... Henson selected the field teams, choosing the best and strongest Eskimo hunters, skilled sledge builders and dog handlers. The Eskimos were loyal to Matt, who now spoke their language fluently. ... On the next-to-last march of the successful expedition, Henson knew at the outset how far the last day's journey would be, and his experience told him how many hours it would take to travel that distance. The sun was his clock. Sighting the position of the sun as he started that final advance on 6 April 1909, Matt knew where it would be when he had reached the Pole. Thus it was that he arrived 45 minutes before Peary, who, after taking an instrument sighting, said This is it, the Pole at last. ... Back in the States, Matt drifted into semi-obscurity. In 1913, President Taft appointed him to a Civil Service job as a messenger boy at the New York Customs House. Over the ensuing years, as many as six bills were introduced in Congress to retire Matt with honour and a pension, but all failed. ...

Semantics of the Inuktitut (Eskimo) Spatial Deictics

Previous articleNext article No AccessSemantics of the Inuktitut (Eskimo) Spatial DeicticsJ. Peter DennyJ. Peter Denny Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by International Journal of American Linguistics Volume 48, Number 4Oct., 1982 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/465747 Views: 27Total views on this site Citations: 14Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1982 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Marcin Kilarski A History of the Study of the Indigenous Languages of North America, 129 (Nov 2021).https://doi.org/10.1075/sihols.129David Peeters, Emiel Krahmer, Alfons Maes A conceptual framework for the study of demonstrative reference, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 28, no.22 (Oct 2020): 409–433.https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-020-01822-8Nicholas Williams Deixis and Indexicals, (Nov 2020): 1–9.https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118786093.iela0092Matthias Urban Mountain linguistics, Language and Linguistics Compass 14, no.99 (Jul 2020).https://doi.org/10.1111/lnc3.12393Diana Forker Elevation as a Grammatical and Semantic Category of Demonstratives, Frontiers in Psychology 11 (Jul 2020).https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01712NICHOLAS EVANS, HENRIK BERGQVIST, LILA SAN ROQUE The grammar of engagement I: framework and initial exemplification, Language and Cognition 10, no.11 (Nov 2017): 110–140.https://doi.org/10.1017/langcog.2017.21Isaac N. Mwinlaaru, Foong Ha Yap A tale of two distal demonstratives in Dagaare: Reflections on directionality principles in grammaticalisation, Language Sciences 64 (Nov 2017): 130–151.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2017.07.005Gary Lupyan, Rick Dale Why Are There Different Languages? The Role of Adaptation in Linguistic Diversity, Trends in Cognitive Sciences 20, no.99 (Sep 2016): 649–660.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2016.07.005Gary Lupyan, Rick Dale Chapter 11. The role of adaptation in understanding linguistic diversity, (Jan 2015): 289–316.https://doi.org/10.1075/clscc.6.11lupHolger Diessel Demonstratives, Frames of Reference, and Semantic Universals of Space, Language and Linguistics Compass 8, no.33 (Mar 2014): 116–132.https://doi.org/10.1111/lnc3.12066Elena Mihas Spatial deixis in Ashéninka Perené (Arawak), LIAMES: Línguas Indígenas Americanas 12, no.11 (May 2012): 39–65.https://doi.org/10.20396/liames.v0i12.1482Paul Proulx Willem F.H. Adelaar, with the collaboration of Pieter Muysken. The languages of the Andes. In the series Cambridge Language Surveys. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2004. Pp. xxv + 718. US$150.00 (hardcover)., Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique 51, no.11 (Jun 2016): 81–82.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0008413100003923 References, ().https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110923964.547Loretta O'Connor, Pieter Muysken The Native Languages of South America, 4 (Mar 2014).https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107360105

Johann August Miertsching (1817-1877)

Miertsching learned the Eskimo language while serving at a Moravian mission at the Labrador station of Ogkak. He was directed by his order to serve as interpreter for the British Admiralty on an Arctic discovery ship searching for the Sir John Franklin expedition. Miertsching remained with Captain McClure for five years, in spite of having been assigned to the ship of Captain Collinson. Collinson, who went to Victoria Island, could probably have discovered Franklin's fate had he had an interpreter capable of questioning the natives of the Island. Such was not to be the case, however. Miertsching's portrayal of the dangers and suffering inflicted on the crew during this five year epic are dramatic and unrestrained. They are corroborated by the surgeon Armstrong who also served on this ship.

Inuit Theatre: Dramatizing the Myths

In March of this year, the touring Tuukaq Theatre of Greenland staged two performances of an Eskimo play called Inuit at Toronto Workshop Productions. After Toronto, the company moved on to Ottawa and Montreal then north to Fort Chimo, Baffin Island and Keewatin to perform for Canadian Eskimos. It was expected that the Greenlandic Inuit language of the play as well as its mythology would be easily shared by the Inuit people of other lands.

Alf Erling Porsild (1901-1977)

Alf Erling Posild was well known and highly respected among biologists in both America and Europe. His research was meticulous, and rested solidly upon a clear understanding of the materials he worked with and of the theoretical concepts within which he operated. Born in Copenhagen, he spent much of his childhood in Greenland and spoke the Greenlandic Eskimo language fluently. He and his brother both worked in Greenland and learning how little was known about the flora of Greenland and the North American Arctic, set about planning a botanical expedition of their own on Baffin Island when they were suddenly invited by the Canadian government to undertake a survey of reindeer grazing potentials in northern Alaska and the Northwest Territories. Erling spent the next ten years on the reindeer study; his brother remaining with him for approximately half of that time. The brothers first went to Alaska where they studied the reindeer herds and their grazing habits. They made extensive trips in Northern Alaska and through the vast expanse that lies between Great Bear Lake and the Arctic Ocean, and between the Mackenzie and Coppermine rivers. In the course of evaluating grazing possibilities, they also collected flora. Erling set up, manned, and arranged to supply, a reindeer research station on the east side of the Mackenzie Delta. The Eskimos, being a nomadic hunting people, showed no ability or interest in herding domesticated livestock, and Erling himself went to Lapland to engage suitable teachers for them. Erling returned to Ottawa in 1935 and started to turn out a stream of publications based on his studies of the boreal American flora. In the following year he was appointed Acting Chief Botanist at the National Museum of Canada in Ottawa. In 1946 he became Chief Botanist at the National Museum of Canada, a position which he held until he retired in 1967. He was awarded a great many honours, one being Fellow of the Arctic Institute of North America. His life was a saga of unique experiences and accomplishments. Erling Porsild died in Vienna on 13 November 1977. His older brother, Robert, died a few weeks later at his home in Whitehorse, Y.T. - on 30 December.

Eskimo: a language with a future?

Native languages in northern Canada are under great pressure. Even in the remote settlements of the central and eastern Arctic schooling is primarily in English; Eskimo or Indian languages tend to be regarded as special items of culture that warrant a half-day per week in a ‘cultural inclusion’ programme, along with story-telling and traditional crafts. Even this ‘inclusion’ is a result of recent reforms in curriculum development: in the 1950's and '60's there were schools where the use of native language was simply forbidden. This pressure from within the educational system is compounded by demands from employers in the industrial sector: functional English has sometimes been a condition of being hired, and native languages are generally given minimum usefulness or status at the work-place.

Alaskan Eskimo Dance in Cultural Context

This is a preliminary study of Alaskan Eskimo dance, the first findings of a three-year comprehensive survey of Alaskan Eskimo and Indian musical systems, funded by the National Science Foundation. The study is primarily synchronic; limited diachronic comparison may be made by consulting a recent study of nineteenth century Alaskan Eskimo dance (Johnston 1974a: 17–26). The populations investigated are the Inupiaq-speakers of Northwest Alaska, numbering about. 11,000, the Central Yupik-speakers of Southwest Alaska, numbering about 17,000, and the Siberian Yupik-speakers of St. Lawrence Island (Alaska), numbering about 1,000. A prime finding is that stylistic differences in Alaskan Eskimo dance coincide approximately with Alaskan Eskimo language (not dialect) areas, with the exception of St. Lawrence Island Eskimo dance, which follows Northwest Alaskan tendencies. The study presents both emic and etic information concerning dance elements, symbolism, functions, and accoutrements.Alaska Eskimo music has a relatively homogeneous style centering around use of the shallow frame-drum, unison singing, glottal pulsation, pentatonism (but with the additional use of microtones), asymmetrical rhythm, and sectionalized repetition. Intentionally rhythmic, patterned sequences of nonverbal body movement and gesture form an integral part of this musical system, for each complete dance routine (particularly of the sayuun category) is permanently associated with a specific melody, drum rhythm, and set of meaningful songwords. More significantly (from the anthropological point of view), each song-dance pairing is associated with and re-enacts either some recent, significant, true event in cultural history (such as a heroic or comic whaling incident), or a story involving a legendary figure or culture hero. Each song-dance pairing is associated with a specific Eskimo dancer, the latter usually being the creator. If the original creator of the dance is deceased, then the dance is associated with the present-day owner, usually the namesake, partner, or offspring of the creator.

Some characteristics of noun phrases in West Greenlandic

Abstract “Ergativity” 2 is one of the syntactic characteristics of the Eskimo languages. It is reflected in the surface representation of sentences by a difference in case marking between transitive and intransitive sentences, the former being related in form to possessive constructions.