The Eskaleut language family is divided into two branches: Eskimoan and Aleut. The Aleut branch consists of a single language, Aleut, spoken in the Aleutian Islands and the Pribilof Islands. Aleut is divided into several dialects. 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, are divided into several varieties. Neighbouring varieties are quite similar, although those at the farthest distances from the centre in the Diomede Islands and East Greenland are quite divergent.[3]
The proper place of one language, Sirenik, within the Eskimoan family has not been settled. While some linguists list it as a branch of Yupik,[4] others list it as a separate branch of the Eskimoan family, alongside the Yupik and Inuit languages.[5]
History
The Alaska Native Language Center 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.[3][6][7] The Eskimoan language family split into the Yupik and Inuit branches around 1,000 years ago.[6]
Alexander Vovin (2015)[8] notes that northern Tungusic languages, which are spoken in eastern Siberia 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. Vovin (2015) considers the homeland (Urheimat) of Proto-Eskaleut to be in Siberia rather than in Alaska.
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, such as Chukotko-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 proposal to date is Michael Fortescue's Uralo–Siberian hypothesis, published in 1998 which links Eskaleut languages to Yukaghir and the Uralic languages.
More recently Joseph Greenberg (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.[9] 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.[9] 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, the comparative method bases its validity on highly regular changes, not occasional semantic and phonological similarities, which is what the Eurasiatic hypothesis provides.
Every word must have only one root (free morpheme) always at the beginning.[11] Eskaleut languages have a relatively small number of roots: in the case of Central Alaskan Yup'ik, around two thousand.[12] Following the root are 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 and Inuktitut pi) is used.
The basic word schema is as follows: root-(affixes)-inflection-(enclitic). Below is an example from Central Siberian Yupik.[13]
angyagh-(gh)lla-ng(e)-yug-tuq-lu
boat-big-acquire-want.to-IND.3S-also
angyagh-(gh)lla-ng(e)-yug-tuq-lu
boat-big-acquire-want.to-IND.3S-also
‘also, he wants to acquire a big boat’
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.[13]
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 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 clitics 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) and far-eastern Siberia (Chukotko-Kamchatkan). There are usually only three vowels—/a/, /i/, /u/—though some Yup'ik dialects also have /ə/. All Eskaleut languages lack both ejectives and aspirates, in which they resemble the Siberian languages more than the North American ones. Eskaleut languages possess voicelessplosives 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). There are usually contrasting voiced and voiceless fricatives at the same positions, and in the Eskimoan subfamily a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative is also present. A rare feature of many dialects of Yup'ik and Aleut is contrasting voiceless nasals.
Phonology
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The following vowels and consonants were taken from Knut Bergsland, (1997).[15]
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!'
The Aleut consonants featured below include single Roman letters, digraphs, and one trigraph. Phonemes in parentheses 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: voiceless nasals and lack of a /p/.
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.[16] Polysynthetic languages are said to be a form of extreme agglutination, 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:
I asked him to make a big kayak. (but actually he has not made it yet)
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".[13]
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.
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[18] 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 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 cognates 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.[20]
Cognates of the Aleut language can be found in Knut Bergsland, 1997.[15]
There are two types of pronouns: independent pronouns and pronominal pronouns.
Pronouns in relation to nouns
In Eskaleut languages, singular, dual, 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.[21][22]
"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.
^"Due to the pejorative nature of the term 'Eskimo' in some locales, and the increasing preference for 'Unangan' as opposed to 'Aleut' in Alaska, this family may be alternately referred to as Inuit–Yupik–Unangan. The hyphenated term gives some sense of the variety of languages subsumed under this family label." Holton, Gary. 2012. Overview of Comparative Inuit–Yupik–Unangan. Retrieved 2013-11-18.
^Stern, Pamela (2009). The A to Z of the Inuit. Lanham: Scarecrow Press. pp. xxiii. ISBN978-0-8108-6822-9.
^Vovin, Alexander. 2015. Eskimo Loanwords in Northern Tungusic. Iran and the Caucasus 19 (2015), 87–95. Leiden: Brill.
^ abGeorg, Stefan; Vovin, Alexander (2005). "Review of Indo-European and its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic language family. Volume 2: Lexicon". Diachronica. 22: 184–191. doi:10.1075/dia.22.1.09geo.
^Jan Henrik Holst, Einführung in die eskimo-aleutischen Sprachen. Buske Verlag
^Mattissen, Johanna. Dependent–Head Synthesis in Nivkh: A Contribution to a Typology of Polysynthesis p. 282. ISBN90-272-2965-1
^Garry, Jane and Rubino, Carl R. Galvez, Facts about the World's Languages: An Encyclopedia of the World's Major Languages pp. 842–844. ISBN0-8242-0970-2
^Fortescue, Michael; Jacobson, Steven; Kaplan, Lawrence (2010). Comparative Eskimo Dictionary with Aleut Cognates. United States of America: Alaska Native Language Center.
^ abcBergsland, Knut (1997). Aleut Grammar: Unangam Tunuganaan Achixaasix̂. United States of America: Alaska Native Language Center.
^Crowley, Terry; Bowern, Claire (2010). An Introduction to Historical Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press.
^Miyaoka, Osahito (2012). A grammar of Central Alaskan Yupik (cay). Mouton Grammar Library.
^Fortescue, Michael (1998). Language Relations Across Bering Strait: Reappraising the Archaeological and Linguistic Evidence. London: Bookcraft Ltd.
^Fortescue, Michael. Language Relations Across Bering Strait: Reappraising the Archaeological and Linguistic Evidence. London: Bookcraft Ltd.
^Fortescue, Michael; Jacobson, Steven; Kaplan, Lawrence (2010). Comparative Eskimo Dictionary with Aleut Cognates. Fairbanks: Alaska Native Language Center.
^Booij, Geert; Lehmann, Christian; Mugdan, Joachim; Skopeteas, Stavros (2004). Morphologie / Morphology. Walter de Gruyter.
Bernet, John W. (1974). An Anthology of Aleut, Eskimo, and Indian Literature of Alaska in English Translation. Fairbanks: University of Alaska.
Booij, Geert; Lehmann, Christian; Mugdan, Joachim; Skopeteas, Stavros, eds. (2004). Morphologie / Morphology. Vol. 2. Walter de Gruyter. doi:10.1515/9783110172782.2. ISBN978-3-11-019427-2.
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". American Anthropologist. 67 (5): 1231–1257. doi:10.1525/aa.1965.67.5.02a00080. JSTOR668365.
Fortescue, Michael D. (1984). Some Problems Concerning the Correlation and Reconstruction of Eskimo and Aleut Mood Markers. København: Institut for Eskimologi, Københavns Universitet. ISBN87-87874-10-5.
Fortescue, Michael (1998). Language Relations across Bering Strait: Reappraising the Archaeological and Linguistic Evidence. London: Cassell. ISBN978-0-304-70330-2.
Greenberg, Joseph H. (2000). Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family. Vol. 1: Grammar. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Greenberg, Joseph H. (2002). Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family. Vol. 2: Lexicon. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Swift, Mary D. (2004). Time in Child Inuktitut: A Developmental Study of an Eskimo–Aleut Language. Studies on Language Acquisition. Vol. 24. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN3-11-018120-7.
Further reading
Compton, Richard (2024). "Inuit-Yupik-Unangan: An overview of the language family". In Carmen Dagostino; Marianne Mithun; Keren Rice (eds.). The Languages and Linguistics of Indigenous North America: A Comprehensive Guide. Vol. 2. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 843–874. doi:10.1515/9783110712742-038. ISBN978-3-11-071274-2.
