Aleut language
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{{language |name=Aleut |states=Alaska (Aleutian, Pribilof, and Commander Islands) |speakers=Western-Central dialects: 60–80 speakers Eastern dialects: 400 speakers |familycolor=Eskimo-Aleut |fam2=Aleut group |iso2=ale|iso3=ale}}
Aleut is a language of the Eskimo-Aleut language phylum. It is the tongue of the Aleut people living in the Aleutian, Pribilof, and Commander Islands. In 1995 there were 305 speakers of Aleut.
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Dialects
Aleut is alone with the Eskimo languages (Yupik and Inuit) in the Eskimo-Aleut group. The two main dialect groupings are Eastern Aleut and Atkan. Within the Eastern group are the dialects of Unalaska, Belkofski, Akutan, the Pribilof Islands, Kashega and Nikolski. Within the Atkan grouping are the dialects of Attu, Bering Island and Copper Island (or Mednyy).
Grammar
Aleut (Unagan tunuu), linked to the parent linguistic group Eskimo-Aleut, has an opaque and somewhat confusing morphology (linguistics). Previously though to be an ergative language, current research being done at the University of Alaska,Fairbanks Alaska has shown that, while maintaining a relationship with its Eskimo/Inutktitut cousins, Aleut has broken off from the ergativity of the parent Esk-Aleut language group. Instead, the polysynthetic style of Aleut shows influence from local Arctic/Siberian languages. (see Berge et al, 2005)
The case system of Aleut is greatly simplified from that of the Eskimo languages. Most nouns take only two cases: a default absolutive case for agents, patients, and predicates; and a relative case that relates its bearer to another noun in the clause, as in possessive, temporal, and contrastive constructions. The two cases are identical in most combinations of person and number. Local cases such as locative and ablative appear only on a closed class of positional nouns.
The years of trading between Rusian and Alaskan native have left their linguist mark on Unagan tunuu. For instance, the word: 'Qaĝaasaachxuzakuq' is definted as 'I thank you very much', and it shows marked polysynthesism when broken down morpheme-by-morpheme:
qaĝaasa+chxuza+ku+q
(to thank)+(to a great extent)+(present mood)+(1st person pronoun)
Languages related to Unagan tunuu that are truly ergative lack a feature quite prominent in the language of the Aleuts. The ability to change nouns into verbs is a common process in Unagan tunuu (known as the 'ti-' system). This verb marker, -ti-, eluded researchers from Fairbanks for years! This morphological feature is just recently being uncovered via recent archive digitations done by Aric Bills from the dialect spoken on Atka Island. For example, the Unagnan noune base for weather is 'sla-'. We find the word 'slachxizax' defined as 'nice weather'. From this base 'sla-', we can construct the phrase 'slatiqalikuxt' meaning 'it is beginning to become stormy (outside)'. Broken down morpheme-by-morpheme, we find:
sla-ti-qali-ku-xt
(weather)+(NOUN-BECOMES-VERB)+(inceptive mood)+(present mood)+(3rd person)
This feature is quite confusing, as sometimes, the -ti- is not used in sentence construction. Future graduate work is being conducted on Aleut via Anna Berge at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks Alaska. Her email is: ffamb@uaf.edu
Research history
The first contact of people from the Eastern Hemisphere with the Aleut language occurred in 1741, as Vitus Bering's expedition picked up place names and the names of the Aleut people they met. The first recording of the Aleut language in lexicon form appeared in a word list of the Unalaskan dialect compiled by Captain James King on Cook's voyage in 1778. At that time the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg became interested in the Aleut language upon hearing of Russian expeditions for trading.
In Catherine the Great's project to compile a giant comparative dictionary on all the languages spoken in what was the spread of the Russian empire at that time, she hired Peter Simon Pallas to conduct the fieldwork that would collect linguistic information on Aleut. During an expedition from 1791 to 1792, Carl Heinrich Merck and Michael Rohbeck collected several word lists and conducted a census of the male population that included prebaptismal Aleut names. Explorer Yuriy Feodorovich Lisyansky compiled several word lists. in 1804 and 1805, the czar's plenipotentiary, Nikolai Petrovich Rezanov collected some more. Johann Christoph Adelung and Johann Severin Vater published their Mithridates oder allgemeine Sprachkunde 1806-1817, which included Aleut among the languages it catalogued, similar to Catherine the Great's dictionary project.
It wasn't until 1819 that the first professional linguist, the Dane Rasmus Rask, studied Aleut. He collected words and paradigms from two speakers of Eastern Aleut dialects living in St. Petersburg. In 1824 came the man who would revolutionize Aleut as a literary language. Ioann Veniaminov, a Russian Orthodox priest who would later become a saint, arrived at Unalaska studying Unalaskan Aleut. He created an orthography for this language (using the Cyrillic alphabet; the Roman alphabet would come later), translated the Gospel according to St. Matthew and several other religious works into Aleut, and published a grammar of Eastern Aleut in 1846. The religious works were translated with the help of Veniaminov's friends Ivan Pan'kov (chief of Tigalda) and Iakov Netsvetov (the priest of Atka), both of whom were native Aleut speakers. Netsvetov also wrote a dictionary of Atkan Aleut. After Veniaminov's works were published, several religious figures took interest in studying and recording Aleut, which would help these Russian Orthodox clerics in their missionary work.
The first Frenchman to record Aleut was Alphonse Pinart, in 1871, shortly after the United States purchase of Alaska. Shortly after, in 1878, American Lucien M. Turner began work on collecting words for a word list. Benedykt Dybowski, a Pole, began taking word lists from the dialects the Commander Islands in 1881, while Nikolai Vasilyevich Slyunin, a Russian doctor, did the same in 1892.
From 1909 to 1910, the ethnologist Waldemar Jochelson traveled to the Aleut communities of Unalaska, Atka, Attu and Nikolski. He spent nineteen months there doing fieldwork. Jochelson collected his ethnographic work with the help of two Unalaskan speakers, Aleksey Yachmenev and Leontiy Sivstov. He recorded many Aleut stories, folklore and myth, and had many of them not only written down but also recorded in audio. Jochelson discovered much vocabulary and grammar when he was there, adding to the scientific knowledge of the Aleut language.
In the 1930s, two native Aleuts wrote down works that are considered breakthroughs in the use of Aleut as a literary language. Afinogen K. Ermeloff wrote down a literary account of a shipwreck in his native language, while Ardelion G. Ermeloff kept a diary in Aleut during the decade. At the same time, linguist Melville Jacobs picked up several new texts from Sergey Golley, an Atkan speaker who was hospitalized at the time.
John P. Harrington furthered research into the Pribilof Island dialect on St. Paul Island in 1941, collecting some new vocabulary along the way. In 1944, the United States Department of the Interior published The Aleut Language as part of the war effort, allowing World War II soldiers to understand the language of the Aleuts. This English language project was based on Veniaminov's work. Knut Bergsland published a complete Aleut dictionary in 1994.
Current research has been revived by a group of two graduate students working under Anna Berge at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks,Alaska. In 2006, the group published the first true grammar on Aleut (Niiĝuĝis Mataliin Tunuxtazangis: A Conversational Grammar On How The Atkans Talk). Work is being done for an Eastern Aleut Grammar, and there is current graduate research into Aleut syncopy and phonology.
External links
- University of Alaska Fairbanks Linguistics Dept
- Aleut Language (In Russian)
- Alaska Indian Dictionary, by Charles A. Lee
Bibliography
- {{cite book
| last = Berge | first = Anna | authorlink = | coauthors = | year = 2006 | title = Niiĝuĝis Mataliin Tunuxtazangis: How the Atkans Talk (A Conversational Grammar) | publisher = Alaska Native Language Center, University of Alaska | location = Fairbanks, AK | id = ISBN 6-416-22491-11
}}
- {{cite book
| last = Bergsland | first = Knut | authorlink = | coauthors = | year = 1994 | title = Aleut Dictionary = Unangam Tunudgusii: an unabridged lexicon of the Aleutian, Pribilof, and Commander Islands Aleut language | publisher = Alaska Native Language Center, University of Alaska | location = Fairbanks, AK | id = ISBN 1-555-00047-9
}}
- {{cite book
| last = Bergsland | first = Knut | authorlink = | coauthors = | year = 1997 | title = Aleut Grammar = Unangam Tunuganaan Achixaasix | publisher = Alaska Native Language Center, University of Alaska | location = Fairbanks, AK | id = ISBN 1-55500-064-9
}}
[[Category:{{{1|}}} articles with sections needing expansion]]an:Luenga aleutiana
de:Aleutisch gl:Lingua aleutiana ru:Алеутский язык sk:Aleutčina fi:Aleutin kieli zh:阿留申语