Aleut language
Aleut is the language spoken by the Aleut living in the Aleutian Islands, Pribilof Islands, Commander Islands, and the Alaska Peninsula. Aleut is the sole language in the Aleut branch of the Eskimo–Aleut language family. The Aleut language consists of three dialects, including Eastern, Atkan, and Attuan.
Various sources estimate there are fewer than 100 to 150 remaining active Aleut speakers. Eastern and Atkan Aleut are classified as "critically and severely endangered" and have an rating of 7. The task of revitalizing Aleut has largely been left to local government and community organizations. The overwhelming majority of schools in the historically Aleut-speaking regions lack any language/culture courses in their curriculum, and those that do fail to produce fluent or even proficient speakers.
History
It is generally accepted that the Eskimo and Aleut peoples were part of a relatively late migration from Asia across the Bering Land Bridge, between 4,000 and 6,000 years ago. During this period the Proto-Eskimo-Aleut language was spoken, which broke up around 2000 BC. Differentiation of the two branches is thought to have happened in Alaska because of the linguistic diversity found in the Eskimo languages of Alaska relative to the entire geographic area where Eskimo languages are spoken. After the split between the two branches, their development is thought to have occurred in relative isolation.There is evidence of a culture associated with Aleut speakers on the Eastern Aleutian Islands as early as 4,000 years ago followed by a gradual expansion westward over the next 1,500 years to the Near Islands. There is also evidence of another westward expansion about 1,000 year ago, which may explain the lack of obvious diversification among the Aleut dialects, with Eastern Aleut features having spread westward. This second westward expansion is characterized as a period of cultural affinity with southeastern Alaska and the Pacific Northwest Coast, which may explain linguistic features that Aleut shares with neighboring non-Eskimo languages, such as rules of plural formation.
Due to colonization by Russian colonizers and traders in the 18th and 19th centuries, Aleut has a large portion of Russian loanwords. However, they do not affect the basic vocabulary and thus do not suggest undue influence on the language.
Dialects
Within the Eastern group are the dialects of the Alaskan Peninsula, Unalaska, Belkofski, Akutan, the Pribilof Islands, Kashega and Nikolski. The Pribilof dialect has more living speakers than any other dialect of Aleut.The Atkan grouping comprises the dialects of Atka and Bering Island.
Attuan was a distinct dialect showing influence from both Atkan and Eastern Aleut. Copper Island Aleut is a Russian-Attuan mixed language. Despite the name, today Copper Island Aleut is spoken only on Bering Island, as Copper Islanders were evacuated there in 1969.
All dialects show lexical influence from Russian; Copper Island Aleut has also adopted many Russian inflectional endings. The largest number of Russian loanwords can be seen in the Bering Aleut "take leave; tell goodbye", сулкуӽ "silk", на̄нкал "to nurse", на̄нкаӽ "a nurse", ра̄ниӽ "wound, injury", рисувал "to draw", саса̄тхиӽ "ambush, ambuscade", миса̄йал "to interfere", зӣткал "liquid, fluid" – from Russian прощаться, шёлк, нянчить, нянька, рана, рисовать, засада, мешать, жидкий ).
Orthography
The modern practical Aleut orthography was designed in 1972 for the Alaska school system's bilingual program:The historic Aleut alphabet found in both Alaska and Russia has the standard pre-1918 Russian orthography as its basis, although a number of Russian letters were used only in loanwords. In addition, the extended Cyrillic letters: г̑, ҟ, ҥ, ў, х̑ were used to represent distinctly Aleut sounds.
A total of 24+ letters were used to represent distinctly Aleut words, including 6 vowels and 16 consonants. The letter ҟ has been used in modern Aleut Cyrillic publications to denote the letter ԟ traditionally used to mark the voiceless uvular plosive.
The modern Aleut orthography :
| А а | А̄ а̄ | Б б | В в | Г г | Ӷ ӷ | Гў гў | Д д | Д̆ д̆ | Е е | Е̄ е̄ | Ё ё | Ж ж | З з | И и | Ӣ ӣ |
| Й й | ʼЙ ʼй | К к | Ӄ ӄ | Л л | ʼЛ ʼл | М м | ʼМ ʼм | Н н | ʼН ʼн | Ӈ ӈ | ʼӇ ʼӈ | О о | О̄ о̄ | П п | Р р |
| С с | Т т | У у | Ӯ ӯ | Ф ф | Х х | Ӽ ӽ | Ц ц | Ч ч | Ш ш | Щ щ | Ъ ъ | Ы ы | Ы̄ ы̄ | Ь ь | Э э |
| Э̄ э̄ | Ю ю | Ю̄ ю̄ | Я я | Я̄ я̄ | ʼ | ʼЎ ʼў | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |
Phonology
Consonants
The consonant phonemes of the various Aleut dialects are represented below. Each cell indicates the International Phonetic Alphabet representation of the phoneme; consonants existing only in loanwords are in parentheses. Note that some phonemes are unique to specific dialects of Aleut.The palato-alveolar affricate and uvular stop are pronounced with strong aspiration.
Attuan labial fricative is pronounced voiced or devoiced.
Voiceless approximants and devoiced nasals are preaspirated. The preaspiration of approximants causes very little friction and may pronounced more as a breathy voice. The preaspiration of devoiced nasals starts with a voiceless airstream through the nose and may end voiced before a vowel. The preaspiration feature is represented orthographically with an <h> preceding the given sound. For example, a devoiced, preaspirated labial nasal would be written <hm>.
Voiced approximants and nasals may be partly devoiced in contact with a voiceless consonant and at the end of a word.
The voiceless glottal approximant functions as an initial aspiration before a vowel. In Atkan and Attuan, the prevocalic aspiration contrasts with an audible but not written glottal stop initiation of the vowel. Compare halal and alal. This contrast has been lost in Eastern Aleut.
Modern Eastern Aleut has a much simpler consonant inventory because the voice contrasts among nasals, sibilants and approximants has been lost.
Consonants listed in the dental column have varied places of articulation. The stop, nasal, and lateral dentals commonly have a laminal articulation. The voiced dental fricative is pronounced interdentally.
The pronunciation of the sibilant varies from an alveolar articulation to a retracted articulation like a palato-alveolar consonant. There is no contrast between and ʃ in Aleut. Many Aleut speakers experience difficulties with this distinction while learning English.
Vowels
Aleut has a basic three-vowel system including the high front, low, and high back. Aleut vowels contrast with their long counterparts,, and.Notably, Aleut is pronounced slightly lower than in the vowel space.
The long vowel is pronounced retracted in the vowel space creating a significant distinction relative to the vowel length of. The two high vowels are pronounced with the same vowel quality regardless of vowel length.
In contact with a uvular, is lowered to, is backed to, and is lowered to. In contact with a coronal, is raised to or, and is fronted to.
The mid-vowels and occur only in family names like Nevzorof and very recently introduced Russian loanwords.
Syllable Structure
V ± ± CAn Aleut word may contain one to about a dozen syllables, all syllables with a vocalic nucleus. In Atkan and Attuan, there is a word-final CC due to apocopation. There also exist word initial CCC in loanwords.
Phonotactics
A word may begin or end in a vowel, both short and long, with few exceptions. Due to apocopation, short is not found in the final position. The same is true for short, except in some obsolete suffixes, such as -chi 'your' which is realized as -chin and -chix in modern Eastern and Atkan Aleut.Vowels within a word are separated by at least one consonant. All single consonants can appear in an intervocalic position, with the following exceptions:
- and do not occur in intervocalic positions
- does not occur in contact with
- does not occur in contact with
The word-initial CC can take many forms, with various restrictions on the distribution of consonants:
- a stop or, followed by a continuant other than or
- a coronal stop or, followed by a postlingual continuant.
- postlingual stop or, followed by
- or, followed by
In CC clusters of to voiced continuants, there is often a short transitional vowel. For example, qilĝix̂ 'umbilical cord' is pronounced similar to qiliĝi-n 'brain'.
Almost all possible combinations of coronal and postlingual consonants are attested.
The combination of two postlingual or two coronal consonants is rare, but attested, such as hux̂xix 'rain pants', aliĝngix̂ 'wolf', asliming 'fit for me', iistalix 'to say; to tell; to call'.
In CCC clusters, the middle consonant is either,,. For example, taxtxix̂ 'pulse', huxsx̂ilix 'to wrap up', chamchxix̂ 'short fishline'.
The most common single consonants to appear word-final are,,,,, and.
Through apocopation, word-final single consonants /l/ and occur, and word-final consonant clusters ending with or.
Syncopation
The details of the extensive syncopation characteristic of the Eastern Aleut dialect are described below. In the examples, the syncopated vowel will be shown in parentheses.A word medial short vowel may be syncopated between single consonants, except after an initial open short syllable and/or before a final open short syllable. For example, ìx̂amnákux̂ 'it is good' and alqutmaan 'what for?'.
The syncopation often creates consonant clusters beyond those prescribed by the general rules of Aleut phonotactics. The resulting clusters include:
- clusters of two stops: asx̂atkuu 'he killed it'
- geminate consonants: yuuggaadakux̂ 'is young'
- a regular three consonant cluster: ingamsxakum 'after a short while '
At slower speeds of speech, the syncopation may not be realized. Compare txin saakutikux̂txin 'you are getting skinny' beside ting saaktikuqing 'I am getting skinny'.
Stress
Aleut stress is indeterminate and often difficult to define. Stress varies based on the relation to the beginning or end of the word form, the length of the vowels, the sonority of the consonants, open- or closeness of the syllables, or the number of syllables in sentential rhythm and intonation. Stress affects the length of both vowels and consonants. Stress underlies the distinctive syncopation characteristics of Eastern Aleut. In the following discussion, the acute accent indicates the stronger stress and the grave accent indicates the weaker.In Eastern Aleut, stronger stress tends to fall on the penultimate syllable if it is short, or on the last syllable if it is long. The weaker stress commonly falls on the first syllable. For example, úlax̂ 'house', tùnúnax̂ 'talked', tùnulákan 'without talking', ìnaqáam 'he himself'.
Eastern Aleut words with more than two syllables exhibit a wider variety of stress patterns. Stress may be attracted to another syllable by a long vowel or relatively sonorant consonant, or by a closed syllable. It's possible the stress can be determined by rhythmic factors so that one word will have different stress in different contexts, such as áĝadax̂ compared to àĝádax̂, both meaning 'arrow'.
In Atkan and Attuan Aleut, stronger stress more commonly falls on the first syllable. However, long vowels, sonorants, etc. have similar effects on stress as in Eastern Aleut. For example, qánáang 'how many' vs qánang 'where'; ùĝálux̂ 'spear' vs álaĝux̂ 'sea'.
Stress may also be expressive, as with exclamations or polite requests. Stronger stress falls on the last syllable and is accompanied by a lengthening of a short vowel. For example, kúufyax̂ àqakúx̂! 'coffee is coming'. Similar structure for polite requests, qadá 'please eat!' vs qáda 'eat'.
Under ordinary strong stress, a short syllable tends to be lengthened, either by lengthening the vowel or geminating the following single consonant. Lengthening of the vowel is most common in Eastern, but is found in Atkan before a voiced consonant. In all dialects gemination is common between an initial stressed syllable with a short vowel and a following stressed syllable. For example, ìláan 'from him' pronounced and làkáayax̂ 'a boy' pronounced.
Phrasal Phonology
The following descriptions involve phonological processes that occur in connected speech.Word-final velar and uvular fricatives are voiceless when followed by a word-initial voiceless consonant and are voiced when followed by a word-initial voiced consonant or a vowel.
Word-final nasals and are frequently deleted before an initial consonant other than. For example, tana kugan 'on the ground' and ula naga 'the interior of the house'.
In Eastern Aleut, the final vowel may be elided before or contracted with the initial vowel of the following word, as in aamg iĝanalix' 'he is bleeding awfully'.
In Atkan, the final syllable of a word form may be clipped off in fast speech. This is even frequent at slow speed in certain constructions with auxiliary verbs. The result will be a sequence of vowels or full contraction:
- waaĝaaĝan aĝikux̂, waaĝaa-aĝikux̂, waaĝaaĝikux̂ 'he's about to come'
- ixchiinhan aĝikuq, ixchii-aĝikuq, ixchiiĝikuq 'I'll go home'
Morphology
Nouns
Ordinary nouns have suffixes for- number: singular, dual, and plural
- relational case: absolutive and relative
- person: first, second, anaphoric third, reflexive third
| sg. | du. | pl. | |
| abs. | - | -x̂ | E: -n A: -s |
| rel. | -m | -x̂ | E: -n A: -s |
The anaphoric third person refers to a proceeding term, specified by being marked in the relative case or from context. For example, tayaĝu-m ula-a 'the man's house' and ula-a 'his house'.
| sg. | du. | pl. | |
| 1.p. | ting | E: tumin A: timis | E: tumin A: timis |
| 2.p. | txin | txidix | E: txichi A: txichix |
| 3R | txin | txidix | E: txidin A: txidix |
As free forms, the pronouns are used primarily as an object, like fully specified nouns. As enclitics they function as subject markers.
Positional Nouns
Positional nouns indicate positional, directional, or some more abstract relation to a definite referent. Positional nouns have possessive suffixes but no inherent number.Unlike ordinary nouns, positional nouns have two adverbial cases: locative and/or ablative. The most important stem i-, called the dative, has only a locative form meaning 'to, at, for-'.
Most are used in absolutive case, as in ula-m agal-a agikux̂ 'he passed behind the house'. Can also be used in the relative case, as in laavki-m agal-a-n ula-a 'the house behind the store'.
Numerals
The numeral system is decimal with hatix̂ 'ten' and sisax̂ 'hundred' as the basic higher terms. The higher tens numerals are derived through multiplication. The multiplicative numerals are derived with the suffix -di-m on the base numeral followed by hatix̂ 'ten'. For example, qankudim hatix̂ 'forty'.| 1 | ataqan | 6 | atuung | ||||
| 2 | E: aalax A: alax | 7 | uluung | 20 | algidim | 60 | atuungidim |
| 3 | E: qaankun A: qankus | 8 | qamchiing | 30 | qankudim | 70 | uluungidim |
| 4 | E: sichin A: siching | 9 | siching | 40 | sichidim | 80 | qamchiingidim |
| 5 | chaang | 10 | hatix̂ | 50 | chaangidim | 90 | sichiingidim |
Verbs
Verbs differ from nouns morphologically by having mood/tense suffixes. Like nominal stems, verb stems may end in a short vowel or consonant. Many stems ending in a consonant had auxiliary vowels which have largely become part of the stem itself.Negation is sometimes suffixal, preceding or combining with the mood/tense suffix. In some cases the negation will be followed by the enclitic subject pronoun.
| sg. | du. | pl. | |
| 1.p. | E: -ku-qing A: -ku-q | = pl. | E: -ku-n A: -ku-s |
| 2.p. | E: -ku-x̂-txin A: -kux̂t | -ku-x̂-txidix | E: -ku-x̂-txichi A: -kux̂txichix |
| 3.p. | -ku-x̂ | -ku-x | E: -ku-n A: -ku-s |
Derivation (Postbases)
There are 570 derivational suffixes including many composite ones, but about two thirds are found only in a small number of words. There are approximately 175 more common suffixes, considerably less than the Eskimo branch of the family.A postbase may be nominal or verbal, yielding nouns derived from nouns or verbs, or verbs derived from verbs or nouns, or from nominal phrases. Many stems are ambivalent, being either nominal or verbal and even some derivatives can be ambivalent.
Difficulties distinguishing between nominal and verbal parts of speech arise because the parts of speech in Aleut are not easy to distinguish. A verbal stem may be used as a verbal predicate, and quite often as a noun. The verbal use of nouns is also very common.
The derivational suffixes may combine in strings of up to about six components, some belonging together to form composites. In sequences, each successive suffix often modifies the preceding string.
The majority of derivatives have a single stem that occurs also without the suffixes in question. While some stems are bound, only occurring with some derivational suffix. For example, compare iĝa-t- 'to scare, frighten' iĝa-x̂ta- 'to fear, be afraid of' iĝa-na- 'to be terrible, frightening'.
Syntax
Overview
Most Aleut words can be classified as nouns or verbs. Notions which in English are expressed by means of adjectives and adverbs are generally expressed in Aleut using verbs or postbases.Aleut's canonical word order is subject object verb.
Nouns are obligatorily marked for grammatical number and for absolutive case or relative case. The absolutive form is the default form, while the relative form communicates a relationship between the noun and another member of the sentence, possibly one that has been omitted. Absolutive and relative are identical in most combinations of person and number.
In possessive constructions, Aleut marks both possessor and possessum, with the possessor preceding the possessum:
The verbal predicate of a simple sentence of the final clause of a complex sentence carries the temporal and modal marking in relation to the speech act. Verbs of non-final clauses are marked in relation to the following clause. A complex sentence may contain an unlimited number of clauses.
Simple sentences may include a subject or no subject. The predicate may be a verb with no complement, a predicate noun with a copula, or a verb with a preceding direct object in the absolutive case and/or an oblique term or local complement.
The number of arguments may be increased or decreased by verbal derivative suffixes. Arguments of a clause may be explicitly specified or anaphoric.
The verb of a simple sentence or final clause may have a nominal subject in the absolutive case or a 1st/2nd person subject marker. If the nominal subject is left out, as known from context, the verb implies an anaphoric reference to the subject:
Positional nouns are a special, closed set of nouns which may take the locative or ablative noun cases; in these cases they behave essentially as postpositions. Morphosyntactically, positional noun phrases are almost identical to possessive phrases:
Verbs are inflected for mood and, if finite, for person and number. Person/number endings agree with the subject of the verb if all nominal participants of a sentence are overt:
If a 3rd person complement or subordinate part of it is omitted, as known from context, there is an anaphoric suffixal reference to it in the final verb and the nominal subject is in the relative case:
When more than one piece of information is omitted, the verb agrees with the element whose grammatical number is greatest. This can lead to ambiguity:
Comparison to Eskimo grammar
Although Aleut derives from the same parent language as the Eskimo languages, the two language groups have evolved in distinct ways, resulting in significant typological differences. Aleut inflectional morphology is greatly reduced from the system that must have been present in Proto-Eskimo–Aleut, and where the Eskimo languages mark a verb's arguments morphologically, Aleut relies more heavily on a fixed word order.Unlike the Eskimo languages, Aleut is not an ergative-absolutive language. Subjects and objects in Aleut are not marked differently depending on the transitivity of the verb ; by default, both are marked with a so-called absolutive noun ending. However, if an understood complement is absent, the verb takes an "anaphoric" marking and the subject noun takes a "relative" noun ending.
A typological feature shared by Aleut and Eskimo is polysynthetic derivational morphology, which can lead to some rather long words:
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 Saint 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 Saint 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, translated the 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 and Iakov Netsvetov, 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. Father Innocent Shayashnikov did much work in the Eastern Fox-Island dialect translating a Catechism, all four Gospels and Acts of Apostles from the New Testament, and an original composition in Aleut entitled: "Short Rule for a Pious Life".
Most of these were published in 1902, although written years earlier in the 1860s and 1870s. Father Lavrentii Salamatov produced a Catechism, and translations of three of the four Gospels in the Western-Atkan dialect. Of Father Lavrentii's work, the Gospel of St. Mark was published in a revised orthography, and in its original, bilingual Russian-Aleut format, together with his Catechism for the youth of Atka Island. The Atkan-dialect Gospel of St. John was also electronically published, along with the Gospel of St. Luke in the original bilingual format, completing the set of Fr. Lavrentii's biblical translations.
The first Frenchman to record Aleut was Alphonse Pinart, in 1871, shortly after the United States purchase of Alaska. A French-Aleut grammar was also produced by Victor Henry, entitled "Esquisse d'une grammaire raisonnee de la langue aleoute d'apres la grammaire et le vocabulaire de Ivan Veniaminov". 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.
In 1950, Knut Bergsland began an extensive study of Aleut, perhaps the most rigorous to date, culminating in the publication of a complete Aleut dictionary in 1994 and a descriptive grammar in 1997. Bergsland's work would not have been possible without key Aleut collaborators, especially Atkan linguist Moses Dirks.
Michael Krauss, Jeff Leer, Michael Fortescue, and Jerrold Sadock have published articles about Aleut.
Alice Taff has worked on Aleut since the 1970s. Her work constitutes the most detailed accounts of Aleut phonetics and phonology available.
Anna Berge conducts research on Aleut. Berge's work includes treatments of Aleut discourse structure and morphosyntax, and curricular materials for Aleut, including a conversational grammar of the Atkan dialect, co-authored with Moses Dirks.
In 2005, the parish of All Saints of North America Orthodox Church, began to re-publish all historic Aleut language texts from 1840–1940. Archpriest Paul Merculief of the Russian Orthodox Diocese of Alaska and the Alaska State Library Historical Collection generously contributed their linguistic skills to the restoration effort. The historic Aleut texts are available on the parish's Aleut library.