Sirenik Eskimo language


Sirenik Yupik[], Sireniki Yupik, Sirenik, or Sirenikskiy is an extinct Eskimo–Aleut language. It was spoken in and around the village of Sireniki in Chukotka Peninsula, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Russia. The language shift has been a long process, ending in total language death. In January 1997, the last native speaker of the language, a woman named Vyjye , died. Ever since that point, the language has been extinct; nowadays, all Sirenik Eskimos speak Siberian Yupik or Russian.
Сиӷы́ных is the endonym for the eponymous settlement of Sireniki. The endonym for the people itself is сиӷы́ныгмы̄́ӷий "Sirenikites"; the singular form is сиӷы́ныгмы̄́ӷа ).
This article is based on Menovschikov, with cited examples transliterated from Cyrillic transcription to the International Phonetic Alphabet.

Classification

Genealogical

External

Some argue that the Sirenik language is a remnant of a third group of Eskimo languages, in addition to Yupik and Inuit groups. In fact, the exact genealogical classification of Sireniki language is not settled yet, and some others regard it belonging to the Yupik branch.
Many words are formed from entirely different roots than in Siberian Yupik. Also, the grammar has several peculiarities compared to other Eskimo languages, and even compared to Aleut. For example, dual number is not known in Sireniki Eskimo, while most Eskimo–Aleut language have dual, including even its neighboring Siberian Yupik relatives. The peculiarities amounted to mutual unintelligibility with even its nearest language relatives. This forced Sirenik Eskimos to use Chukchi as a lingua franca when speaking with neighboring Eskimo peoples. Thus, any external contacts required using a different language for Sireniki Eskimos: they either resorted to use of lingua franca, or used Siberian Yupik languages. This difference from all their language relatives may be the result of a supposed long isolation from other Eskimo groups: Sireniki Eskimos may have been in contact only with speakers of unrelated languages for many centuries in the past, influenced especially by non-relative Chukchi.

Internal

Although the number of its speakers was very few even at the end of the nineteenth century, the language had at least two dialects in the past.

Typological

As for its morphological typology, it has polysynthetic and incorporative features.

Phonology

Some notes :
Like all other Eskimo languages, the morphology is rather complex. A description grouped by lexical categories follows.

Nominal and verbal

Although morphology will be treated grouped into a nominal and a verbal part, many Eskimo languages show features which “crosscut” any such groupings in several aspects:
Some grammatical categories are applicable to both verbal and nominal lexical categories.
Although person and number are expressed in a single suffix, sometimes it can be traced back to consist of a distinct person and a distinct number suffix.
Person
s can make a distinction in 3rd person for “self”, thus the mere personal suffix can distinguish e.g.
;a nominal example
;a verbal example
Thus, it can be translated into English using reflexive pronoun. This notion concerns also other concepts in building larger parts of the sentence and the text, see section #Usage of third person suffixes.
Number
Although other Eskimo languages know more than the familiar two grammatical numbers, Sireniki uses only singular and plural, thus it lacks dual. As mentioned, Sireniki is peculiar in this aspect not only among Eskimo languages, but even in the entire Eskimo–Aleut language family, even its neighboring Siberian Yupik relatives have dual.

Building verbs from nouns

Suffix -- meaning “to be similar to sth”:
Predicative form of a noun
Predicative form of a noun can be built using suffix --:
Verbs built from [toponym]s

Grammatical categories

Not only the grammatical cases of nouns are marked by suffixes, but also the person of possessor can be expressed by agglutination.
It is just an excerpt for illustration: not all cases are shown, Sirenik language has more grammatical cases. The table illustrates also why Sirenik language is treated as agglutinative.
There is no grammatical gender.
Case
Sireniki is an absolutive–ergative language.
Cases :
  1. Absolutive
  2. Relative case, playing the role of both genitive case and ergative case.
  3. Ablative / Instrumental, used also in accusative structures.
  4. Dative / Lative
  5. Locative
  6. Vialis case, see also Prosecutive case, and "motion via"
  7. Equative
To see why a single case can play such distinct roles at all, read morphosyntactic alignment, and also a short table about it.
Some finer grammatical functions are expressed using postpositions. Most of them are built as a combinations of cases
in a similar way as we use expressions like "on top of" in English.

Verbal lexical categories

Also at verbs, the morphology is very rich. Suffixes can express grammatical moods of the verb, and also negation, tense, aspect, the person of subject and object. Some examples :
The rich set of morphemes makes it possible to build huge verbs whose meaning could be expressed as whole sentences . Sireniki – like the other Eskimo languages – has polysynthetic and incorporative features, in many forms, among others polypersonal agreement.

Grammatical categories

The polysynthetic and incorporative features mentioned above manifest themselves in most of the ways Sirenik language can express grammatical categories.
Transitivity
For background, see transitivity.
See also.
Polarity
Even the grammatical polarity can be expressed by adding a suffix to the verb.
An example for negative polarity: the negation form of the verb :
Also linguistic modality can be expressed by suffixes. Modal verbs like "want to", "wish to" etc. do not even exist:
The table illustrates also why Sirenik is treated as agglutinative.
Voice
Four grammatical voices are mentioned in:
;active
;passive
;middle
;causative
all of them are expressed by agglutination, thus, no separate words are required.

Participles

A distinction between two kinds of participles makes sense in Sireniki.
Sireniki has many kinds of participles in both categories. In the following, they will be listed, grouped by the relation between the “dependent action” and “main action” – following the terminology of. A sentence with a participle can be imagined as simulating a subordinating compound sentence where the action described in the dependent clause relates somehow to the action described in the main clause. In English, an adverbial clause may express reason, purpose, condition, succession etc., and a relative clause can express many meanings, too.
In an analogous way, in Sireniki Eskimo language, the "dependent action" relates somehow to the “main action”, and the participles will be listed below grouped by this relation.

Adverbial participles

They can be translated into English e.g. by using an appropriate adverbial clause. There are many of them, with various meanings.
An interesting feature: they can have person and number. The person of the dependent action need not coincide with that of the main action. An example :
Another example :
They will be discussed in more details below.
Reason, purpose or circumstance of action
An adverbial participle “explaining reason, purpose or circumstance of action” is expressed by suffix -- / --. Examples:
Another example, with a somewhat different usage:
Dependent action ends just before main action begins
Using the adverbial participle -- / --, the dependent action finishes just before the main action begins.
Dependent action begins before main action, but they continue together till end
It can be expressed by suffix --. Examples:
where
Another example:
Conditional
Dependent action is conditional: it does not takes place, although it would. Confer also conditional sentence.
Sireniki Eskimo has several adverbial participles to express that. We can distinguish them according to the concerned condition : it may be
It is expressed with suffix -- / --, let us see e.g. a paradigm beginning with ; :
Irreal
Confer counterfactual conditional. Sireniki can compress it into an adverbial participle: it is expressed with suffix -- / --.
The dependent action is expressed with an adverbial participle. The main action is conveyed by the verb. If also the main action is conditional, than it can be expressed with a verb of conditional mood. The persons need not coincide.
An example :
The example in details:
Dependent action:

Adjectival participles

There are more kinds of them.
They can be used not only in attributive role, but also in predicative role:
Adjectival participle - / - conveys a meaning related rather to modality. It conveys meaning “able to”.

Ergative–absolutive

Sireniki is an ergative–absolutive language. For English-language materials treating this feature of Sireniki, see Vakhtin's book, or see online a paper treating a relative Eskimo language.

Usage of third person suffixes

Although the below examples are taken from Inuit Eskimo languages, but e.g. Sireniki's distinguishing between two kinds of 3rd person suffixes can be concerned, too.

Topic–comment

For a detailed theoretical treatment concerning the notions of topic, with Eskimo-related examples, see online 's works, especially.

Obviation

For a treatment of obviation in Eskimo languages, see online and in more details from the same authors.

Word order

See also.

English