Aleut (Unangam Tunuu) is a language of the Eskimo-Aleut language family. It is the tongue of the Aleut (Unangax̂) people living in the Aleutian Islands, Pribilof Islands, and Commander Islands. In 1995 there were 305 speakers of Aleut. Current distribution of Human Language Families A language family is a group of related languages said to have descended from a common proto-language. ... Eskimo-Aleut languages Eskimo-Aleut is a language family native to Greenland, the Canadian Arctic, Alaska, and parts of Siberia. ... ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family. ... ISO 639-2 is the second part of the ISO 639 standard, which lists codes for the representation of the names of languages. ... ISO 639-3 is an international standard for language codes. ... Articles with similar titles include the NATO phonetic alphabet, which has also informally been called the “International Phonetic Alphabet”. For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words, see IPA chart for English. ... The Unicode Standard, Version 5. ... Eskimo-Aleut (also called Inuit-Aleut, but both names are considered offensive by some) is a language family native to Greenland, the Canadian Arctic, Alaska, and parts of Siberia. ... Current distribution of Human Language Families A language family is a group of related languages said to have descended from a common proto-language. ... Languages English, Russian, Aleut Religions Christianity, Shamanism Related ethnic groups Inuit, Yupik The Aleuts (self-denomination: , Unangan or Unanga) are the indigenous people of the Aleutian Islands of Alaska, United States and Kamchatka Krai, Russia. ... Aleutians seen from space The Aleutian Islands (possibly from Chukchi aliat, island) are a chain of more than 300 small volcanic islands forming an island arc in the Northern Pacific Ocean, occupying an area of 6,821 sq mi (17,666 km²) and extending about 1,200 mi (1,900... The Pribilof Islands (often called the Fur Seal Islands, Russian: Kotovi) are a group of four volcanic islands, part of Alaska, lying in the Bering Sea, about 200 miles north of Unalaska and 200 miles south of Cape Newenham, the nearest point on the North American mainland. ... The Komandorski Islands or Commander Islands, (in Russian, Komandorskiye Ostrova) are a group of treeless islands east of the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Russian Far East, in the Bering Sea. ... Year 1995 (MCMXCV) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display full 1995 Gregorian calendar). ...

Dialects

Aleut is alone with the Eskimo languages (Yupik and Inuit languages) in the Eskimo-Aleut group. The main dialect groupings are Eastern Aleut, Atkan, and Attuan. The Yupik (Yupik/Юпик) people speak several distinct languages, depending on their location. ... The language of the Inuit people is traditionally spoken across the North American Arctic and to some extent in the subarctic in Labrador. ...

Within the Eastern group are the dialects of Unalaska, Belkofski, Akutan, the Pribilof Islands, Kashega and Nikolski. The Pribilof dialect boasts more living speakers than any other dialect of Aleut. Unalaska is an island in the Fox Islands group in the middle of the Aleutian Islands southwest of Alaska, at 53°54 North 166°32 West. ... Akutan Island (54°07′41″N, 165°55′05″W) is an island of the Aleutian Islands in Alaska, USA. The island is approximately 30 km (18 mi) in length and contains the Mount Akutan volcano. ... The Pribilof Islands (often called the Fur Seal Islands, Russian: Kotovi) are a group of four volcanic islands, part of Alaska, lying in the Bering Sea, about 200 miles north of Unalaska and 200 miles south of Cape Newenham, the nearest point on the North American mainland. ... Nikolsky, also spelled Nikolski (Russian: ), or Nikolskaya (feminine; ), is a Russian last name and name of other entities. ...

The Atkan grouping comprises the dialects of Atka and Bering Island. Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ...

Attuan, now extinct, was a distinct dialect showing influence from both Atkan and Eastern Aleut. Copper Island (or Mednyy) was settled by Attuans, and Copper Island Aleut is a heavily creolized form of Attuan. Ironically, today Copper Island Aleut is spoken only on Bering Island; Copper Islanders were evacuated to Bering Island in 1969. Attu Island Attu is the westernmost and largest island in the Near Islands group of the Aleutian Islands of Alaska, making it the westernmost point of land relative to Alaska and the United States. ... Copper Island is an island in the North Pacific (one of the Komandorski Islands) located near Attu at the western end of the Aleutian Islands Copper Island is a dialect (also as Mednyy) of the Aleut language. ...

All dialects show lexical influence from Russian; Copper Island Aleut has also adopted many Russian inflectional endings.

Phonology

Consonants

The consonant phonemes of the various Aleut dialects are represented below. The first line of each cell indicates the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) representation of the phoneme; the second indicates how the phoneme is represented in the Aleut orthography. Italicized orthographic forms represent phonemes borrowed from Russian or English; bold orthographic forms represent native Aleut phonemes. Note that some phonemes are unique to specific dialects of Aleut. In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by a closure or stricture of the vocal tract sufficient to cause audible turbulence. ... In human language, a phoneme is the theoretical representation of a sound. ... Articles with similar titles include the NATO phonetic alphabet, which has also informally been called the “International Phonetic Alphabet”. For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words, see IPA chart for English. ... The orthography of a language specifies the correct way of writing in that language. ...

^* Only found natively in Attuan (/v/ is also found in loanwords)

^† Only found in Eastern Aleut

^‡ Only found in Atkan and in loanwords

Taff et al. (2001, p. 234) note that modern Eastern Aleut has done away with most voicing distinctions among nasals, sibilants and approximants. Labials are consonants articulated either with both lips (bilabial articulation) or with the lower lip and the upper teeth (labiodental articulation). ... Dentals are consonants such as t, d, n, and l articulated with either the lower or the upper teeth, or both, rather than with the gum ridge as in English. ... Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli (the sockets) of the superior teeth. ... Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate (the middle part of the roof of the mouth). ... Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate (the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum). ... Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. ... Glottal consonants are consonants articulated with the glottis. ... A stop or plosive or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. ... Fricatives (or spirants) are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. ... A nasal consonant is produced when the velum—that fleshy part of the palate near the back—is lowered, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. ... Laterals are L-like consonants pronounced with an occlusion made somewhere along the axis of the tongue, while air from the lungs escapes at one side or both sides of the tongue. ... Approximants are speech sounds that could be regarded as intermediate between vowels and typical consonants. ... A sibilant is a type of fricative, made by speeding up air through a narrow channel and directing it over the sharp edge of the teeth. ...

Vowels

Aleut has six native vowel phonemes: the short vowels /i/, /a/, and /u/, and their long counterparts /iː/, /aː/, and /uː/. These are represented orthographically as i, a, u, ii, aa, and uu respectively.

Before or after a uvular consonant, i becomes a retracted /e/, a is still pronounced as /a/ but is retracted and u becomes a retracted /o/. Before or after a coronal consonant, a becomes /e/ or /ε/ and u becomes /y/ or /ʉ/ (Bergsland 1994, p. xix; Bergsland 1997, pp. 21-22; see also Taff et al. 2001, pp. 247-249). Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. ... Coronal consonants are articulated with the flexible front part of the tongue. ...

Grammar

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 (derivational suffixes). In linguistics, a noun or noun substantive is a lexical category which is defined in terms of how its members combine with other grammatical kinds of expressions. ... It has been suggested that Verbal agreement be merged into this article or section. ... In grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntactic role is to modify a noun or pronoun (called the adjectives subject), giving more information about what the noun or pronoun refers to. ... An adverb is a part of speech. ... In linguistics, derivation is the process of creating new lexemes from other lexemes, for example, by adding a derivational affix. ... Look up affix in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Nouns are obligatorily marked for grammatical number (singular, dual, or plural) and for "case" (absolutive or relative; some researchers, notably Anna Berge, dispute both the characterization of this feature as "case" and the names "absolutive" and "relative". This approach to Aleut nouns comes from Eskimo linguistics, but these terms can be misleading when applied to Aleut). 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. In linguistics, grammatical number is a morphological category characterized by the expression of quantity through inflection or agreement. ... In linguistics, declension is the inflection of nouns, pronouns and adjectives to indicate such features as number (typically singular vs. ... In linguistics, a sentence is a unit of language, characterized in most languages by the presence of a finite verb. ...

In possessive constructions, Aleut marks both possessor and possessum: Possession, in the context of linguistics, is an asymmetric relationship between two constituents, one of which possesses (owns, rules over, has as a part, has as a relative, etc. ...

 tayaĝu-x̂ man-ABS `[the] man' 

 ada-x̂ father-ABS `[the] father' 

 tayaĝu-m ada-a man-REL father-POSSM `the man's father' 

The possessor precedes the possessum.

So-called "positional nouns" are a special, closed set of nouns which may take the locative and/or ablative noun cases; in these cases they behave essentially as postpositions. Morphosyntactically, positional noun phrases are almost identical to possessive phrases: Locative is a case which indicates a location. ... In linguistics, ablative case (also called the sixth case) (abbreviated ABL) is a name given to cases in various languages whose common thread is that they mark motion away from something, though the details in each language may differ. ... A postposition is a type of adposition, a grammatical particle that expresses some sort of relationship between a noun phrase (its object) and another part of the sentence; an adpositional phrase functions as an adjective or adverb. ... Morphology is a subdiscipline of linguistics that studies word structure. ...

 tayaĝu-m had-an man-REL direction-LOC `toward the man' 

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; in general, if a complement (including the complement of a verb, the object of a positional noun, or the possessor of a noun) is omitted, its absence will be reflected by anaphoric marking on the verb; in such situations, the subject will usually be in the relative case. Compare: It has been suggested that prohibitive mood be merged into this article or section. ... Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to the participant role of a referent, such as the speaker, the addressee, and others. ... In languages, agreement is a form of cross-reference between different parts of a sentence or phrase. ... In linguistics, anaphora is an instance of an expression referring to another. ...

`Peter is helping the man.'

`Peter is helping him.'

(Bergsland 1997, pp. 126-127)

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: Look up ambiguity in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

 kidu-ku-ngis help-PRES-PL.ANA `He/she helped them.' / `They helped him/her/them.' 

(Sadock 2000)

Both nouns and verbs are subject to extensive derivational morphology. Aleut words begin with a content morpheme, called a `root' or a `base', optionally followed by any number of derivational suffixes (`postbases'). Inflectional endings are obligatory; interestingly, there is no "zero" (null) inflectional ending for either class of words. A zero, in linguistics, is a constituent needed in an analysis but not realized in speech. ... A null morpheme is a morpheme that is realized by a phonologically null affix (an empty string of phonological segments). ...

Aleut's canonical word order is subject-verb-object. In linguistic typology, word order is the order in which words appear in sentences. ...

Comparison to Eskimo grammar

Although Aleut derives from the same parent language as the Eskimo languages, the two language groups (Aleut and Eskimo) 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. Linguistic typology is the typology that classifies languages by their features. ... Inflection of the Spanish lexeme for cat, with blue representing the masculine gender, pink representing the feminine gender, grey representing the form used for mixed-gender, and green representing the plural number. ...

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 (i.e. whether the verb is transitive or intransitive); by default, both are marked with a so-called absolutive noun ending. However, if an understood complement (which may either be a complement of the verb or of some other element in the sentence) is absent, the verb takes an "anaphoric" marking and the subject noun takes a "relative" noun ending. An ergative-absolutive language (or simply ergative) is one that treats the agent of transitive verbs distinctly from the subject of intransitive verbs and the object of transitive verbs. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Transitive verb. ... A transitive verb is a verb that requires both a subject and one or more objects. ... An intransitive verb is a verb that has only one argument, that is, a verb with valency equal to one. ...

A typological feature shared by Aleut and Eskimo is polysynthetic derivational morphology, which can lead to some rather long words: Polysynthetic languages are highly synthetic languages, i. ...

`Perhaps he tried to fool me again.' (Bergsland 1997, p. 123)

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. A portrait attributed to Vitus Bering (according to modern data, his uncles portrait) Vitus Jonassen Bering (also, less correctly, Behring) (August 1681–December 19, 1741) was a Danish-born navigator in the service of the Russian Navy, a captain-komandor known among the Russian sailors as Ivan Ivanovich. ... Captain James King served under James Cook on his last voyage around the world, specialising in taking important astronomical readings using a sextant. ... This article is about the British explorer. ... Saint Petersburg (Russian: Санкт-Петербу́рг, English transliteration: Sankt-Peterburg), colloquially known as Питер (transliterated Piter), formerly known as Leningrad (Ленингра́д, 1924–1991) and...

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. Catherine II (Екатерина II Алексеевна: Yekaterína II Alekséyevna, April 21, 1729 - November 6, 1796), born Sophie Augusta Fredericka, known as Catherine the Great, reigned as empress of Russia from... The subject of this article was previously also known as Russia. ... Peter Simon Pallas (September 22, 1741 - September 8, 1811) was a German-born Russian zoologist. ... Yuri Fyodorovich Lisyansky (also spelled as Urey Lisiansky) (Russian: , August 13, 1773—March 06, 1837) was an officer in the Imperial Russian Navy and explorer. ... Nikolai Petrovich Rezanov was the head of Russian expedition to Alaska. ... Johann Christoph Adelung (8 August 1732 - 10 September 1806) was a German grammarian and philologist. ...

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. 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 1860's and 1870's. Father Lavrentii Salamatov produced a Catechism, and translations of three of the four Gospels (St. Mark, St. Luke, St. John) in the Western-Atkan dialect. Of Father Lavrentii's work, only the Gospel of St. Mark was published in a revised orthography in 1959. Rasmus Christian Rask Rasmus Christian Rask (November 22, 1787 - November 14, 1832), Danish scholar and philologist, was born at Brandekilde in the island of Funen or Fyn in Denmark. ... A literary language is a register of a language that is used in writing, and which often differs in lexicon and syntax from the language used in speech. ... Saint Innocent of Alaska was a Russian Orthodox priest, bishop, archbishop and Metropolitan of Moscow and all Russia. ... The Russian Orthodox Church (Русская Православная церковь) is that body of Christians who are united under the Patriarch of Moscow, who in turn is in communion with... Our righteous Father Jacob Netsvetov, Enlightener of Alaska, was a native of the Aleutian Islands who became a priest of the Orthodox Church and continued the missionary work of St. ...

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. Official language(s) English[1] Spoken language(s) English 85. ... Benedykt Dybowski (May 12, 1833-January 31, 1930) was a Polish naturalist and physician. ...

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. Ethnologyis a genre of cultural anthropology and| anthropological study, involving the systematic comparison of the beliefs and practices of different societies. ... Aleksey Mironovich Yachmenev (1866-1937) was an Aleut chief who lived in Unalaska. ... Leontiy Ivanovich Sivstov (1872-1919) was a church reader who lived in Unalaska. ...

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. Map of Saint Paul Island and surrounding ocean soundings. ... The United States Department of the Interior (DOI) is a Cabinet department of the United States government that manages and conserves most federally owned land. ... Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tōjō Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...

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. Michael E. Krauss is a linguist who has worked extensively on the Na-Dené language family, especially on proto-Athabaskan, pre-proto-Athabaskan, and the Eyak language. ... Michael Fortecue is a linguist specializing in Arctic and native North American languages, including Kalaallisut, Inuktun, Chukchi and Nitinaht. ... Jerrold Sadock is a professor of linguistics at the University of Chicago. ...

Alice Taff has worked on Aleut since the 1970's. 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 1840-1903. Archpriest Paul Merculief (originally from the Pribilofs) 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 on-line Aleut library. The Alaska State Library and Historical Collections is located in Juneau, Alaska, with an office in Anchorage featuring the Talking Book Center. ...

External links

• University of Alaska Fairbanks, Aleut Collections List
• Aleut Language (In Russian)
• Ethnologue report for Aleut
• Alaskan Orthodox Christian texts (Aleut)
• Information on Aleut at the Rosetta Project

Bibliography

• Berge, Anna; & Moses Dirks (2006). Niiĝuĝis Mataliin Tunuxtazangis: How the Atkans Talk (A Conversational Grammar). Fairbanks, AK: Alaska Native Language Center, University of Alaska. [Forthcoming, Fall 2006]. 

• Bergsland, Knut (1994). Aleut Dictionary = Unangam Tunudgusii: an unabridged lexicon of the Aleutian, Pribilof, and Commander Islands Aleut language. Fairbanks, AK: Alaska Native Language Center, University of Alaska. ISBN 1-55500-047-9. 

• Bergsland, Knut (1997). Aleut Grammar = Unangam Tunuganaan Achixaasix̂. Fairbanks, AK: Alaska Native Language Center, University of Alaska. ISBN 1-55500-064-9. 

• Sadock, Jerrold M. (2000). "Aleut Number Agreement". Presented at Berkeley Linguistic Society[1] 26th Annual Meeting.

• Taff, Alice; Lorna Rozelle; Taehong Cho; Peter Ladefoged; Moses Dirks; & Jacob Wegelin (2001). "Phonetic structures of Aleut". Journal of Phonetics 29: 231-271. DOI:10.006/jpho.2001.0142. ISSN 0095-4470.