The Aleut Language: The Elements of Aleut Grammar with a Dictionary in Two Parts Containing Basic Vocabularies of Aleut and English

Geoghegan, Richard Henry

ISBN 10: 125876797X / ISBN 13: 9781258767976

Published by Literary Licensing, LLC, 2013

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Aleut Language: The Elements of Aleut Grammar with a Dictionary in Two Parts Containing Basic Vocabularies of Aleut and English
• Publisher: Literary Licensing, LLC
• Publication Date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 125876797X
• ISBN 13: 9781258767976
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: As New

About this title

Synopsis

Aleut(Unangam Tunuu) is a language of the Eskimo-Aleut language family. It is the heritage language of the Aleut (Unangax̂) people living in the Aleutian Islands, Pribilof Islands, and Commander Islands. As of 2007 there were about 150 speakers of Aleut. 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. 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. Unlike the Eskimo languages, Aleut is not an ergative-absolutive language. SThe 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. A typological feature shared by Aleut and Eskimo is polysynthetic derivational morphology, which can lead to some rather long Within the Eastern group are the dialects of 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, now extinct, was a distinct dialect showing influence from both Atkan and Eastern Aleut.