I am a linguist specializing in the documentation and description of the Eskimo-Aleut languages, especially at the level of morphosyntax and discourse. Over the past decade I have been investigating the divergence of the two branches of the language family and reconstructing its likely prehistory, using evidence from linguistics, archaeology, genetics, paleo-environmental studies, and ethnohistory. I work closely with communities on language revitalization, the development of language learning materials, and the archiving and preservation of language materials of all types. Address: Alaska Native Language Center 421 Brooks Building University of Alaska Fairbanks Fairbanks, AK 99775
The Languages and Linguistics of Northern Asia, 2024
The Eskaleut (EA) languages are spoken from the Russian Far East to Greenland. They are well-know... more The Eskaleut (EA) languages are spoken from the Russian Far East to Greenland. They are well-known as being among the most polysynthetic in the world, as well as being exclusively suffixing and highly agglutinative. In these and other respects, they resemble neighboring Chukotkan languages but greatly differ from neighboring American language groups like Na-Dene, supporting the idea of a late migration from Asia to America. Archaeological, genetic, and linguistic evidence, however, points to a more complex prehistory, with movement in all directions between Chukotka and Alaska. Each major language in the family has features that explicate this complex history. Many of these distinctive features can be shown to have resulted from intensive language contact: Unangam Tunuu and Central Alaskan Yup’ik with Dene (Athabaskan) languages; Siberian Yupik and Sirenikski with each other and with Chukchi; Alaskan Iñupiaq with neighboring Yupik languages in both Asia and Alaska. Non-Alaskan Inuit, having only expanded very recently, shows mostly postcolonial contact effects, and Copper Island Aleut, with Unangax̂ lexicon and grammar and Russian inflections and particles, is the quintessential example of a mixed language.
The Languages and Linguistics of Indigenous North America, 2023
The way people decide to present what they want to say reflects the choices
they make about what ... more The way people decide to present what they want to say reflects the choices they make about what it is they want to focus on, or what they think other people in a conversation know. The study of how people package the information they want to convey in a sentence is called information structure. Some important concepts in the study of information structure include the notions of focus (what a speaker considers particularly important information), topic (what a speaker is talking about), and word order (what information a speaker decides to present first). Indigenous languages, being so different syntactically to widely spoken languages like English, have much to offer to studies of information structure. For example, how are notions such as focus and topic indicated when a sentence may consist of a single word? In this chapter, I present the basic notions of and approaches to information structure and the challenges that Indigenous languages have posed to studies of information structure, then conclude with a brief look at why an understanding of information structure is helpful for language revitalization efforts.
Language contact is pervasive in the history of all Eskaleut languages of the Pacific Rim, and th... more Language contact is pervasive in the history of all Eskaleut languages of the Pacific Rim, and the languages show contact effect regardless of typological similarity or degree of relatedness. Moreover, the degree of contact has allowed for the borrowing of features that are generally thought of as relatively impervious to borrowing, including verb inflection. In particular, Sirenikski has been in close contact with the closely related language Central Siberian Yupik, and contact effects on the phonology, prosodic system and lexicon have been well described, however, the verbal inflectional morphology has largely been assumed to be cognate. In this article, I present evidence that some elements of the inflectional paradigm have been borrowed from Central Siberian Yupik.
The relationship between Unangam Tunuu (Aleut) and Eskimo was established in the early 19th centu... more The relationship between Unangam Tunuu (Aleut) and Eskimo was established in the early 19th century, and the 20th century especially saw a number of efforts on the reconstruction of Proto-Eskimo-Aleut (PEA). Reconstruction has supported assumptions of a largely genealogical relationship between the EA languages, assumptions which include a long history of independent development in isolation from other languages and language families. The reconstruction of PEA, however, is incomplete; many apparent cognates have irregular or imperfectly understood sound correspondences. Furthermore, advances in archaeology and genetics have called into question many assumptions about EA prehistory and about the isolation or lack thereof of Unangam Tunuu. In this study, I reexamine the proposed cognates and evaluate them based on the strength of their correspondences and their distribution within the lexicon, with reference to new findings regarding technological innovations and periods of cultural contact. Several patterns emerge, including a large group of proposed cognates with overly-specific semantic correlations relating to technologies or cultural practices postdating the split of EA languages, a gender-based difference in the number of cognates relating to cultural activities, and a correlation between known borrowings and high levels of cognates in certain semantic domains. Results suggest extensive language contact, especially in the past millennium.
As more and more languages are becoming endangered, our notions of what it means to adequately do... more As more and more languages are becoming endangered, our notions of what it means to adequately document a language are changing. Further, while some languages remain undocumented, dictionaries, grammars, and texts are available for more and more languages, enabling researchers to broaden the scope of their documentation efforts. This article examines the question of adequacy in language documentation from a number of perspectives and proposes some general guiding principles for documentation efforts. Points of discussion include the interplay between documentation and description; the potential for diversity in all aspects of documentation, such as diversity of linguistic data, consultants, fieldworkers, and products; and the interaction of the different participants in documentation efforts.
This paper presents some preliminary thoughts on comparative discourse structure between Greenlan... more This paper presents some preliminary thoughts on comparative discourse structure between Greenlandic and Aleut. Greenlandic is a typical ergativeabsolutive language, with coindexing of participants on the verb and typical patterns of information flow which allow ...
... REL eat-PART-3SG-NEG 'Mary sat down but did not eat'(Atkan; Bergsland 1997: 221) ..... more ... REL eat-PART-3SG-NEG 'Mary sat down but did not eat'(Atkan; Bergsland 1997: 221) ... anaphoric object or oblique in a first clause to be the sub-ject of a second clause, as in example (35)(this should not be misconstrued as evidence of ergative syntax): (35) Piitra-m tuga-ku-u ...
The Eskimo-Aleut language family consists of two quite different branches, Aleut and Eskimo. The ... more The Eskimo-Aleut language family consists of two quite different branches, Aleut and Eskimo. The latter consists of Yupik and Inuit languages. It is spoken from the eastern coast of Russia to Greenland. The family is thought to have developed and diverged in Alaska between 4,000 and 6,000 years ago, although recent findings in a variety of fields suggest a more complex prehistory than previously assumed. The language family shares certain characteristics, including polysynthetic word formation, an originally ergative-absolutive case system (now substantially modified in Aleut), SOV word order, and more or less similar phonological systems across the language family, involving voiceless stop and voiced fricative consonant series often in alternation, and an originally four-vowel system frequently reduced to three. The languages in the family have undergone substantial postcolonial contact effects, especially evident in (although not restricted to) loanwords from the respective coloni...
Unangam Tunuu (Aleut) is a highly divergent member of the Eskimo-Aleut language family; it has al... more Unangam Tunuu (Aleut) is a highly divergent member of the Eskimo-Aleut language family; it has also experienced substantial language contact during several distinct periods of its history, including the late prehistoric period (ca. 1000–1741 CE), the Russian period (1741–1867), and the American period (1867–present). This chapter discusses each period, and the very different linguistic effects of the different nature of the respective periods of language contact: prehistoric contact was extensive enough to result in deep structural changes; Russian and early American contact were primarily lexical and did not overwhelm the Aleut language; and the late American period is characterized by language shift. The chapter focuses especially on the speculative first period, as it is of critical important in the divergence of Aleut within its language family.
This article is available to read online at https://www.thearcticinstitute.org/language-revitaliz... more This article is available to read online at https://www.thearcticinstitute.org/language-revitalization-cultural-stabilization-eskaleut-languages/. The Arctic is at the forefront of potentially catastrophic climate change, affecting the survival of most forms of life. In comparison, discussions of language loss in the Arctic may seem trivial, and language researchers sometimes struggle to justify their research in such a context, particularly with respect to documentation and revitalization efforts. However, language loss is a reflection of cultural destabilization of communities in the Arctic, and thus a symptom of the broader problems of environmental change, sustainability, and adaptability. Is language revitalization, therefore, part of the solution? In the following article, I offer a perspective on this question, with special reference to the Eskaleut languages. The Eskaleut languages include Unangam Tunuu (formerly known as Aleut), spoken along the Aleutian Islands, Bering Island, and the Pribilof Islands; the Yupik languages, spoken in the Russian Far East, St. Lawrence Island, and Southwest Alaska; and the Inuit language group, spoken in northern Alaska, northern Canada, and Greenland.
This paper is available to read online at https://benjamins.com/#catalog/books/z.215/toc.
The Es... more This paper is available to read online at https://benjamins.com/#catalog/books/z.215/toc.
The Eskimo-Aleut are arctic and subarctic hunter-gatherers known for their geographic
spread and successful adaptation to a harsh climate; they are one of the
canonical examples of a people that spread without agriculture. One of the most
prehistoric recent spreads in this language family occurred about 1000 years
ago, with effects felt throughout coastal Alaska. One area of language contact
and possible spread was in Southeast Alaska, between the Pacific Coast Yupik
language Alutiiq and the Aleutian language Unangam Tunuu. In this paper,
I look at the distribution of cognates and borrowings of subsistence terminology
in Unangam Tunuu, and I show that Alutiiq must have spread into a previously
Unangax! area as a result of warfare rather than subsistence activities.
The Eskimo-Aleut language family is well known for its extreme polysynthesis; in general, however... more The Eskimo-Aleut language family is well known for its extreme polysynthesis; in general, however, descriptions of this extreme polysynthesis more accurately describe the situation in Eskimo languages. In fact, both the degree and the nature of polysynthesis in Aleut are very different. In this paper, I present a detailed discussion of the ways in which Aleut polysynthesis differs from that of Eskimo. In particular, I show that it is not only much reduced, but also more templatic and more fluid than polysynthesis in Eskimo.
Handout from Conference Presentation
Using data from both published texts and original fieldwork... more Handout from Conference Presentation
Using data from both published texts and original fieldwork, I examine neutral and non-neutral word order, the indexing and expression or lack thereof of arguments, and topic and topic/comment structure in Aleut. I explore some challenges that Aleut presents to the theory of information structure as a result of features such as its polysynthesis, verb indexing, and clause chaining.
The Languages and Linguistics of Northern Asia, 2024
The Eskaleut (EA) languages are spoken from the Russian Far East to Greenland. They are well-know... more The Eskaleut (EA) languages are spoken from the Russian Far East to Greenland. They are well-known as being among the most polysynthetic in the world, as well as being exclusively suffixing and highly agglutinative. In these and other respects, they resemble neighboring Chukotkan languages but greatly differ from neighboring American language groups like Na-Dene, supporting the idea of a late migration from Asia to America. Archaeological, genetic, and linguistic evidence, however, points to a more complex prehistory, with movement in all directions between Chukotka and Alaska. Each major language in the family has features that explicate this complex history. Many of these distinctive features can be shown to have resulted from intensive language contact: Unangam Tunuu and Central Alaskan Yup’ik with Dene (Athabaskan) languages; Siberian Yupik and Sirenikski with each other and with Chukchi; Alaskan Iñupiaq with neighboring Yupik languages in both Asia and Alaska. Non-Alaskan Inuit, having only expanded very recently, shows mostly postcolonial contact effects, and Copper Island Aleut, with Unangax̂ lexicon and grammar and Russian inflections and particles, is the quintessential example of a mixed language.
The Languages and Linguistics of Indigenous North America, 2023
The way people decide to present what they want to say reflects the choices
they make about what ... more The way people decide to present what they want to say reflects the choices they make about what it is they want to focus on, or what they think other people in a conversation know. The study of how people package the information they want to convey in a sentence is called information structure. Some important concepts in the study of information structure include the notions of focus (what a speaker considers particularly important information), topic (what a speaker is talking about), and word order (what information a speaker decides to present first). Indigenous languages, being so different syntactically to widely spoken languages like English, have much to offer to studies of information structure. For example, how are notions such as focus and topic indicated when a sentence may consist of a single word? In this chapter, I present the basic notions of and approaches to information structure and the challenges that Indigenous languages have posed to studies of information structure, then conclude with a brief look at why an understanding of information structure is helpful for language revitalization efforts.
Language contact is pervasive in the history of all Eskaleut languages of the Pacific Rim, and th... more Language contact is pervasive in the history of all Eskaleut languages of the Pacific Rim, and the languages show contact effect regardless of typological similarity or degree of relatedness. Moreover, the degree of contact has allowed for the borrowing of features that are generally thought of as relatively impervious to borrowing, including verb inflection. In particular, Sirenikski has been in close contact with the closely related language Central Siberian Yupik, and contact effects on the phonology, prosodic system and lexicon have been well described, however, the verbal inflectional morphology has largely been assumed to be cognate. In this article, I present evidence that some elements of the inflectional paradigm have been borrowed from Central Siberian Yupik.
The relationship between Unangam Tunuu (Aleut) and Eskimo was established in the early 19th centu... more The relationship between Unangam Tunuu (Aleut) and Eskimo was established in the early 19th century, and the 20th century especially saw a number of efforts on the reconstruction of Proto-Eskimo-Aleut (PEA). Reconstruction has supported assumptions of a largely genealogical relationship between the EA languages, assumptions which include a long history of independent development in isolation from other languages and language families. The reconstruction of PEA, however, is incomplete; many apparent cognates have irregular or imperfectly understood sound correspondences. Furthermore, advances in archaeology and genetics have called into question many assumptions about EA prehistory and about the isolation or lack thereof of Unangam Tunuu. In this study, I reexamine the proposed cognates and evaluate them based on the strength of their correspondences and their distribution within the lexicon, with reference to new findings regarding technological innovations and periods of cultural contact. Several patterns emerge, including a large group of proposed cognates with overly-specific semantic correlations relating to technologies or cultural practices postdating the split of EA languages, a gender-based difference in the number of cognates relating to cultural activities, and a correlation between known borrowings and high levels of cognates in certain semantic domains. Results suggest extensive language contact, especially in the past millennium.
As more and more languages are becoming endangered, our notions of what it means to adequately do... more As more and more languages are becoming endangered, our notions of what it means to adequately document a language are changing. Further, while some languages remain undocumented, dictionaries, grammars, and texts are available for more and more languages, enabling researchers to broaden the scope of their documentation efforts. This article examines the question of adequacy in language documentation from a number of perspectives and proposes some general guiding principles for documentation efforts. Points of discussion include the interplay between documentation and description; the potential for diversity in all aspects of documentation, such as diversity of linguistic data, consultants, fieldworkers, and products; and the interaction of the different participants in documentation efforts.
This paper presents some preliminary thoughts on comparative discourse structure between Greenlan... more This paper presents some preliminary thoughts on comparative discourse structure between Greenlandic and Aleut. Greenlandic is a typical ergativeabsolutive language, with coindexing of participants on the verb and typical patterns of information flow which allow ...
... REL eat-PART-3SG-NEG 'Mary sat down but did not eat'(Atkan; Bergsland 1997: 221) ..... more ... REL eat-PART-3SG-NEG 'Mary sat down but did not eat'(Atkan; Bergsland 1997: 221) ... anaphoric object or oblique in a first clause to be the sub-ject of a second clause, as in example (35)(this should not be misconstrued as evidence of ergative syntax): (35) Piitra-m tuga-ku-u ...
The Eskimo-Aleut language family consists of two quite different branches, Aleut and Eskimo. The ... more The Eskimo-Aleut language family consists of two quite different branches, Aleut and Eskimo. The latter consists of Yupik and Inuit languages. It is spoken from the eastern coast of Russia to Greenland. The family is thought to have developed and diverged in Alaska between 4,000 and 6,000 years ago, although recent findings in a variety of fields suggest a more complex prehistory than previously assumed. The language family shares certain characteristics, including polysynthetic word formation, an originally ergative-absolutive case system (now substantially modified in Aleut), SOV word order, and more or less similar phonological systems across the language family, involving voiceless stop and voiced fricative consonant series often in alternation, and an originally four-vowel system frequently reduced to three. The languages in the family have undergone substantial postcolonial contact effects, especially evident in (although not restricted to) loanwords from the respective coloni...
Unangam Tunuu (Aleut) is a highly divergent member of the Eskimo-Aleut language family; it has al... more Unangam Tunuu (Aleut) is a highly divergent member of the Eskimo-Aleut language family; it has also experienced substantial language contact during several distinct periods of its history, including the late prehistoric period (ca. 1000–1741 CE), the Russian period (1741–1867), and the American period (1867–present). This chapter discusses each period, and the very different linguistic effects of the different nature of the respective periods of language contact: prehistoric contact was extensive enough to result in deep structural changes; Russian and early American contact were primarily lexical and did not overwhelm the Aleut language; and the late American period is characterized by language shift. The chapter focuses especially on the speculative first period, as it is of critical important in the divergence of Aleut within its language family.
This article is available to read online at https://www.thearcticinstitute.org/language-revitaliz... more This article is available to read online at https://www.thearcticinstitute.org/language-revitalization-cultural-stabilization-eskaleut-languages/. The Arctic is at the forefront of potentially catastrophic climate change, affecting the survival of most forms of life. In comparison, discussions of language loss in the Arctic may seem trivial, and language researchers sometimes struggle to justify their research in such a context, particularly with respect to documentation and revitalization efforts. However, language loss is a reflection of cultural destabilization of communities in the Arctic, and thus a symptom of the broader problems of environmental change, sustainability, and adaptability. Is language revitalization, therefore, part of the solution? In the following article, I offer a perspective on this question, with special reference to the Eskaleut languages. The Eskaleut languages include Unangam Tunuu (formerly known as Aleut), spoken along the Aleutian Islands, Bering Island, and the Pribilof Islands; the Yupik languages, spoken in the Russian Far East, St. Lawrence Island, and Southwest Alaska; and the Inuit language group, spoken in northern Alaska, northern Canada, and Greenland.
This paper is available to read online at https://benjamins.com/#catalog/books/z.215/toc.
The Es... more This paper is available to read online at https://benjamins.com/#catalog/books/z.215/toc.
The Eskimo-Aleut are arctic and subarctic hunter-gatherers known for their geographic
spread and successful adaptation to a harsh climate; they are one of the
canonical examples of a people that spread without agriculture. One of the most
prehistoric recent spreads in this language family occurred about 1000 years
ago, with effects felt throughout coastal Alaska. One area of language contact
and possible spread was in Southeast Alaska, between the Pacific Coast Yupik
language Alutiiq and the Aleutian language Unangam Tunuu. In this paper,
I look at the distribution of cognates and borrowings of subsistence terminology
in Unangam Tunuu, and I show that Alutiiq must have spread into a previously
Unangax! area as a result of warfare rather than subsistence activities.
The Eskimo-Aleut language family is well known for its extreme polysynthesis; in general, however... more The Eskimo-Aleut language family is well known for its extreme polysynthesis; in general, however, descriptions of this extreme polysynthesis more accurately describe the situation in Eskimo languages. In fact, both the degree and the nature of polysynthesis in Aleut are very different. In this paper, I present a detailed discussion of the ways in which Aleut polysynthesis differs from that of Eskimo. In particular, I show that it is not only much reduced, but also more templatic and more fluid than polysynthesis in Eskimo.
Handout from Conference Presentation
Using data from both published texts and original fieldwork... more Handout from Conference Presentation
Using data from both published texts and original fieldwork, I examine neutral and non-neutral word order, the indexing and expression or lack thereof of arguments, and topic and topic/comment structure in Aleut. I explore some challenges that Aleut presents to the theory of information structure as a result of features such as its polysynthesis, verb indexing, and clause chaining.
Aleut is the only language in its branch of the Eskimo-Aleut language family. It is quite diverg... more Aleut is the only language in its branch of the Eskimo-Aleut language family. It is quite divergent from Eskimo languages and is traditionally considered to have developed in isolation, both from Eskimo and neighboring languages, until the Russians colonized the Aleutians in the 18th century (Bergsland 1986). Many assumptions concerning, e.g. the time and place of the proposed split between the two branches of the language family, features present in the proto-language, and subsequent independent developments, have in the past been used to support interpretations of archaeological findings (e.g. Dumond 1965, 1979, 1984). These assumptions, based primarily on rather few and far from finished comparative studies, have not yet been adequately reexamined in decades, despite the subsequent broadening of the field of historical linguistics. Meanwhile, recent advances in the archaeology and genetic investigations of the Aleut and a growing body of linguistic research all increasingly suggest extensive contact with neighboring groups (Crawford, M.H. et al. 2010, inter alia, Leer 1991, Fortescue 1998, 2002, Berge 2012, 2014). In this paper, I argue for the need for a comprehensive reexamination of the linguistic prehistory of Aleut.
Previous studies have noted lexical and grammatical features shared between Unangam Tunuu and nei... more Previous studies have noted lexical and grammatical features shared between Unangam Tunuu and neighboring Eskimo (esp. Alutiiq) and Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit (AET) languages, suggesting prehistoric language contact, without, however, proposing a specific period or mechanism of contact. In this paper, I provide evidence from likely Unangan place names to support archaeological findings suggesting the former presence of UT in contemporary Alutiiq areas; and further, that Unangax̂ presence along the eastern Pacific Coast provides a locus of contact to explain AET-like grammatical features in UT
Unangam Tunuu (UT, a.k.a. Aleut; ISO 639-3 ale) is member of the Eskimo-Aleut (ISO 639-5 esx) lan... more Unangam Tunuu (UT, a.k.a. Aleut; ISO 639-3 ale) is member of the Eskimo-Aleut (ISO 639-5 esx) language family; its extreme divergence was long thought to be a result of its assumed isolation from other languages, the length of time since the branches of the family split, and the effects of prehistoric contact with an unknown substrate language (Bergsland 1986, Krauss 1990, Fortescue et al. 2012). Recent work in archaeology and genetics, however, does not support these assumptions: there appears to have been long-term cultural contact with both neighboring Eskimo and non-Eskimo groups, with several periods of more intense contact, particularly around the historic boundary of the eastern Unangax̂ and Alutiiq peoples. The most recent period, from about 1000 BP, involved the entire Pacific Coast area and may have involved some degree of population replacement (Smith et al., 2009). The nature of this contact is still unclear: Maschner (2016) argues for a former affinity between the cultures of the Aleutian Islands and Kodiak, and the recent arrival of Alutiiq culture on Kodiak, which displaced an indigenous population closely related to the Unangan. Steffian et al. (2016) argue for long-term continuity on Kodiak and thus several thousand years of indigenous Alutiiq culture, recent external influences from the north, and extensive trade and warfare with neighboring cultures, including the Unangan. A number of linguistic studies have noted UT features shared with neighboring languages. Bergsland (1986, 1994) and Berge (2017) have noted lexical borrowings between UT and neighboring Eskimo languages, predominantly from UT into Alutiiq (Alutiiq, ISO 693-3 ems). Leer 1991, Fortescue 1998, 2002, etc., and Berge 2016 have noted grammatical features shared with Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit (AET; ISO 639-5 ath, eya, tli) languages, some of which are typologically unusual and most of which are non-trivial. In most cases, however, no specific period or mechanism of contact have been proposed; these are, however, crucial to any discussion of Eskimo-Aleut, since UT shows substantial contact effects, even extending to signs of language mixing or shift (Berge 2017). UT must have had contact with an AET language or languages and yet these are thought to have been relatively late arrivals on the northern Pacific Coast (ca. 1300 BP, cf. Kari 1989, Workman and Workman 2010), and, furthermore, there are several hundred miles and the Alutiiq language separating UT from the closest AET language. This contact must have been substantial enough for the effects thereof to permeate all UT dialects by the time they are first recorded, in the 18th century. There are suggestions of a late prehistoric westward wave of language features along the Aleutian Islands (Woodbury 1984, Bergsland 1994, Berge 2010) and some indication of an influx of new people (Black 2003, Smith 2009), probably from Kodiak Island (Black 2003, Maschner 2016), but there is no compelling evidence of wholesale population replacement, either on Kodiak Island or along the Aleutians. In this paper, I discuss a) evidence for the former presence of UT in currently Alutiiq areas (especially Kodiak Island and the Kenai Peninsula), which provides a geographical justification for UT-AET language contact effects, b) linguistic evidence suggestive of a language shift from AET to UT and a later language replacement of UT with Alutiiq on Kodiak Island, and c) the problem of apparent language shift(s) without obvious population replacement (cf. Heggarty 2015).
Unangam Tunuu (Aleut) is member of the Eskimo-Aleut (EA) language family; its extreme divergence ... more Unangam Tunuu (Aleut) is member of the Eskimo-Aleut (EA) language family; its extreme divergence has long been thought to be a result of its relative isolation over an extended period of time (Bergsland 1986, Krauss 1990). Recent work in archaeology and genetics, however, is suggestive of long-term cultural contact with both neighboring Eskimo and non-Eskimo groups. The linguistic evidence for contact is not yet clearly established, although there is strongly circumstantial evidence of contact from both lexical studies of the distribution of cognates and borrowings in different semantic domains (Berge 2016a, submitted; Berge and Holton 2015) and grammatical studies of innovations in Unangam Tunuu shared with neighboring non-EA peoples (Leer 1991, Fortescue 1998, Berge 2016b). Language contact effects are apparent in both the lexicon and the grammar, reflecting contact primarily with the Alutiiq Eskimo and the Dena’ina Athabaskans. Lexically, there are distributional differences in the number of cognates and borrowings in certain semantic domains between Unangam Tunuu and Eskimo; and Unangam Tunuu, but not Eskimo, has features more characteristic of Athabaskan languages, such as multiple synonyms for basic terms, multiple phonological variants for many words, and signs of a once-active replacement strategy for nouns. Grammatically, Unangam Tunuu has EA structure: basic word formation, nominal and verbal inflection, verbal mood, deictic terms, particles, etc. appear to reconstruct to EA; however, there have been substantial changes in this grammatical system. Some features of Unangax̂ grammar look like importations from Yupik Eskimo grammar; the deictic system, for example, likes like a Yupik deictic system that has been reorganized and paradigmatically leveled. On the other hand, many features of Unangax̂ grammar are found in neighboring non-EA languages, such as auxiliary verb formations, widespread use of positional nouns, stem-stem compounding (Berge 2016b). These two contact experiences occurred during the same time period, from about 1000-300 BP; however, they had vastly different effects. The arrival of the Alutiiq Eskimos at the easternmost edge of Unangax̂-speaking territory may have resulted in a shift from Unangam Tunuu to Alutiiq, pushing the Unangan further east; but in Unangam Tunuu, the effects of contact were relatively superficial, perhaps limited to certain types of borrowings suggestive of an influx of Alutiiq men and most probably as a result of warfare caused by economic or ecological stress (Berge, submitted). Around the same time, the whole Pacific Coast region shows a radical shift in social complexity, involving social stratification, warfare motivated by the need for social status and slaves (Misarti and Maschner 2015). Slaves, mostly women or children, were often from non-Unangan speaking communities such as the newly arrived Alutiit and Dena’ina. This type of contact shows substratum influences from non-Unangan languages, as a result of imperfect learning during language shift. This explains the few numbers of attested borrowings from other languages, but the extensive borrowing of grammatical structures. In this paper, I discuss the non-linguistic evidence for late prehistoric linguistic contact in Unangam Tunuu, the linguistic evidence for each type of contact discussed above, the methods used to determine linguistic contact as opposed to direct inheritance, and the implications for the study of EA and the identification of substratum effects.
A re-examination of the genesis and development of the Eskimo-Aleut language family, starting wit... more A re-examination of the genesis and development of the Eskimo-Aleut language family, starting with an in investigation into the distribution of Eskimo cognates to non-cognates in Aleut (Unangam Tunuu); Eventual goal: Understanding migration and language contact in the Aleutians and Pacific Coast of Alaska.
Unangam Tunuu is the language of the people indigenous to the Aleutian Islands; it is highly enda... more Unangam Tunuu is the language of the people indigenous to the Aleutian Islands; it is highly endangered, but speaker communities are found in the Aleutian and Pribilof Islands of Alaska and the Commander Islands of Eastern Russia. Pribilof Anĝaĝigan Tunungin / The Way We Talk in the Pribilofs is a serious and in-depth introduction to one of the less-well documented varieties of Unangam Tunuu, that spoken on the Pribilof Islands. The book is intended for adult learners and provides some of the first college-level materials for conversational language learning of Unangam Tunuu, although this also may be used in high schools or for self-study. The book is organized in three units of five lessons each; the first four lessons of each unit introduce vocabulary, grammar, cultural notes, and (in Unit 1 only) pronunciation notes, while the fifth lesson is geared toward review and practice. Most lessons are accompanied by sound files for self-study and practice. The materials lead the learner toward conversational ability, with many examples of individual speaker preferences and different ways of expressing the same thing. All examples were collected from Native speakers from 2002 to 2012. The book is unique in presenting grammatical, lexical, and cultural information specific to the Pribilofs; differences with other documented dialects are noted. In addition, and for ease of reference, the book includes a number of appendices such as a glossary of linguistic terms used in the lessons, a grammatical sketch with many charts of grammatical forms, and an Unangam Tunuu–English / English–Unangam Tunuu lexicon. This is an entry-level introduction to conversational Unangam Tunuu; it is not a comprehensive grammar of the language. Upon completion of these units, a learner will have enough basic language skills to continue learning from Elders and from published materials and recordings.
International Journal of American Linguistics, 2016
This impressively large work by Miyaoka represents the culmination of more than five decades of w... more This impressively large work by Miyaoka represents the culmination of more than five decades of work on Central Alaskan Yupik (CAY). The author has previously published extensively on various aspects of CAY (see the list of references on pages 1590-92), and others have produced general descriptive and pedagogical grammars of various dialects of CAY, as well as more targeted grammatical studies. Not only is this the most comprehensive grammatical work on CAY to date, it is also the most comprehensive grammar of any Eskimo-Aleut language. The book is intended as a reference work on CAY grammar, with the greatest focus on nominal and verbal morphology; it is descriptive rather than theoretical and relies heavily on examples elicited from many native speakers from 1967 to at least 1994 (p. xii). The opening matter includes the acknowledgments, a foreword, a list of tables, a list of phonological rules, abbreviations and conventions, and maps (of the indigenous peoples and languages of Alaska and of the Central Yup'ik area). The main body of the work consists of 54 chapters organized in ten parts, each of which opens with a one-page summary of the topics to be covered. Part 1, with six chapters, presents background information on Eskimo and the position of CAY in relation to the language family, and an overview of the general linguistic and sociolinguistic characteristics of CAY. These preliminary chapters also provide the theoretical approach for this largely descriptive work. Although the author is careful to state that this "is an old-fashioned grammar that is not 'fortified' by recent theoretical formulations" (p. xi), he is equally careful to explain his understandings of key concepts within Saussurian and Hjelmslevian frameworks; for example, the word (phrase, clause, sentence) is viewed as having bilateral articulation in the content and expression planes (pp. 21ff.). Indeed, the preliminary chapters are important for understanding the terminology used in the rest of the book. While the author employs many terms that are standard within the field of Yupik linguistics and even more broadly within Eskimo linguistics, there are nevertheless significant innovations based on more recent theoretical work, e.g., the use of "cosubordinate" (from Van Valin and LaPolla 1997) to describe the function of the appositional mood. The remaining parts present detailed information on the phonology and morphology of CAY. Part 2 consists of three chapters on CAY phonology and specifically on phonological and prosodic rules. Parts 3-5 focus on nominal morphology, including seven chapters on nominals, four chapters on nominal derivation, and eleven chapters on inflection. Parts 6-19 relate to verbs, with five chapters on verbal stems, inflection, and valency, four chapters on verbal derivation, five chapters on more grammaticized derivation, including adverbial modification, tense/aspect/mode, negation, and
International Journal of American Linguistics, 2007
Time in Child Inuktitut is a descriptive study of tense/aspect understanding and usage in very yo... more Time in Child Inuktitut is a descriptive study of tense/aspect understanding and usage in very young speakers of Arctic Quebec Inuktitut, an Eskimo-Aleut language. As American language families go, Eskimo-Aleut is fortunate to possess a very good collection of ...
Uploads
Papers by Anna Berge
they make about what it is they want to focus on, or what they think other people in a conversation know. The study of how people package the information they want to convey in a sentence is called information structure. Some important concepts in the study of information structure include the notions of focus (what a speaker considers particularly important information), topic (what a speaker is talking about), and word order (what information a speaker decides to present first). Indigenous languages, being so different syntactically to widely spoken languages like English, have much to offer to studies of information structure. For example, how are notions such as focus and topic indicated when a sentence may consist of a single word? In this chapter, I present the basic notions of and approaches to information structure and the challenges that Indigenous languages have posed to studies of information structure, then conclude with a brief look at why an understanding of information structure is helpful for language revitalization efforts.
and the very different linguistic effects of the different nature of the respective periods of language contact: prehistoric contact was extensive enough to result in deep structural changes; Russian and early American contact were primarily lexical and did not overwhelm the Aleut language; and the late American period is characterized by language shift. The chapter focuses especially on the speculative first period, as it is of critical important in the divergence of Aleut within its language family.
The Arctic is at the forefront of potentially catastrophic climate change, affecting the survival of most forms of life. In comparison, discussions of language loss in the Arctic may seem trivial, and language researchers sometimes struggle to justify their research in such a context, particularly with respect to documentation and revitalization efforts. However, language loss is a reflection of cultural destabilization of communities in the Arctic, and thus a symptom of the broader problems of environmental change, sustainability, and adaptability. Is language revitalization, therefore, part of the solution? In the following article, I offer a perspective on this question, with special reference to the Eskaleut languages. The Eskaleut languages include Unangam Tunuu (formerly known as Aleut), spoken along the Aleutian Islands, Bering Island, and the Pribilof Islands; the Yupik languages, spoken in the Russian Far East, St. Lawrence Island, and Southwest Alaska; and the Inuit language group, spoken in northern Alaska, northern Canada, and Greenland.
The Eskimo-Aleut are arctic and subarctic hunter-gatherers known for their geographic
spread and successful adaptation to a harsh climate; they are one of the
canonical examples of a people that spread without agriculture. One of the most
prehistoric recent spreads in this language family occurred about 1000 years
ago, with effects felt throughout coastal Alaska. One area of language contact
and possible spread was in Southeast Alaska, between the Pacific Coast Yupik
language Alutiiq and the Aleutian language Unangam Tunuu. In this paper,
I look at the distribution of cognates and borrowings of subsistence terminology
in Unangam Tunuu, and I show that Alutiiq must have spread into a previously
Unangax! area as a result of warfare rather than subsistence activities.
Using data from both published texts and original fieldwork, I examine neutral and non-neutral word order, the indexing and expression or lack thereof of arguments, and topic and topic/comment structure in Aleut. I explore some challenges that Aleut presents to the theory of information structure as a result of features such as its polysynthesis, verb indexing, and clause chaining.
they make about what it is they want to focus on, or what they think other people in a conversation know. The study of how people package the information they want to convey in a sentence is called information structure. Some important concepts in the study of information structure include the notions of focus (what a speaker considers particularly important information), topic (what a speaker is talking about), and word order (what information a speaker decides to present first). Indigenous languages, being so different syntactically to widely spoken languages like English, have much to offer to studies of information structure. For example, how are notions such as focus and topic indicated when a sentence may consist of a single word? In this chapter, I present the basic notions of and approaches to information structure and the challenges that Indigenous languages have posed to studies of information structure, then conclude with a brief look at why an understanding of information structure is helpful for language revitalization efforts.
and the very different linguistic effects of the different nature of the respective periods of language contact: prehistoric contact was extensive enough to result in deep structural changes; Russian and early American contact were primarily lexical and did not overwhelm the Aleut language; and the late American period is characterized by language shift. The chapter focuses especially on the speculative first period, as it is of critical important in the divergence of Aleut within its language family.
The Arctic is at the forefront of potentially catastrophic climate change, affecting the survival of most forms of life. In comparison, discussions of language loss in the Arctic may seem trivial, and language researchers sometimes struggle to justify their research in such a context, particularly with respect to documentation and revitalization efforts. However, language loss is a reflection of cultural destabilization of communities in the Arctic, and thus a symptom of the broader problems of environmental change, sustainability, and adaptability. Is language revitalization, therefore, part of the solution? In the following article, I offer a perspective on this question, with special reference to the Eskaleut languages. The Eskaleut languages include Unangam Tunuu (formerly known as Aleut), spoken along the Aleutian Islands, Bering Island, and the Pribilof Islands; the Yupik languages, spoken in the Russian Far East, St. Lawrence Island, and Southwest Alaska; and the Inuit language group, spoken in northern Alaska, northern Canada, and Greenland.
The Eskimo-Aleut are arctic and subarctic hunter-gatherers known for their geographic
spread and successful adaptation to a harsh climate; they are one of the
canonical examples of a people that spread without agriculture. One of the most
prehistoric recent spreads in this language family occurred about 1000 years
ago, with effects felt throughout coastal Alaska. One area of language contact
and possible spread was in Southeast Alaska, between the Pacific Coast Yupik
language Alutiiq and the Aleutian language Unangam Tunuu. In this paper,
I look at the distribution of cognates and borrowings of subsistence terminology
in Unangam Tunuu, and I show that Alutiiq must have spread into a previously
Unangax! area as a result of warfare rather than subsistence activities.
Using data from both published texts and original fieldwork, I examine neutral and non-neutral word order, the indexing and expression or lack thereof of arguments, and topic and topic/comment structure in Aleut. I explore some challenges that Aleut presents to the theory of information structure as a result of features such as its polysynthesis, verb indexing, and clause chaining.
A number of linguistic studies have noted UT features shared with neighboring languages. Bergsland (1986, 1994) and Berge (2017) have noted lexical borrowings between UT and neighboring Eskimo languages, predominantly from UT into Alutiiq (Alutiiq, ISO 693-3 ems). Leer 1991, Fortescue 1998, 2002, etc., and Berge 2016 have noted grammatical features shared with Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit (AET; ISO 639-5 ath, eya, tli) languages, some of which are typologically unusual and most of which are non-trivial.
In most cases, however, no specific period or mechanism of contact have been proposed; these are, however, crucial to any discussion of Eskimo-Aleut, since UT shows substantial contact effects, even extending to signs of language mixing or shift (Berge 2017). UT must have had contact with an AET language or languages and yet these are thought to have been relatively late arrivals on the northern Pacific Coast (ca. 1300 BP, cf. Kari 1989, Workman and Workman 2010), and, furthermore, there are several hundred miles and the Alutiiq language separating UT from the closest AET language. This contact must have been substantial enough for the effects thereof to permeate all UT dialects by the time they are first recorded, in the 18th century. There are suggestions of a late prehistoric westward wave of language features along the Aleutian Islands (Woodbury 1984, Bergsland 1994, Berge 2010) and some indication of an influx of new people (Black 2003, Smith 2009), probably from Kodiak Island (Black 2003, Maschner 2016), but there is no compelling evidence of wholesale population replacement, either on Kodiak Island or along the Aleutians.
In this paper, I discuss a) evidence for the former presence of UT in currently Alutiiq areas (especially Kodiak Island and the Kenai Peninsula), which provides a geographical justification for UT-AET language contact effects, b) linguistic evidence suggestive of a language shift from AET to UT and a later language replacement of UT with Alutiiq on Kodiak Island, and c) the problem of apparent language shift(s) without obvious population replacement (cf. Heggarty 2015).
Language contact effects are apparent in both the lexicon and the grammar, reflecting contact primarily with the Alutiiq Eskimo and the Dena’ina Athabaskans. Lexically, there are distributional differences in the number of cognates and borrowings in certain semantic domains between Unangam Tunuu and Eskimo; and Unangam Tunuu, but not Eskimo, has features more characteristic of Athabaskan languages, such as multiple synonyms for basic terms, multiple phonological variants for many words, and signs of a once-active replacement strategy for nouns. Grammatically, Unangam Tunuu has EA structure: basic word formation, nominal and verbal inflection, verbal mood, deictic terms, particles, etc. appear to reconstruct to EA; however, there have been substantial changes in this grammatical system. Some features of Unangax̂ grammar look like importations from Yupik Eskimo grammar; the deictic system, for example, likes like a Yupik deictic system that has been reorganized and paradigmatically leveled. On the other hand, many features of Unangax̂ grammar are found in neighboring non-EA languages, such as auxiliary verb formations, widespread use of positional nouns, stem-stem compounding (Berge 2016b).
These two contact experiences occurred during the same time period, from about 1000-300 BP; however, they had vastly different effects. The arrival of the Alutiiq Eskimos at the easternmost edge of Unangax̂-speaking territory may have resulted in a shift from Unangam Tunuu to Alutiiq, pushing the Unangan further east; but in Unangam Tunuu, the effects of contact were relatively superficial, perhaps limited to certain types of borrowings suggestive of an influx of Alutiiq men and most probably as a result of warfare caused by economic or ecological stress (Berge, submitted). Around the same time, the whole Pacific Coast region shows a radical shift in social complexity, involving social stratification, warfare motivated by the need for social status and slaves (Misarti and Maschner 2015). Slaves, mostly women or children, were often from non-Unangan speaking communities such as the newly arrived Alutiit and Dena’ina. This type of contact shows substratum influences from non-Unangan languages, as a result of imperfect learning during language shift. This explains the few numbers of attested borrowings from other languages, but the extensive borrowing of grammatical structures.
In this paper, I discuss the non-linguistic evidence for late prehistoric linguistic contact in Unangam Tunuu, the linguistic evidence for each type of contact discussed above, the methods used to determine linguistic contact as opposed to direct inheritance, and the implications for the study of EA and the identification of substratum effects.