Anna Berge
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
Address: Alaska Native Language Center
421 Brooks Building
University of Alaska Fairbanks
Fairbanks, AK 99775
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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.