księżyc - Yugcetun

[księżycowy]

is the parka, in german Parka or Anorak.

What are you referencing?

[johnH]

atkuk › (parka)
I read that parka and Anorak are destinguished in german and were formerly destinguished in english so it seamed a relevant question to me.
Also, parka and anorak both come from circumpolar languages.

Example this is not an anorak, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Inuit ... -06-15.jpg
However the following is an anorak
http://leegertrained.files.wordpress.co ... /inuit.jpg
the people however are inuits.

[księżycowy]

Good question. I'm not sure what type they were referencing in the book.

[księżycowy]

So, this Powwow will be special! I'm going back to one of the first NAILs I ever studied!
I'd say my Yup'ik is on life-support, but that is a gross overstatement. Anyway for the next week or two I'll be reviewing my old notes here. After that I hope to do at least one lesson a week. I'll post notes and/or anything I find interesting as I move along. By the end of the Powwow I'll write a composition of some sort in Yup'ik.

For resources, I have A Practical Grammar of the Central Alaskan Yup'ik Eskimo Language (still ), Yup'ik Eskimo Dictionary (first edition), and Yup'ik Stories Read Aloud all by either Steven or Anna Jacobson (Anna is Steven's wife, and a native speaker). The grammar and stories come with audio too. Oh, and I also have two smaller pamphlets on the language too, namely a "word-chooser" and a phrasebook.

I'll try to do weekly updates. Until next time.

[Bijlee]

I'm excited to watch your progress! I love Yup'ik. I was toying with the idea of doing it or Aleut for my Powwow language, but I decided against it because I didn't think I could dedicate myself to it as much as I could with Creek right now.

Post everything you learn!

[księżycowy]

I'm excited to watch your progress! I love Yup'ik. I was toying with the idea of doing it or Aleut for my Powwow language, but I decided against it because I didn't think I could dedicate myself to it as much as I could with Creek right now.

I love the Eskimo-Aleut languages. It has to be on my top 5 language families list.

Post everything you learn!

Sure will.

[księżycowy]

So, I've been reviewing the first chapter, which is only on the phonology of the language, and I must say Yup'ik has a very rich phonology! Whew! But it's cool. I was listening to one of the recordings I have of some stories, and it sounds like no other language I've had to opportunity to hear.

So, I'll post some additions to my notes on the pronunciation.

Frequently sounds end up losing their voicing around other voiceless sounds, which is nothing spectacular.

So Yup'ik has an interesting stress system. It relies on the syllable structure in a word. Basically any second simple syllable gets stress, with the exception of the last syllable of a word. This process is more correctly called rhythmic lengthening and lengthens the vowel. (They are called "hatted vowels in Jakobson's grammar. As in â, î, û. This is only a grammatical notation, it's not used in the standard orthography. And it's also used with consonants to mark when they are automatically geminated, see below.)

The types of syllables in Yup'ik are: (V = vowel, C = consonant)
V (at the beginning of a word), CV, CVV, CVC, CVVC
The syllables that constitute a "simple" syllable are V and CV.

So then, if we have the word qayaliciqngatuten, it breaks down into syllables as such:

qa	yâ	li	ciq	nga	tû	ten
1	2	1	x	1	2	x

In other words, the syllables <ya> and <tu> get the lengthening/stress. The syllable <ciq> breaks the chain of simple syllables and thus we have to start back at one afterword.

There is also a similar phenomenon with consonants that lengthens them (automatic gemination). Basically, if a consonant is flanked by a single non-rhythmically lengthened vowel before it and any two vowels after it, the consonant gets lengthened.
For example:
alingevkenii

a	lî	ngev	ke	n̂ii
1	2	x	1	x

(This word actually give example to both rules explored so far)

More coming later.

[księżycowy]

Now two more sets of rules and we're mostly done with the phonology.

The Apostrophe:
- Indicates gemination of the preceding consonant.
ex. ner’uq
- Comes between consonants to prevent devoicing.
ex. tep’lek
- To distinguish between ng [ŋ] and n’g [nɣ].
ex. tan’geq vs. angeq --> [tanɣeq] vs. [aŋeq]
- Comes between vowels to stop automatic gemination of the preceding consonant. This does not represent a glottal stop between the vowels, and is not pronounced.
ex. pika’antuq vs. *pik̂aantuq
- Comes at the end of a word when something is omitted.
ex. qaill’ = qaillun

Hatted 'e':
-Generally speaking (as we shall see later in the grammar), a rhythmically lengthened <e> is dropped when forming a word*, unless is between two same or similar consonants. The second consonant then gets automatic gemination.
ex. tumemi --> *tumêmi -->tumem̂i


*In other words, when adding endings.

And that basically does it for the phonology of the language.
Grammar review to follow.

[księżycowy]

So, now I'm going over the 2^nd lesson. My impression after reviewing the first lesson is that this will be slow going, but I pretty much guessed that at the start. All those phonological changes will keep me guessing for a while.

More updates to come.

[księżycowy]

Been about a week and I'm still working through lesson 2. Probably not going to be any major updates for another week or two, seeing as I've already taken notes on most of lesson 2 and 3.

[vijayjohn]

One of the professors at the University of Texas (where I was both an undergrad and a grad student in linguistics), Tony Woodbury, is an expert on Eskimo languages and did fieldwork on Cup'ik in Chevak (I'd transcribe his pronunciation of that placename in English as [ˈtʃʰivæk]. He now works primarily on Chatino, which is spoken way down in Oaxaca, although FWIR he makes frequent references to Cup'ik anyway, even when discussing Chatino with the grad students he's advising ). Unfortunately, I don't think I have any of his examples of Cup'ik with me anymore, but maybe at least some of his papers can be found online.

I remember him making at least a few interesting observations about it.

One is that the numeral system is vigesimal (based on counting not only on the fingers but also on the toes).

Another is that it's so agglutinative that the only parts of speech that exist in the language, really, are nouns (e.g. arnaq /aʀnaq/ 'man'; I forget which syllable is stressed (the first?), but I do remember that the [ʀ] is a uvular tap as in other Eskimo languages), verbs, and a few particles (including uuminaqsaga [uːmiˈnaqsaɣa] 'darn it!' which is the only one I remember). Everything else is expressed just by adding suffixes. One example he gave of agglutination in this language was this word:

ivrucilistengqersugnaitut [ivʀuˈtʃilistə̃ŋqəʀsuɣnajtut] (which IIRC means 'they definitely don't have someone to make them waterskin boots')

formed from ivruci 'waterskin boots'. (I think the morphological breakdown is ivruci-li-ste-ngqer-sugnait-ut, but I don't really remember what the other morphemes mean ).

He also said that when you're pronouncing such long words, if you happen to stumble, you can't just pick up where you left off in the word; you have to start all the way at the beginning all over again. So you couldn't say "ivrucilistenga...-ngqersugnaitut" or even "ivruciliste...nqersugnaitut" or anything like that. Instead, you'd have to say something like "ivrucistenga- ivrucilistengqersugnaitut" (if you're lucky enough to only stumble once ).

Finally, Tony once told me an interesting anecdote about doing fieldwork in Chevak. One time, he was working with his informant, a kind of older guy, trying to get grammaticality judgments, so he formulated a sentence and asked the informant whether it was a "good" sentence. (Presumably, the sentence meant something like 'The dog was on the mountain.') The informant (apparently looking a bit bewildered) said something like: "...No, that's not a good sentence. Look around you. There are dogs everywhere here. On the roads, on our sleds..." So then Tony tried out another sentence, and then the informant said, "Ohhhh. A bear on the mountain. Now that would've been interesting!"

[księżycowy]

Yeah, between the agglutinative grammar and the phonology, I was drawn to Yup'ik quite easily. Of course, once you get past the surface you get bombarded with phonological changes and grammar rules out the wazoo.

Ok, so to update my notes for the Powwow: December was abysmal for Yup'ik studies. But I'm working at it again. I'll update soon.

[księżycowy]

Alas, I most attend to the French and German portion of my TAC. I'll be back some day though.

[vijayjohn]

Aw, that's too bad, but it's great that you're not giving up, like, forever! Maybe I'll learn Yup'ik some day, too. Maybe.

[księżycowy]

Definitely not forever!

[vijayjohn]

That's always great to hear I wanna learn some indigenous languages of the Americas, too, so that my list of languages spans a wider range and does a better job of representing the diversity of the world's languages.