Language Documentation, Description, and Maintenance Activities for Sugpiaq (ISO 639-3) in Nanwalek

FAIN: PD-266988-19

University of Alaska, Fairbanks (Fairbanks, AK 99775-7500)
Anna Mary Sophia Berge (Project Director: November 2018 to present)

Documentation and description of Sugpiaq, a highly endangered Yupik language spoken on the Alaska Peninsula, Kodiak Island, and the Kenai Peninsula. The project would result in documentation of the language and would include collaboration with local teachers in the creation of language-learning materials.

Sugpiaq (ems) is a highly endangered Yupik language (of the Eskimo-Aleut language family) traditionally spoken on the Alaska Peninsula, Kodiak Island, and on the Kenai Peninsula in the lower Cook Inlet region. It consists of several distinct dialects, including Alaska Peninsula Alutiiq, Kodiak Alutiik, Kenai Sugpiaq, and Chugach.  While documentation of its closest relative -- Central Alaskan Yup'ik -- has been comparatively extensive, little systematic work has been done on Sugpiaq, and many assumptions about the language are based on our understanding of its relative, Central Alaskan Yu’pik. While there has been some documentation of Sugpiaq, it is unpublished, and as a result, study of Sugpiaq is disadvantaged in a number of important ways, including the community's ability to maintain or revitalize the language. This project addresses these problems in the following ways: two summers of fieldwork will focus on the documentation of Sugpiaq syntax. The results of fieldwork will inform: a) a description of syntactic aspects of contemporary spoken Sugpiaq, b) an investigation of prehistoric contact between the Sugpiat and the Unangan (a.k.a. Aleut) and Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit language groups, and c) a collaboration with local language teachers in the production of language learning materials for the language maintenance and revitalization programs. The latter involves regular discussions on methods of adapting the results of fieldwork to language lessons and training in elicitation techniques to expand these lessons.

Associated Products

Berge, Anna. 2019. “How do Historical Linguistics and Language Revitalization Inform Each Other? A Case Study from Unangam Tunuu (Aleut) and Sugt’stun (Pacific Coast Yupik).” (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Berge, Anna. 2019. “How do Historical Linguistics and Language Revitalization Inform Each Other? A Case Study from Unangam Tunuu (Aleut) and Sugt’stun (Pacific Coast Yupik).”
Author: Anna Berge
Abstract: Just as understanding another person’s perspective can help in one’s own life, understanding one field of study results in a better understanding of the needs of the other field. In this paper, I discuss how work on language documentation and revitalization can inform studies of a language’s history, and vice versa, drawing on my experience with Eskaleut (EA) and in particular of Unangam Tunuu (UT), formerly known as Aleut. On a project to document UT and create adult language learning materials, I had to describe UT morphosyntax in sufficient detail for language learners; in so doing, I discovered substantial heretofore unidentified differences between UT and Yupik/Inuit languages, such as in strategies for combining words, or for expressing causation. These, in turn, led me to investigate differences between Yupik/Inuit languages and UT more systematically, and to explore the possibility of prehistoric language contact as a source of these differences. In looking at borrowing patterns between UT and the neighboring Yupik language Alutiiq, I discovered gaps in the documentation of place naming strategies, making it difficult to establish the origins and meanings of place names, despite excellent collections of place names themselves, and despite community prioritization of indigenous names, including the creation of new names. This led me full circle back to documentation efforts.
Date: 10/5/2019
Primary URL: http://https://sites.grenadine.uqam.ca/sites/inuitstudies2019/en/isc2019/schedule/166/How%20language%20documentation%20and%20revitalization%20help%20in%20understanding%20language%20history,%20and%20vice%20versa:%20A%20case%20study%20from%20Unangam%20Tunuu
Primary URL Description: conference schedule and abstract
Conference Name: 21st Inuit Studies Conference

Sketch of Alutiiq (Book Section)
Title: Sketch of Alutiiq
Author: Anna Berge
Editor: Anna Berge, Anja Arnhold, Naja Trondhjem
Abstract: (an abstract has not yet been created; article is under review)
Year: 2020
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Book Title: Handbook of Eskaleut Languages

Innovation in Eskaleut Dependent Moods (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Innovation in Eskaleut Dependent Moods
Author: Anna Berge
Abstract: In this paper, I argue that dependent clauses in Eskaleut languages (Unangam Tunuu or Aleut, Yupik languages, Sirenikski, and Inuit) are more innovative morphologically than are independent clauses. (The Eskaleut moods have been studied and reconstructed by numerous scholars (Hammerich 1936, Bergsland 1964, 1989, Fortescue 1984, 1995, 1998, and Vakhtin 1979, 1986); but they have not been explicitly studied from the perspective of this paper.) Dependency in Eskaleut clauses is indicated in part by verbal mood and person inflection. The term ‘mood’ covers several functions, including speech act, relative time in clause combination, and various types of dependence (embedded clauses, appositional clauses, etc.). Eskaleut moods are typically divided as in the following table (parentheses and italics are explained below): Independent Dependent Indicative Consequential (Interrogative) Conditional (Imperative/Optative) Conjunctive (Participial) …Language particular moods Moods frequently have multiple functions: the conjunctive and participial moods, for example, often function independently, although structurally, they may be dependent. Dependence is more clearly indicated by the person inflection that follows the mood. Thus, person inflection in independent moods is morphologically similar to absolutive and relative possessed nominal inflection. Dependent moods are characterized by subject inflection related to relative possessed nominal inflection; the differentiation of 3rd and 3rd coreferential persons; and unique object morphemes not otherwise found in the inflectional system. Some moods (indicated by parentheses in the table) have mixed person inflection, e.g. 1st and 2nd persons have independent inflection and 3rd person has dependent inflection. Different languages do not show the same mixed inflections. A comparison of moods across the language family suggests that the original moods must have included the indicative, the conjunctive, the consequential, an
Date: 08/26/2022
Conference Name: Societas Linguistica Europea

Siberian Yupik Influence on Sirenikski Verbal Inflection (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Siberian Yupik Influence on Sirenikski Verbal Inflection
Author: Anna Berge
Abstract: 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 (cf. the pervasive Russian inflections in the well-known mixed language, Copper Island Aleut). One aspect of Eskaleut morphosyntax that has generated a great deal of interest is the parallelism between possessive inflection on nouns and person inflection on verbs, and attempts to reconstruct the systems include Hammerich 1936, Bergsland 1951, 1964, 1989, Vakhtin 1979, 1986, Fortescue 1984, 1995, 1998, etc. Most of these studies, despite acknowledging language contact, explain the modern reflexes of verbal person inflection in the respective languages via the traditional comparative method. The many irregularities require much speculation, however, and the motivations for the proposed developments are not always evident. For example, there are two variants of 2sgO verbal inflection, -tən and -kən, presumed to have come from an originally independent pronominal stem *təkə-. 1sgS/2sgO forms almost universally involve the variant -kən, while almost all others use -tən. Why this should be so is still unclear. Many aspects of Eskaleut inflection remain obscure, despite the excellent studies listed above. In this paper, I revisit the verbal inflection of the Eskaleut language Sirenikski, examining its systems of nominal and verbal person inflections within the context of the verbal mood system. Sirenikski has been in close contact with Central Siberian Yupik (CSY) (as well as with non-Eskaleut Chukchi), and contact effects have been well described, including effects on its phonology, prosodic system, lexicon, and to a lesser extent on its derivational morphology. Much less work has been devoted to teasing ou
Date: 08/03/2022
Conference Name: International Conference on Historical Linguistics

Tracing Contact in the closely related Eskaleut languages of the North Pacific Rim (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Tracing Contact in the closely related Eskaleut languages of the North Pacific Rim
Author: Anna Berge
Abstract: Language contact is pervasive in the history of all of the Eskaleut languages of the North Pacific Rim, and the languages Language contact is pervasive in the history of all of the Eskaleut languages of the North Pacific Rim, and the languages show contact effects regardless of typological similarity or degree of relatedness. Thus, phonological, morphological, and syntactic features indicative of long-term contact are shared between different branches of the family (Inuit and Yupik, Sirenikski and Yupik), as well as between languages so distantly related that they are typologically different in important ways (Unangam Tunuu, aka Aleut, and Yupik, specifically Alutiiq). Several languages also had extended contacts with other language families (Sirenikski and Siberian Yupik languages with Chukchi; Alaskan Yupik languages and Unanam Tunuu with Athabaskan languages). More important factors influencing feature sharing appear to be the degree and length of contact between languages. Evidence of contact is both direct and indirect, and both recent and of more ancient date. Nevertheless, relatedness has tended to mask contact effects, and they are frequently only recoverable if the evidence is direct or if there is support from other sources. Contact effects have a direct impact on our interpretations of the age of the language family, and the study thereof is crucial to understanding the tangled relationships between the individual languages. In this presentation, I expound upon these points and I argue that a) the languages have a very long history of intermingling, making the genetic family tree model inaccurate, and b) that a cross-disciplinary approach, involving linguistics, archaeology, genetics, and the paleoenvironment, is necessary to adequately reconstruct traces of prehistoric contact.
Date: 05/24/2021
Conference Name: Dynamics of Language Contact in the Circumpolar Region, Moscow, Russia

Tracing Contact in the closely related Eskaleut languages of the North Pacific Rim (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Tracing Contact in the closely related Eskaleut languages of the North Pacific Rim
Author: Anna Berge
Abstract: Language contact is pervasive in the history of all of the Eskaleut languages of the North Pacific Rim, and the languages show contact effects regardless of typological similarity or degree of relatedness. Thus, phonological, morphological, and syntactic features indicative of long-term contact are shared between different branches of the family (Inuit and Yupik, Sirenikski and Yupik), as well as between languages so distantly related that they are typologically different in important ways (Unangam Tunuu, aka Aleut, and Yupik, specifically Alutiiq). Several languages also had extended contacts with other language families (Sirenikski and Siberian Yupik languages with Chukchi; Alaskan Yupik languages and Unanam Tunuu with Athabaskan languages). More important factors influencing feature sharing appear to be the degree and length of contact between languages. Evidence of contact is both direct and indirect, and both recent and of more ancient date. Nevertheless, relatedness has tended to mask contact effects, and they are frequently only recoverable if the evidence is direct or if there is support from other sources. Contact effects have a direct impact on our interpretations of the age of the language family, and the study thereof is crucial to understanding the tangled relationships between the individual languages. In this presentation, I expound upon these points and I argue that a) the languages have a very long history of intermingling, making the genetic family tree model inaccurate, and b) that a cross-disciplinary approach, involving linguistics, archaeology, genetics, and the paleoenvironment, is necessary to adequately reconstruct traces of prehistoric contact.
Date: 11/19/2020
Conference Name: Workshop on Tracing Contact in Closely Related Languages, Zurich, Switzerland

ANL 293: Alaska Native Languages and Archives (Course or Curricular Material)
Title: ANL 293: Alaska Native Languages and Archives
Author: Anna Berge
Abstract: Course Description: The course will introduce students to the use of Archives for the purposes of accessing Alaska Native Language materials, assessing further documentation / language learning materials needs, and using archived materials in new and creative ways. I will go over 1) what archives are, how they are organized, how to use them, and how they interact with donors and users, then 2) we will look more specifically at the Alaska Native Language Archive (ANLA) and the role of language documentation in its mission and development; how to use ANLA for multiple purposes, including finding materials, finding information, and assessing potential uses of this information, and 3) the creation of new products using archives such as ANLA, and how to develop greater community-based projects dependent on archives.
Year: 2022
Audience: Undergraduate

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