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Part of
Language Dispersal Beyond Farming
Edited by Martine Robbeets and Alexander Savelyev
[Not in series 215] 2017
► pp. 47–73

Chapter 3
Subsistence terms in Unangam Tunuu (Aleut)

| Alaska Native Language Center

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 Unangax̂ area as a result of warfare rather than subsistence activities.

Keywords: Eskimo-Aleut, hunter-gatherers, prehistoric language contact, distribution of cognates, borrowed subsistence terminology, warfare
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
  • 3.Subsistence terminology and language spread
    • 3.1Evidence for early agriculture?
    • 3.2Traditional subsistence terminology
      • 3.2.1Methodology
      • 3.2.2Eskimo-Aleut cognates
  • 4.Major patterns
    • 4.1Unequal distribution of cognates between semantic domains
    • 4.2Gender differences in proportions of cognates
      • Eskimo sewing terms with Unangan cognates
      • Unangan sewing terms with Eskimo cognates
    • 4.3Correlations in proportions of cognates and borrowings between Eskimo and Unangam Tunuu
    • 4.4Cognates and Post-Eskimo-Aleut split technology
    • 4.5The motivations for language spread
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 21 December 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/z.215.03ber
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Berge, Anna
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