The Language of the Inuit: Syntax, Semantics, and Society in the Arctic

409 Pages·2010·2.41 MB·English

by  Louis-Jacques Dorais

The Language of the Inuit
McGill-Queen’s Native and Northern Series
(In memory of Bruce G. Trigger)
Sarah Carter and Arthur J. Ray, editors
1 When the Whalers Were Up North 10 Strangers among Us
Inuit Memories from the Eastern David Woodman
Arctic
11 When the North Was Red
Dorothy Harley Eber
Aboriginal Education
2 The Challenge of Arctic Shipping in Soviet Siberia
Science, Environmental Assessment, Dennis A. Bartels and
and Human Values Alice L. Bartels
Edited by David L. VanderZwaag
12 From Talking Chiefs to
and Cynthia Lamson
a Native Corporate Elite
3 Lost Harvests The Birth of Class and
Prairie Indian Reserve Farmers Nationalism among
and Government Policy Canadian Inuit
Sarah Carter Marybelle Mitchell
4 Native Liberty, Crown Sovereignty 13 Cold Comfort
The Existing Aboriginal Right My Love Affair with the Arctic
of Self-Government in Canada Graham W. Rowley
Bruce Clark
14 The True Spirit and Original
5 Unravelling the Franklin Mystery Intent of Treaty 7
Inuit Testimony Treaty 7 Elders and Tribal
David C. Woodman Council with Walter Hildebrandt
Dorothy First Rider,
6 Otter Skins, Boston Ships,
and Sarah Carter
and China Goods
The Maritime Fur Trade of the 15 This Distant and
Northwest Coast, 1785–1841 Unsurveyed Country
James R. Gibson A Woman’s Winter at Baffin
Island, 1857–1858
7 From Wooden Ploughs to Welfare
W. Gillies Ross
The Story of the Western Reserves
Helen Buckley 16 Images of Justice
Dorothy Harley Eber
8 In Business for Ourselves
Northern Entrepreneurs 17 Capturing Women
Wanda A. Wuttunee The Manipulation of Cultural
Imagery in Canada’s Prairie West
9 For an Amerindian Autohistory
Sarah A. Carter
An Essay on the Foundations
of a Social Ethic 18 Social and Environmental
Georges E. Sioui Impacts of the James Bay
Hydroelectric Project
Edited by James F. Hornig
19 Saqiyuq 28 The Arctic Voyages of Martin
Stories from the Lives of Frobisher
Three Inuit Women An Elizabethan Adventure
Nancy Wachowich in Robert McGhee
collaboration with Apphia
29 Northern Experience and
Agalakti Awa, Rhoda Kaukjak
the Myths of Canadian Culture
Katsak, and Sandra Pikujak
Renée Hulan
Katsak
30 The White Man's Gonna Getcha
20 Justice in Paradise
The Colonial Challenge to
Bruce Clark
the Crees in Quebec
21 Aboriginal Rights and Toby Morantz
Self-Government
31 The Heavens Are Changing
The Canadian and Mexican
Nineteenth-Century Protestant
Experience in North
Missions and Tsimshian
American Perspective
Christianity
Edited by Curtis Cook
Susan Neylan
and Juan D. Lindau
32 Arctic Migrants/Arctic Villagers
22 Harvest of Souls
The Transformation of Inuit
The Jesuit Missions and
Settlement in the Central Arctic
Colonialism in North America,
David Damas
1632–1650
Carole Blackburn 33 Arctic Justice
On Trial for Murder –
23 Bounty and Benevolence
Pond Inlet, 1923
A History of Saskatchewan
Shelagh D. Grant
Treaties
Arthur J. Ray, Jim Miller, 34 Eighteenth-Century
and Frank Tough Naturalists of Hudson Bay
Stuart Houston, Tim Ball,
24 The People of Denendeh
and Mary Houston
Ethnohistory of the Indians of
Canada’s Northwest Territories 35 The American Empire
June Helm and the Fourth World
Anthony J. Hall
25 The Marshall Decision
and Native Rights 36 Uqalurait
Ken Coates An Oral History of Nunavut
Compiled and edited by John
26 The Flying Tiger
Bennett and Susan Rowley
Women Shamans and Storytellers
of the Amur 37 Living Rhythms
Kira Van Deusen Lessons in Aboriginal Economic
Resilience and Vision
27 Alone in Silence
Wanda Wuttunee
European Women in the Canadian
North before 1940 38 The Making of an Explorer
Barbara E. Kelcey George Hubert Wilkins and
the Canadian Arctic Expedition,
1913–1916
Stuart E. Jenness
39 Chee Chee 51 Firekeepers of the
A Study of Aboriginal Suicide Twenty-First Century
Alvin Evans First Nations Women Chiefs
Cora J. Voyageur
40 Strange Things Done
Murder in Yukon History 52 Isuma
Ken S. Coates and William R. Inuit Video Art
Morrison Michael Robert Evans
41 Healing through Art 53 Outside Looking In
Ritualized Space and Cree Identity Viewing First Nations Peoples
Nadia Ferrara in Canadian Dramatic
Television Series
42 Coyote and Raven Go Canoeing
Mary Jane Miller
Coming Home to the Village
Peter Cole 54 Kiviuq
An Inuit Hero and
43 Something New in the Air
His Siberian Cousins
The Story of First Peoples
Kira Van Deusen
Television Broadcasting
in Canada 55 Native Peoples and Water Rights
Lorna Roth Irrigation, Dams, and the Law
in Western Canada
44 Listening to Old Woman Speak
Kenichi Matsui
Natives and Alternatives in
Canadian Literature 56 The Rediscovered Self
Laura Smyth Groening Indigenous Identity
and Cultural Justice
45 Robert and Francis Flaherty
Ronald Niezen
A Documentary Life, 1883–1922
Robert J. Christopher 57 As affecting the fate of my absent
husband
46 Talking in Context
Selected Letters of Lady Franklin
Language and Identity in
Concerning the Search for
Kwakwaka’wakw Society
the Lost Franklin Expedition,
Anne Marie Goodfellow
1848–1860
47 Tecumseh’s Bones Edited by Erika Behrisch Elce
Guy St-Denis
58 The Language of the Inuit
48 Constructing Colonial Discourse Syntax, Semantics, and Society
Captain Cook at Nootka Sound in the Arctic
Noel Elizabeth Currie Louis-Jacques Dorais
49 The Hollow Tree 59 Inuit Shamanism and Christianity
Fighting Addiction with Transitions and Transformations
Traditional Healing in the Twentieth Century
Herb Nabigon Frederic Laugrand and
Jarich Oosten
50 The Return of Caribou to Ungava
A.T. Bergerud, Stuart Luttich,
and Lodewijk Camps
The Language of the Inuit
Syntax, Semantics, and Society
in the Arctic
LOUIS-JACQUES DORAIS
McGill-Queen’s University Press
Montreal & Kingston • London • Ithaca
© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2010
isbn 978-0-7735-3646-3
Legal deposit first quarter 2010
Bibliothèque nationale du Québec
Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free
(100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the
Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through
the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided
by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Funding has also been provided by the Association Inuksiutiit
Katimajiit.
McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the
Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also
acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada
through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (bpidp)
for our publishing activities.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Dorais, Louis-Jacques, 1945–
The language of the Inuit: syntax, semantics, and society in the
Arctic / Louis-Jacques Dorais.
(McGill-Queen's native and northern series; 58)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-7735-3646-3
1. Inuktitut language. 2. Inuktitut language – Social aspects.
3. Inuit – Languages. I. Title. II. Series: McGill-Queen’s native
and northern series; 58
pm50.d669 2010 497'.124 c2009-904223-1
This book was typeset by Interscript in 10.5/13 Sabon.
Contents
Maps and Tables ix
Preface xi
Introduction 3
1 The Eskaleut Family of Languages 7
2 The Inuit Language 27
3 The Nunavik Dialect of Inuktitut 66
4 The Prehistory of the Inuit Language 88
5 Historical Sources and Linguistic Change 106
6 Semantics, Neology, and Oral Literature 135
7 Literacy and Formal Education 172
8 Language Contact and Bilingualism 215
9 The Current Status of the Inuit Language 235
10 Conclusion: Language and Identity in the Arctic 261
appendices
1 The Possessive Noun Declension (Nunavik Inuktitut) 279
2 The Grammatical Endings of Verbs (Nunavik Inuktitut) 283
3 Categories of Lexical Affixes with Nunavik Inuktitut
Examples 289
viii Contents
4 Inuit First and Home Languages in Inuit nunaat (Canada)
in 2006 292
Notes 297
References 343
Index 387
Maps and Tables
maps
1 The Eskaleut World 8
2 The Alaskan Languages 12
3 Western Canadian Inuktun 33
4 Eastern Canadian Inuktitut 37
5 Greenlandic Kalaallisut 48
6 The Thule Migrations 99
tables
1 Eskaleut Languages and Dialects 28
2 Principal Phonological Characteristics of the Inuit Dialects 63
3 The Standard Canadian Inuit Syllabic and Roman Writing
Systems 181