| Mednyj Aleut | |
|---|---|
| Copper Island Creole, Copper Island Aleut | |
| Native to | Russia |
| Region | Commander Islands |
| Ethnicity | Alaskan Creoles ofMedny Island |
| Extinct | 5 October 2022, with the death of Gennady Yakovlev[1] |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | mud |
| Glottolog | medn1235 |
| ELP | Copper Island Aleut |
Mednyj Aleut (also calledCopper IslandCreole orCopper Island Aleut[3]) was amixed language spoken onBering Island.
Mednyj Aleut is characterized by a blending ofRussian andAleut (primarilyAttu) elements in most components of the grammar, but most profoundly in the verbal morphology.[3] The Aleut component comprises the majority of the vocabulary, all the derivational morphology, part of the simple sentence syntax, nominal inflection and certain other grammatical means. The Russian components comprise verbal inflection, negation, infinitive forms, part of the simple sentence syntax and all of the compound sentence syntax.[4]
Originally, the language was spoken byAlaskan Creoles onCopper Island, from where it takes its name. The Alaskan Creoles are the descendants ofpromyshlenniki men employed by theRussian-American Company (RAC) andAleut andAlutiiq women, and formed a small but influential population inRussian Alaska. They were bilingual in Russian and Aleut, and were defined as a high-status special social group by the RAC.[5]
Due to increased contact with the Russian language in the 1940s, the majority of the population switched to using Russian instead of Mednyj Aleut. In 1970, the entire population of Medny Island was moved to Bering Island. It was spoken by two elderly speakers inNikolskoe (Bering Island) until 2022.[6]
Mednyj Aleut's consonant inventory mostly consists of phonemes shared between Aleut and Russian. Theaspiratedsonorants/mʰ/,/nʰ/,/lʰ/and/jʰ/, and theuvulars /χ/ and /ʁ/, come from Aleut and do not exist in Russian, while thelabials,stops /p/ and /b/, andfricatives /f/ and /v/ come from Russian and do not exist in Aleut. Labials are mostly used in words of Russian origin, while aspirated sonorants are used only in native Aleut words.[5]
| Labial | Dental | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | asp. | plain | asp. | plain | asp. | |||||
| Plosive | voiceless | p | t | c | k | q | ||||
| voiced | b | d | ||||||||
| Fricatives | voiceless | f | sʃ | x | χ | |||||
| voiced | v | zʒ | ɣ | ʁ | ||||||
| Nasals | m | mʰ | n | nʰ | ŋ | |||||
| Liquids | w | r | j | jʰ | h | |||||
| Laterals | l | lʰ | ||||||||
The vowel inventory of Mednyj Aleut contains three pairs of vowels from Aleut (/i/, /u/, /a/) and two pairs, /o/ and /e/, from Russian. Vowel length is preserved in Aleut loanwords, and vowels are also lengthened in the verbal inflectional endings borrowed from Russian.[5]
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i iː | u uː | |
| Mid | e eː | o oː | |
| Open | a aː |
Mednyj Aleut has a heavily Russian-influenced syntax. In particular, it has a relatively free word order in comparison to Aleut, which is strictlySOV. However, when thedirect object in a sentence is apersonal pronoun or when anadjunct in a sentence is an Aleut word, SOV word order is used.
on
he
hixtaa-l
say-PAST
ni-but
no-will.3SG
timas
us
agítal
with
ayx̂acaa-t'
go-INF
on hixtaa-l ni-but timas agítal ayx̂acaa-t'
he say-PAST no-will.3SG us with go-INF
'He said that he would not go with us.'
Russiancomplementizers,conjunctions and manywh-words are also used:
agitaayani-ƞ
friends-my
u
at
min'a
me
katorəye
which
agítaki
with
abaa-l
work-PAST
pucti
almost
huzúƞi
all
agitaayani-ƞ u min'a katorəye agítaki abaa-l pucti huzúƞi ax̂salaa-l-i
friends-my at me which with work-PAST almost all die-PAST-PL
'Of my friends with whom I worked, almost all are dead.'
Additionally, negation is similar to Russian: the Russian prefixni- is used as the negative suffix and the phrasenetu/nitu(ka) ('there is no') is used as a special negative existential construction.
ani
they
ani ni-saxtazaa-yut
they not-lazy-PRES.3PL
'They are not lazy.'
ya
I
ni-bud-u
not-will-1SG
iĝataa-t'
hurry-INF
ya ni-bud-u iĝataa-t'
I not-will-1SG hurry-INF
'I will not hurry.'
saalugula-x̂
rain-NMLZ
niitu
there.is.no
saalugula-x̂ ilasa-kali-l-i, saalugula-x̂-ta niitu
rain-NMLZ wait-start-PAST-PL rain-NMLZ-EMPH there.is.no
'We started to wait for rain, but there is no rain.'
Like Russian, Mednyj Aleut does not usecopulas in thepresent tense. The verb 'to be' is the Aleut word 'u-', but Russian verbal inflections are used for it. For example, 'uu-it' means 'is' and 'uu-l-i' means 'were'. The copula is only used in past tense when the predicate is nominal. When the predicate is adjectival, the predicate is inflected for the past tense like a verb is.[5]
tátka-ƞ
father-my
u
at
min'a
me
aleuuta-x̂
Aleut
uu-l
was-PAST
tátka-ƞ u min'a aleuuta-x̂ uu-l
father-my at me Aleut was-PAST
'My father was Aleut.'
i
and
vúsim
eight
sútuk
days
saalugula-x̂
rain
i vúsim sútuk saalugula-x̂ ni-bil-a
and eight days rain not-be.PAST-FEM
'And for eight days there was no rain.'
The derivational and inflectional morphology of nouns in Mednyj Aleut comes from Aleut. Notably, Mednyj Aleut contains morphological categories that do not exist in Russian, such asduality. 61.5% of nouns in Mednyj Aleut are of Aleut origin, with the rest coming from Russian.[7]
| Singular | Dual | Plural | |
|---|---|---|---|
| -x̂ | -x | -ƞ, -s | |
| 1SG | -n | -ki-ƞ | -ni-ƞ |
| 2SG | -n | -ki-n | -t |
| 1PL | -mis | -ki | -mis |
| 2PL | -ci | -ki | -ci |
The finite, infinitive and the majority of the nonfinite forms of verbs is of Russian origin while the nominal inflectional morphology is of Aleut origin. For example, this table compares selected finite verb forms for the verb 'to work' between the Bering Island dialect of Aleut, Mednyj Aleut and Russian. The Russian-origin influences are added to the verb stem, which is of Aleut origin.[8] 94% of verbs in the Mednyj Aleut lexicon are of Aleut origin, with a minority coming from Russian. Mednyj Aleut is characterized as considerably moreagglutinative than Russian, which is generally consideredfusional.[7]
| Bering Island Aleut | Mednyj Aleut | Russian | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Present | 1SG | awa-ku-q | aba-ju | rabota-ju |
| 2SG | awa-ku-x̂t | aba-iš | rabota-eš' | |
| 3G | awa-ku-x̂ | aba-it | rabota-et | |
| 1PL | awa-ku-s | aba-im | rabota-em | |
| 2PL | awa-ku-x̂t-xičix | aba-iti | rabota-ete | |
| Past | 3SG | awa-na-x̂ | ||
| MSG | aba-l | rabota-l | ||
| Future | 3SG | awa-ƞan ana-x̂ | bud-it aba-t' | bud-et rabota-t' |
| Imperative | 2SG | awa-ʒa | aba-j | rabota-j |
| Indigenous | |
|---|---|
| Sign languages | |
| Non-Indigenous | |
| Aleut |  | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Eskimoan |
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| See also | |||||
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