Sirenik, Sirenik Yupik,OLAC resources in and about the Sirenik Yupik language Sireniki YupikSireniki Yupik Sea-Ice Dictionary (also Old Sirenik or Vuteen), or Sirenikskiy, is an extinct Eskaleut language. It was spoken in and around the village of Sireniki () in Chukotka Peninsula, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Russia. The language shift has been a long process, ending in total language death. In January 1997, the last native speaker of the language, a woman named Vyjye (Valentina Wye; ) died. Ever since that point, the language has been extinct; nowadays, all Sireniks speak Siberian Yupik or Russian. Despite this, censuses as late as 2010 report up to 5 native speakers of Sirenik.
() is the endonym for the eponymous settlement of Sireniki. The endonym for the people itself is (; ); the singular form is .
This article is based on Menovschikov (1964), with cited examples transliterated from Cyrillic transcription to the International Phonetic Alphabet.
Classification
Genealogical
External Sirenik is an Eskimoan language, one of the two major groupings of the Eskaleut languages. The exact genealogical classification of Sirenik within its group is uncertain. Some argue that Sirenik is a remnant of a third group of Eskimoan languages, in addition to Yupik and Inuit groupsMenovshchikov 1997 (see a visual representation by tree and an argumentation based on comparative linguistics); others regard it as belonging to the Yupik branch,Ethnologue Report for Eskimo–Aleut or as forming a Yupik–Sirenik branch with Yupik.Eváristos Bethlehem. "Morphosyntactic alignment and verbal indexing in Inuit-Yupik-Unangan through a diachronic lens". 2023.
Many words are formed from entirely different roots to those in Siberian Yupik. In addition, the grammar has several peculiarities compared to the other Eskimoan languages as well as Aleut. For example, although most Eskaleut languages, including Sirenik's neighboring relative Siberian Yupik, have dual number, it is not known in Sirenik. The peculiarities amounted to mutual unintelligibility with even its nearest language relatives. This forced Sirenik people to use Chukchi as a lingua franca when speaking with neighboring Eskimo peoples. Thus, any external contacts for Sirenik people required using a different language: they either resorted to the use of a lingua franca, or used the Siberian Yupik language (definitely a mutually unintelligible, different language for them, not just a dialect of their own). This difference from all their language relatives may be the result of a supposed long isolation from other Eskimo groups: Sirenik people may have been in contact only with speakers of unrelated languages for many centuries in the past, and their language may have been influenced, especially by non-relative Chukchi.
Internal Although the number of its speakers was very few even at the end of the nineteenth century, the language had at least two dialects in the past.
Typological As for its morphological typology, it has polysynthetic and incorporative features, just like the other Eskimoan languages.
Phonology Consonants Labial Alveolar Palatal Velar Uvular GlottalNasalvoiced voiceless Stop/Affricate Fricativevoiceless () () voiced Approximantvoiceless voiced Some consonants can be palatalized, e.g.: . Sounds are heard as variants of .
Vowels Front Central Back Close Mid Open
Sounds may also range to .
Morphology
Like all other Eskimo languages, the morphology is rather complex. A description grouped by lexical categories follows.
Nominal and verbal
Although morphology will be treated grouped into a nominal and a verbal part, many Eskimo languages show features which "crosscut" any such groupings in several aspects: the ergative structure at verbs is similar to the possessive structure at nouns (see section §Ergative–absolutive); a physical similarity exists between nominal and verbal personal suffix paradigms, i.e., in most cases, the respective person-number is expressed with the same sequence of phonemes at: possessive suffixes (at nouns) verbal suffixes; nomenverbum-like roots, becoming nominal or verbal only via the suffix they get; Eskimo texts abound in various kinds of participles (see section §Participles);
Common grammatical categories
Some grammatical categories (e.g. person and number) are applicable to both verbal and nominal lexical categories.
Although person and number are expressed in a single suffix, sometimes it can be traced back to consist of a distinct person and a distinct number suffix.
Person
Paradigms can make a distinction in 3rd person for "self", thus the mere personal suffix (of the verb or noun) can distinguish e.g. a nominal example "He/she takes his/her own dog" versus "He/she takes the dog of another person". a verbal example "He/she sees himself/herself" versus "He/she sees him/her (another person)"
Thus, it can be translated into English (and some other languages) using a reflexive pronoun. This notion concerns also other concepts in building larger parts of the sentence and the text, see section §Usage of third person suffixes.
Number
Although other Eskimo languages know more than the familiar two grammatical numbers, by having also dual, Sireniki uses only singular and plural. Sireniki is, as mentioned above, peculiar in this aspect, alongside Greenlandic, within the Eskimo–Aleut language family, with even its neighboring Siberian Yupik relatives having dual number.
Deictic demonstrative pronouns Sireniki had an unusual wide range of deictic distinctions between up to four distances (near, medial, far and out_of_view) which could be horizontal "una">"igna">"ikna", vertical "mana">"unygna">"pikna", marking a movement like approaching the speaker "ukna", away from them "agna", refer to conversational topics be they definite "ugna">"k’amna">oov "amna" or indefinite "k’akymna">"k’agna">oov "akymna" or describe sth in the past "imna".
Building verbs from nouns
Suffix -- meaning "to be similar to sth":
Root Becomes verbal by suffix Indicative mood, singular 3rd person - raven to be similar to a raven he/she is similar to a raven
Predicative form of a noun
Predicative form of a noun can be built using suffix --:
Root Predicative form Examples Singular 2nd person Singular 3rd person - man to be a man you are a man he/she is a man
Verbs built from toponyms
(a toponym: Imtuk) (I travel to Imtuk.)
Nominal lexical categories
Grammatical categories
Not only the grammatical cases of nouns are marked by suffixes, but also the person of possessor (use of possessive pronouns in English) can be expressed by agglutination.
+ Excerpt from cases and personal possessive form of (child) Sing 1st person Sing 2nd person Absolutive (my child) (your child) Ablative / Instrumental (from my child) (from your child) Dative / Lative (to my child) (to your child) Locative (at my child) (at your child) Equative (comparative) (like my child) (like your child) It is just an excerpt for illustration: not all cases are shown, Sirenik language has more grammatical cases. The table illustrates also why Sirenik language is treated as agglutinative (rather than fusional).
There is no grammatical gender (or gender-like noun class system).
Case Sireniki is an absolutive–ergative language.
Cases (listed using Menovščikov's numbering): Absolutive Relative case, playing the role of both genitive case and ergative case. Ablative / Instrumental, used also in accusative structures. Dative / Lative Locative Vialis case, see also Prosecutive case, and "motion via" Equative (comparative)
To see why a single case can play such distinct roles at all, read morphosyntactic alignment, and also a short table about it.
Some finer grammatical functions are expressed using postpositions. Most of them are built as a combinations of cases lative or locative or ablative combined with relative (used as genitive) in a similar way as we use expressions like "on top of" in English.
Verbal lexical categories Also at verbs, the morphology is very rich. Suffixes can express grammatical moods of the verb (e.g. imperative, interrogative, optative), and also negation, tense, aspect, the person of subject and object. Some examples (far from being comprehensive):
Phonology Meaning Grammatical notes Person, number of Mood Others subject object I lead you Singular 1st person Singular 2nd person Indicative Let me lead you Singular 1st person Singular 2nd person Imperative Don't you see me? Singular 2nd person Singular 1st person Interrogative Negative polarity
The rich set of morphemes makes it possible to build huge verbs whose meaning could be expressed (in most of widely known languages) as whole sentences (consisting of more words) . Sireniki – like the other Eskimo languages – has polysynthetic and incorporative features, in many forms, among others polypersonal agreement.
Grammatical categories
The polysynthetic and incorporative features mentioned above manifest themselves in most of the ways Sirenik language can express grammatical categories.
Transitivity
For background, see transitivity. (Remember also section #Ergative–absolutive.)
See also Nicole Tersis and Shirley Carter-Thomas (2005).
Polarity
Even the grammatical polarity can be expressed by adding a suffix to the verb.
An example for negative polarity: the negation form of the verb (to go): (the man walks) (the man does not walk)
Aspect
Grammatical aspect: (to work slowly) and (he works slowly), from (to work)
Modality
Also linguistic modality can be expressed by suffixes. Modal verbs like "want to", "wish to" etc. do not even exist:
+Suffix -jux- (to want to): (to work) (to want to work) (I work) (I want to work)
The table illustrates also why Sirenik is treated as agglutinative (rather than fusional).
Voice
Four grammatical voices are mentioned in: active passive confer that variant of Siberian Yupik which is spoken by Ungazigmit middle (medial) causative (Malika makes Kitugi go to the reindeer.) all of them are expressed by agglutination, thus, no separate words are required.
Participles
A distinction between two kinds of participles (adverbial participle and adjectival participle) makes sense in Sireniki (just like in Hungarian, see határozói igenév and melléknévi igenév for detailed description of these concepts; or in Russian, see деепричастие and причастие).
Sireniki has many kinds of participles in both categories. In the following, they will be listed, grouped by the relation between the “dependent action” and “main action” (or by other meanings beyond this, e.g. modality) – following the terminology of Menovschikov (1964). A sentence with a participle can be imagined as simulating a subordinating compound sentence where the action described in the dependent clause relates somehow to the action described in the main clause. In English, an adverbial clause may express reason, purpose, condition, succession etc., and a relative clause can express many meanings, too.
In an analogous way, in Sireniki Eskimo language, the "dependent action" (expressed by the adverbial participle in the sentence element called adverbial, or expressed by the adjectival participle in the sentence element called attribute) relates somehow to the “main action” (expressed by the verb in the sentence element called predicate), and the participles will be listed below grouped by this relation (or by other meanings beyond this, e.g. modality).
Adverbial participles
They can be translated into English e.g. by using an appropriate adverbial clause. There are many of them, with various meanings.
An interesting feature: they can have person and number. The person of the dependent action need not coincide with that of the main action. An example (meant in the British English usage of “shall / should” in the 1st person: here, conveying only conditional, but no necessity or morality):