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

Louis-Jacques Dorais is a much respected authority on Inuit contemporary and traditional culture, and on Inuktitut, the language of the Inuit as spoken in the eastern Canadian Arctic, i.e., in Arctic Québec and the territory Nunavut. In 1986, he published (with Pierre Robbe) a book on East Greenlandic and in 1996 La Parole Inuit. His Tukilik: An Inuktitut Grammar for All (1988) has been an indispensable source book for linguists since its publication, while historiographers are familiar with his History of the Inuit Language (1993) and anthropologists with Quaqtaq: Modernity and Identity in an Inuit Community (1997) and Language in Nunavut: Discourse and Identity in the Baffin Region (2002, with Susan Sammons). The Language of the Inuit differs considerably from its 1996 French predecessor, although parts of it are retained, as are treatments of other topics dealt with in earlier publications. The Language of the Inuit might be considered a summary statement, a quintessence of Dorais’s oeuvre over the last thirty years or so. It is strongly recommended to all those who are interested in the Inuit, who they are today, their culture, and their languages.

As pointed out in the introduction (pp. 3–6), the focus is on the Canadian Arctic and Greenland, but Alaska and the Asian Far East are considered as well. Three broad topics are addressed. The first is the spatial localization and distribution of the Eskimo-Aleut language family, subsequently concentrating on the discussion of the linguistic structure of its “Inuit” branch, i.e., the eastern branch covering the languages spoken from North Alaska to East Greenland, with special attention to Arctic Québec (Nunavik) (chapters 1–3). The second is the genetic affiliation and eastward spread of the languages to Greenland and Labrador, including a historiography of European accounts of Inuit languages from the 1500s onwards, and, based on these sources, an attempt at reconstructing language change (chapters 4 and 5). The third broad topic is the present-day condition of the languages, including their development over the last sixty years. Chapters 6 to 9 introduce the reader to semantic fields and lexical structure, literacy and the impacts of formal education, language loss, diglossia, and bilingualism. All chapters are enriched by extensive notes. Chapter 10 presents a very special kind of “conclusion,” which I return to later on. The book is supplemented by four appendices, presenting tables of inflectional morphemes (pp. 279–88), a brief survey of categories expressed exclusively by affixes (pp. 289–91), and, finally, a statistical overview (pp. 292–95). The bibliography is impressive, being close to exhaustive. In the rest of the review, I discuss each topic in more detail.

Right from the start the reader is familiarized with the fact that the native population of the North American Arctic, with its unbelievably vast geographical dimensions, is much more diverse than is generally assumed. An overview of the population numbers and percentage of speakers is given (p. 25), and more detailed information appears in appendix 4 (pp. 292–95). Including its Yupik branch, the Eskimo world stretches to the other side of Bering Strait. The Aleut varieties, most of which are close to extinction or already extinct, constitute a distinct branch, but still are close to the “Eskimo” languages, the distribution of which is dealt with in the second chapter. Surprisingly, Dorais introduces a highly idiosyncratic representation of the palatalized voiceless lateral, which most often is represented as 〈ł〉. Instructions for the pronunciation of graphemes are given occasionally, but none for the vowel phonemes represented in writing as 〈a〉, 〈i〉, 〈u〉, which are misleading for Anglophone readers. Highly instructive are the contrastive remarks on the different varieties, with their focus on phonological issues (pp. 27–65). Noteworthy are the remarks on East Greenlandic (pp. 49–54), since very little has been published on this language. Less instructive are the discussions of syntax...