A Unique Collection of Siberian Eskimo Texts

Home , Alaska Peninsula, Aleut, Naukan (village), Siberian Yupik, Sireniki, Yupik languages

International Journal of Eurasian Linguistics 2 (2020) 159–180 JEAL brill.com/jeal

Book Reviews

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Half a Century After: a Unique Collection of Siberian Eskimo Texts

Nikolai B. Vakhtin [Н. Б. Вахтин] (ed.). Тексты на языках эскимосов Чукотки в записи Е. С. Рубцовой [Texts in the languages of the Eskimos of Chukotka collected by E. S. Rubtsova]. Sankt-Peterburg: Art-Ekspress, 2019. 868 pp. ISBN 978-5-4391-0543-4.

This book makes available 65 texts in two Eskimo languages, spoken on Chukotka Peninsula in the extreme North-East of Russia. The texts were collected on the spot by Ekaterina S. Rubtsova in 1940–1943 and were prepared for publication by Nikolai B. Vakhtin. This is the second publication in which Vakhtin deals with Rubtsova’s textual materials. The previous volume (Vakhtin 2000) contains texts in Sireniki Eskimo (sirenikskii), collected by several Russian scholars, including, apart from Rubtsova, also Georgii Menovshchikov, Nina Emelianova and Vakhtin himself, and dating from the 1940s to the 1990s. The current publication includes texts in two other Eskimo languages, namely Naukan Yupik (naukanskii) and Chaplino Yupik (chaplinskii). The value of this volume is hard to overestimate, since it contains unique data, collected during times when these languages were not yet affected by the influence of Russian and were not endangered. Most texts in the collection are narratives, but there are also several songs of various genres. The material is presented in a clear manner in the original transcription, accompanied by an underlying Russian translation of each sentence, and with comments in the footnotes. A full analysis with morphological glosses is offered for only one text in the end of the volume. This gives the reader an opportunity to imagine what an “ideal” representation of Eskimo texts could look like. The information on Rubtsova’s consultants is given in footnotes to each text and is discussed in

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/25898833-12340028 160 book reviews detail in the final part of the book, written by Igor Krupnik. The database of the Asiatic Eskimos born in 1850–1941, a result of several decades of work done by Krupnik, made it possible not only to identify 25 of the 27 consultants represented in the volume, but also to trace their age, clan affiliation, occupation, place(s) of residence, and dialectal base. All this information is essential for understanding the language variation that is attested in Rubtsova’s texts. In my view, one of the shortcomings of the book is the lack of information on the relevant languages and their varieties, as well as on the general context in which they used to be spoken. In the following I will try to fill this gap by presenting some basic information on the topic. As we know, the Eskimo-Aleut (Eskaleutic) language family is divided into two branches: the Eskimo languages and the Aleut languages. The latter were historically spoken in two varieties on the extremity of the Alaska Peninsula and on the Aleutian Archipelago. The Eskimo languages are further classified into the Inuit and Yupik branches. The Inuit languages form a continuum of varieties spoken in Greenland, Canada, and northern Alaska, and in the past they were also represented on the Asiatic side by the Imaklik language. Until 1948, Imaklik was spoken by around 100 people on the Imaklik Island, also known as the Big Diomede Island or Ostrov Ratmanova, cf. (Menovshchikov 1980). The Yupik languages are spoken both in southwestern Alaska and in Siberia. (Central) Alaskan Yupik covers the area from the south shore of Norton Sound (an inlet of the Bering Sea), across the deltas of Yukon and Kuskokwim Rivers and Bristol Bay to the north shore of the Alaska Peninsula. Pacific Gulf Yupik (Alutiiq) is spoken from the Alaska Peninsula eastward to Prince William Sound, an inlet of the Gulf of Alaska known in Russian as Chugatskii zaliv. Chaplino Yupik, also known as Central Siberian Yupik, is the most wide- spread Yupik language in Siberia. It used to be spoken in several locations along the coast of the Chukotka Peninsula, as well as on St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea. Naukan Yupik, also known as East Cape Yupik, was origi- nally spoken more locally in the area of Cape Dezhnev (East Cape), the easternmost point of Asia. The taxonomic status of the already extinct (Old) Sireniki language, which was used along the south-eastern coast of the Chukotka Peninsula, is still undefined. It is variously classified either as another Yupik language (Menovshchikov 1964) or as a separate third branch of Eskimo languages alongside with Inuit and Yupik (Fortescue et al. 1994). The intelligibility between Chaplino and Naukan Yupik is known to be only partial, whereas between Chaplino Yupik and Sireniki it was very minimal, or totally absent. In general, all Siberian Yupik languages show the influence of Chukchi, with which they have been in close contact (Krauss 1976: 188). Let us now consider in more detail the two languages from which texts are offered in the volume under review.

International Journal of Eurasian Linguistics 2 (2020) 159–180