| Central Alaskan Yupik | |
| Also Known As: | Yupʼik |
| Nativename: | Yugtun, Cugtun |
| States: | United States |
| Region: | western and southwestern Alaska |
| Ethnicity: | Central Alaskan Yupik people |
| Speakers: | 19,750 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| Ref: | [1] |
| Familycolor: | Eskimo-Aleut |
| Fam2: | Eskimo |
| Fam3: | Yupik |
| Ancestor: | Proto-Eskimo–Aleut |
| Ancestor2: | Proto-Eskimo |
| Ancestor3: | Proto-Yupik |
| Nation: | [2] |
| Dia2: | Cupʼik (Chevak) |
| Dia3: | Cupʼig (Nunivak) |
| Script: | Latin, formerly the Yugtun syllabary |
| Iso3: | esu |
| Glotto: | cent2127 |
| Glottorefname: | Central Alaskan Yupik |
| Glottopedia: | Zentralalaska-Yup'ik |
| Notice: | IPA |
| Map: | Lang Status 80-VU.svg |
Central Alaskan Yupʼik (also rendered Yupik,[3] Central Yupik,[4] or indigenously Yugtun) is one of the languages of the Yupik family, in turn a member of the Eskimo–Aleut language group, spoken in western and southwestern Alaska. Both in ethnic population and in number of speakers, the Central Alaskan Yupik people form the largest group among Alaska Natives. As of 2010 Yupʼik was, after Navajo, the second most spoken aboriginal language in the United States.[5] Yupʼik should not be confused with the related language Central Siberian Yupik spoken in Chukotka and St. Lawrence Island, nor Naukan Yupik likewise spoken in Chukotka.
Yupʼik, like all Eskimo languages, is polysynthetic and uses suffixation as primary means for word formation. There are a great number of derivational suffixes (termed postbases) that are used productively to form these polysynthetic words. Yupʼik has predominantly ergative alignment: case marking follows the ergative pattern for the most part, but verb agreement can follow an ergative or an accusative pattern, depending on grammatical mood. The language grammatically distinguishes three numbers: singular, dual, and plural. There is no marking of grammatical gender in the language, nor are there articles.
The Yup'ik language goes by various names. Since it is a geographically central member of the Yupik languages and is spoken in Alaska, the language is often referred to as Central Alaskan Yupik (for example, in Miyaoka's 2012 grammar of the language). The term Yup'ik [jupːik] is a common endonym, and is derived from /juɣ-piɣ/ "person-genuine". The Alaska Native Language Center and Jacobson's (1995) learner's grammar use Central (Alaskan) Yup'ik, which can be seen as a hybrid of the former two terms; there is, however, potential for confusion here: Central (Alaskan) Yup'ik may refer to either the language as a whole, or the geographically central dialect of the language, more commonly called General Central Yup'ik.
Other endonyms are used regionally: Cup'ig in the Nunivak dialect, Cup'ik in Chevak (these terms are cognate with Yup'ik, but represent the pronunciation of the word in the respective dialect), and Yugtun in the Yukon-Kuskokwim region.
Yupʼik is spoken primarily in southwestern Alaska, from Norton Sound in the north to the Alaska Peninsula in the south, and from Lake Iliamna in the east to Nunivak Island in the west. Yup'ik lies geographically central relative to the other members of the Yupik language family: Alutiiq ~ Sugpiaq is spoken to south and east, and Central Siberian Yupik is spoken to the west on St. Lawrence Island (often called St. Lawrence Island Yupik in the Alaskan context) and on the Chukotka peninsula, where Naukan Yupik is also spoken. Yup'ik is bordered to the north by the more distantly related Iñupiaq language; the difference between Yupʼik and Iñupiaq is comparable to that of the difference between Spanish and French.
Of a total population of more than 23,000 people, more than 14,000 are speakers of the language.[6] Children still grow up speaking Yupʼik as their first language in 17 of 68 Yupʼik villages, those mainly located on the lower Kuskokwim River, on Nelson Island, and along the coast between the Kuskokwim River and Nelson Island. The variety of Yup'ik spoken by the younger generations is being influenced strongly by English: it is less synthetic, has a reduced inventory of spatial demonstratives, and is lexically Anglicized.
Yup'ik is typically considered to have five dialects: Norton Sound, General Central Yup'ik, Nunivak, Hooper Bay-Chevak, and the extinct Egegik dialect. All extant dialects of the language are mutually intelligible, albeit with phonological and lexical differences that sometimes cause difficulty in cross-dialectal comprehension.[7] Lexical differences exist somewhat dramatically across dialects, in part due to a historical practice of name taboo. Speakers may be reluctant to take on the lexicon of another dialect because they "often feel proud of their own dialects".
The Yupʼik dialects, sub-dialects and their locations are as follows:[8]
The last of these, the Nunivak dialect (Cupʼig) is distinct and highly divergent from mainland Yupʼik dialects. The only significant difference between Hooper Bay and Chevak dialects is the pronunciation of the initial y- [j] as c- [tʃ] in Chevak in some words: Yupʼik in Hooper Bay but Cupʼik in Chevak.
Even sub-dialects may differ with regard to pronunciation and lexicon. The following table compares some words in two sub-dialects of General Central Yupʼik (Yugtun).[9]
| Yukon (Kuigpak) | Kuskokwim (Kusquqvak) | meaning | |
|---|---|---|---|
| elicar- | elitnaur- | to study (intrans.); to teach someone (trans.) | |
| elicaraq | elitnauraq | student | |
| elicari- | elitnauri | to teach (intrans.) | |
| elicarista | elitnaurista | teacher | |
| aiggaq | unan | hand | |
| ikusek | cingun | elbow | |
| ayuqe- | kenir- | to cook by boiling | |
| cella | ella | weather, outside, universe, awareness | |
| naniq | kenurraq | lamp, light | |
| uigtua- | naspaa- | to sample or taste, attempt, try |
A syllabary known as the Yugtun script was invented for the language by Uyaquq, a native speaker, in about 1900, although the language is now mostly written using the Latin script.[10] Early linguistic work in Central Yupʼik was done primarily by Russian Orthodox, then Jesuit and Moravian Church missionaries, leading to a modest tradition of literacy used in letter writing. In the 1960s, Irene Reed and others at the Alaska Native Language Center developed a modern writing system for the language. Their work led to the establishment of the state's first bilingual school programs in four Yupʼik villages in the early 1970s. Since then a wide variety of bilingual materials has been published, including Steven Jacobson's comprehensive dictionary of the language, his complete practical classroom grammar, and story collections and narratives by many others including a full novel by Anna Jacobson.
While several different systems have been used to write Yupʼik, the most widely used orthography today is that adopted by the Alaska Native Language Center and exemplified in Jacobson's (1984) dictionary, Jacobson's (1995) learner's grammar, and Miyaoka's (2012) grammar. The orthography is a Latin-script alphabet; the letters and digraphs used in alphabetical order are listed below, along with an indication of their associated phonemes in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).
| Letter / digraph | IPA | Letter / digraph | IPA | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| a | /a/ | p | /p/ | ||
| c | /tʃ/ | q | /q/ | ||
| e | /ə/ | r | /ʁ/ | represents /χ/ word-finally | |
| g | /ɣ/ | rr | /χ/ | ||
| gg | /x/ | s | /z/ | represents /s/ word-initially | |
| i | /i/ | ss | /s/ | ||
| k | /k/ | t | /t/ | ||
| l | /l/ | u | /u/ | ||
| ll | /ɬ/ | u͡g | /ɣʷ/ | ||
| m | /m/ | u͡r | /ʁʷ/ | ||
| ḿ | /m̥/ | u͡rr | [χʷ] | does not contrast with /ʁʷ/ | |
| n | /n/ | v | /v/ | ||
| ń | /n̥/ | vv | /f/ | ||
| ng | /ŋ/ | w | /xʷ/ | ||
| ńg | /ŋ̊/ | y | /j/ |
Yup'ik contrasts four vowel qualities: pronounced as //a i u ə//. The reduced vowel pronounced as //ə// always manifests phonetically short in duration, but the other three vowel qualities may occur phonetically short or long: pronounced as /[a aː i iː u uː]/. Phonetically long vowels come about when a full vowel (pronounced as //a i u//) is lengthened by stress (see below), or when two single vowels are brought together across a morpheme boundary. The effect is that while phonetic vowel length may yield a surface contrast between words, phonetic length is predictable and thus not phonemically contrastive.
| Non-low | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Low | pronounced as /link/ |
The vowel qualities pronounced as /[e o]/ are allophones of pronounced as //i u//, and are found preceding uvular consonants (such as pronounced as /[q]/ or pronounced as /[ʁ]/) and preceding the low vowel pronounced as /[a]/.
Yup'ik does not contrast voicing in stops, but has a wide range of fricatives that contrast in voicing. The phoneme pronounced as //l// is not phonetically a fricative, but behaves as one phonologically in Yup'ik (in particular with regard to voicing alternations, where it alternates with pronounced as /link/; see below). Contrasts between pronounced as //s// and pronounced as //z// and between pronounced as //f// and pronounced as //v// are rare, and the greater part of the voicing contrasts among fricatives is between the laterals pronounced as //l// and pronounced as //ɬ//, the velars pronounced as //x// and pronounced as //ɣ//, and the uvulars pronounced as //χ// and pronounced as //ʁ//. For some speakers, there is also a voicing contrast among the nasal consonants, which is typologically somewhat rare. Any consonant may occur as a geminate word-medially, and consonant length is contrastive.
| Labial | Alveolar | Postalv./ Palatal | Velar | Uvular | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | ||||||
| pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | |||||||
| Stop | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | |||||
| Affricate | (t͡s) | t͡ʃ | |||||||
| Fricative | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | xʷ | pronounced as /ink/ | (χʷ) | |||
| pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | ɣʷ | pronounced as /ink/ | ʁʷ | ||||
| lateral | pronounced as /ink/ | ||||||||
| Approximant | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | (w) | ||||||
In Norton Sound, as well as some villages on the lower Yukon, pronounced as //j// tends to be pronounced as pronounced as /[z]/ when following a consonant, and geminate pronounced as //jː// as pronounced as /[zː]/. For example, the word angyaq "boat" of General Central Yup'ik (GCY) is angsaq pronounced as /[aŋzaq]/ Norton Sound.
Conversely, in the Hooper Bay-Chevak (HBC) dialect, there is no pronounced as //z// phoneme, and pronounced as //j// is used in its place, such that GCY qasgiq pronounced as /[qazɣeq]/ is pronounced qaygiq pronounced as /[qajɣeq]/. HBC does not have the pronounced as /[w]/ allophone of pronounced as //v//, such that pronounced as //v// is pronounced pronounced as /[v]/ in all contexts, and there are no labialized uvular fricatives.
In the Nunivak dialect, one finds pronounced as //aː// in place of GCY pronounced as //ai//, such that GCY cukaitut "they are slow" is pronounced cukaatut, there is no word-final fortition of pronounced as //x// and pronounced as //χ// (see below), and word-initial pronounced as //xʷ// is pronounced pronounced as /[kʷ]/.
There are a variety of voicing assimilation processes (specifically, devoicing) that apply mostly predictably to continuant consonants (fricatives and nasals); these processes are not represented in the orthography.
Occasionally these assimilation processes do not apply, and in the orthography an apostrophe is written in the middle of the consonant cluster to indicate this: at'nguq is pronounced pronounced as /[atŋoq]/, not pronounced as /[atŋ̊oq]/.
Fricatives are devoiced word-initially and word-finally.
Another common phonological alternation of Yup'ik is word-final fortition. Among consonants, only the stops pronounced as //t k q//, the nasals pronounced as //m n ŋ//, and the fricative pronounced as //χ// may occur word-finally. Any other fricative (and in many cases also pronounced as //χ//) will become a plosive when it occurs at the end of a word. For example, qayar-pak "big kayak" is pronounced pronounced as /[qaja'''χ'''pak]/, while "kayak" alone is pronounced as /[qaja'''q''']/; the velar fricative becomes a stop word-finally. Moreover, the pronounced as /[k]/ of -pak is only a stop by virtue of it being word-final: if another suffix is added, as in qayar-pag-tun "like a big kayak" a fricative is found in place of that stop: pronounced as /[qajaχpa'''x'''tun]/.
The voiced velar consonants pronounced as //ɣ ŋ// are elided between single vowels, if the first is a full vowel: pronounced as //tuma-ŋi// is pronounced tumai pronounced as /[tumːai]/ (with geminate pronounced as /[mː]/ resulting from automatic gemination; see below).
Yup'ik has an iambic stress system. Starting from the leftmost syllable in a word and moving rightward, syllables usually are grouped into units (termed "feet") containing two syllables each, and the second syllable of each foot is stressed. (However, feet in Yup'ik may also consist of a single syllable, which is almost always closed and must bear stress.) For example, in the word pissuqatalliniluni "apparently about to hunt", every second syllable (save the last) is stressed. The most prominent of these (i.e., the syllable that has primary stress) is the rightmost of the stressed syllables.
The iambic stress system of Yup'ik results in predicable iambic lengthening, a processes that serves to increase the weight of the prominent syllable in a foot. When lengthening cannot apply, a variety of processes involving either elision or gemination apply to create a well-formed prosodic word.
Iambic lengthening is the process by which the second syllable in an iambic foot is made more prominent by lengthening the duration of the vowel in that syllable. In Yup'ik, a bisyllabic foot whose syllables each contain one phonologically single vowel will be pronounced with a long vowel in the second syllable. Thus pissuqatalliniluni pronounced as //pisuqataɬiniluni// "apparently about to hunt" is pronounced pronounced as /[(pi.'suː)(qa.'taː)(ɬi.'niː)lu.ni]/. Following standard linguistic convention, parentheses here demarcate feet, periods represent the remaining syllable boundaries, and apostrophes occur before syllables that bear stress. In this word the second, fourth, and sixth syllables are pronounced with long vowels as a result of iambic lengthening.[11] Iambic lengthening does not apply to final syllables in a word.
Because the vowel pronounced as //ə// cannot occur long in Yup'ik, when a syllable whose nucleus is pronounced as //ə// is in line to receive stress, iambic lengthening cannot apply. Instead, one of two things may happen. In Norton Sound dialects, the consonant following pronounced as //ə// will geminate if that consonant is not part of a cluster. This also occurs outside of Norton Sound if the consonants before and after pronounced as //ə// are phonetically similar. For example, pronounced as //tuməmi// "on the footprint" is not pronounced *pronounced as /[(tu.'məː)mi]/, which would be expected by iambic lengthening, but rather is pronounced pronounced as /[(tu.'məm)mi]/, with gemination of the second pronounced as //m// to increase the weight of the second syllable.
There are a variety of prosodic factors that cause stress to retract (move backward) to a syllable where it would not otherwise be expected, given the usual iambic stress pattern. (These processes do not apply, however, in the Norton Sound dialects.) The processes by which stress retracts under prosodically-conditioned factors are said to feature regression of stress in Miyaoka's (2012) grammar. When regression occurs, the syllable to which stress regresses constitutes a monosyllabic foot.
The first of these processes is related to the inability of pronounced as //ə// to occur long. Outside of Norton Sound, if the consonants before and after pronounced as //ə// are phonetically dissimilar, pronounced as //ə// will elide, and stress will retract to a syllable whose nucleus is the vowel before the elided pronounced as //ə//. For example, pronounced as //nəqə-ni// "his own fish" is not pronounced *pronounced as /[(nə.'qəː)ni]/, which would be expected by iambic lengthening, but rather is pronounced neq'ni pronounced as /[('nəq)ni]/, which features the elision of pronounced as //ə// and a monosyllabic foot.
Second, if the first syllable of a word is closed (ends in a consonant), this syllable constitutes a monosyllabic foot and receives stress. Iambic footing continues left-to-right from the right edge of that foot. For example, nerciqsugnarquq "(s)he probably will eat" has the stress pattern pronounced as /[('nəχ)(tʃiq.'sux)naχ.qoq]/, with stress on the first and third syllables.
Another third prosodic factor that influences regressive is hiatus: the occurrence of adjacent vowels. Yup'ik disallows hiatus at the boundaries between feet: any two consecutive vowels must be grouped within the same foot. If two vowels are adjacent, and the first of these would be at the right edge of a foot (and thus stressed) given the usual iambic footing, the stress retracts to a preceding syllable. Without regressive accent, Yupiaq pronounced as //jupiaq// would be pronounced *pronounced as /[(ju.'piː)aq]/, but because of the ban on hiatus at foot boundaries, stress retracts to the initial syllable, and consonant gemination occurs to increase the weight of that initial syllable, resulting in pronounced as /[('jup)pi.aq]/. This process is termed automatic gemination in Jacobson's (1995) grammar.
Yup'ik also disallows iambic feet that consist of a closed syllable followed by an open one, i.e. feet of the form CVC.'CV(ː), where C and V stand for "consonant" and "vowel" respectively. To avoid this type of foot, stress retracts: cangatenrituten pronounced as //tʃaŋatənʁitutən// has the stress pattern pronounced as /[(tʃa.'ŋaː)('tən)(ʁi.'tuː)tən]/ to avoid the iambic foot *(tən.'ʁiː) that would otherwise be expected.
Yup'ik has highly synthetic morphology: the number of morphemes within a word is very high. The language is moreover agglutinative, meaning that affixation is the primary strategy for word formation, and that an affix, when added to a word, does not unpredictably affect the forms of neighboring affixes. Because of the tendency to create very long verbs through suffixation, a Yupʼik verb often carries as much information as an English sentence, and word order is often quite free.
Three parts of speech are identified: nouns, verbs, and particles. Because there are fewer parts of speech than in (e.g.) English, each category has a wider range of uses. For example, Yup'ik grammatical case fulfills the role that English prepositions do, and nominal derivational affixes or roots fulfill the role that English adjectives do.
In descriptive work on Yup'ik, there are four regions within nouns and verbs that are commonly identified. The first of these is often called the stem (equivalent to the notion of a root), which carries the core meaning of the word. Following the stem come zero or more postbases, which are derivational modifiers that change the category of the word or augment its meaning. (Yup'ik does not have adjectives; nominal roots and postbases are used instead.) The third section is called an ending, which carries the inflectional categories of case (on nouns), grammatical mood (on verbs), person, and number. Finally, optional enclitics may be added, which usually indicate "the speaker's attitude towards what he is saying such as questioning, hoping, reporting, etc." Orthographically, enclitics are separated from the rest of the word with a hyphen. However, since hyphens are already used in glosses to separate morphemes, there is potential for confusion as to whether a morpheme is a suffix or an enclitic, so in glosses the equals sign is used instead.
| "(he says) I'm fine" | |||||
| "(tell him) I'm fine" | |||||
Because post-bases are derivational morphemes, and thus can change the part of speech of a word, many verbs are built from noun stems, and vice versa. For example, neqe-ngqer-tua "I have fish" is a verb, despite the fact that neqe- "fish" is a noun; the postbase -ngqerr "have" makes the resulting word a verb. These changes in grammatical category can apply iteratively, such that over the course of word formation, a word may become a noun, then a verb, then back to a noun, and so on.[12]
The conjugation of Yup'ik verbs involves obligatory marking of grammatical mood and agreement.
Yup'ik has a great number of grammatical moods. The moods can be categorized according to whether the clause in which they are found is independent or subordinate. There are four so-called independent moods: the indicative, optative, interrogative, and participial; these typically are found on the main verbs of independent clauses. Yupʼik also has ten connective moods, which occur on the verbs of adverbial clauses; the connective moods are the Yup'ik equivalent of many subordinating conjunctions of English, and are often translated as 'because', 'although', 'if' and 'while'. The form of a given mood may depend on the transitivity of the verb (e.g., the intransitive form of the participial mood suffix is usually -lriar, but when this mood is suffixed to a transitive verb, its form is -ke instead), on the person of the grammatical subject (e.g., the optative mood is marked with -li only if the subject is third person), or on the phonological or morphological environment.
| Independent moods | Indicative | -gur (intransitive)-gar (transitive) | Used to form declarative sentences |
|---|---|---|---|
| Participial | -lriar, or -ngur after /t/ (intransitive)-ke (transitive) | (Varied) | |
| Interrogative | -ta (after a consonant, if subject is third person)-ga (after a vowel, if subject is third person) -ci (if subject is first or second person) | Used to form wh-questions | |
| Optative | -li (if subject is third person)-la (if subject is first person) -gi or -na (if subject is second person) | Used to express wishes, requests, suggestions, commands,and occasionally to make declarative statements | |
| Co-subordinate | Appositional | -lu, or -na after certain suffixes | Used for cosubordination, coordination, and in independent clauses |
| Connective moods | Causal | -nga | Used to form subordinate clauses (translated "because, when") |
| Constative | -gaq(a) | Used to form subordinate clauses (translated "whenever") | |
| Precessive | -pailg | Used to form subordinate clauses (translated "before") | |
| Concessive | -ngrrarr | Used to form subordinate clauses (translated "although, even if") | |
| Conditional | -k(u) | Used to form subordinate clauses (translated "if") | |
| Indirective | -cu(a) | Used to express indirect suggestions, admonishment | |
| Contemporative | -llr | Used to form subordinate clauses (translated "when") | |
| Simultaneous | -nginanrr | Used to form subordinate clauses (translated "while") | |
| Stative | -Ø | Used to form subordinate clauses (translated "being in the state of") |
Yup'ik has a rich system of agreement on verbs. Up to two nominal arguments may be cross-referenced (intransitive verbs agree with their sole argument, and transitive verbs agree with both arguments). Three numbers (singular, dual, and plural) are distinguished, as well as at least three persons (first, second, and third). The third person is unmarked when cross-referencing subjects, and the verbs of dependent clauses may have two types of third person forms depending on whether some argument is co-refers with the subject of the verb in the independent clause (see "Co-reference across clauses" below). To the extent that subject and object agreement markers are not fusional, subject agreement linearly precedes object agreement.
Depending on the grammatical mood of the verb and which grammatical persons are being cross-referenced, agreement may display either an ergative pattern (where the sole argument of an intransitive verb is cross-referenced with the same morpheme that it would be if it were the object of a transitive verb) or an accusative pattern (where the sole argument of an intransitive verb is cross-referenced with the same morpheme that it would be if it were the subject of a transitive verb).
Agreement markers vary in form depending on the grammatical mood of the verb. The two examples below illustrate this. In (1), the 1SG>3SG agreement marker is -qa because the verb is in the indicative mood, while in (2) the agreement marker is -ku due to verb being in the optative mood.
The participial and indicative share a set of agreement markers, and all the connective moods likewise share a common set (which is shared also with some possessed nouns).
The form of 3rd-person agreement in dependent clauses may vary depending on whether that 3rd-person argument is the same referent as, or a different referent than, a 3rd-person subject of the independent clause. In some descriptive work on the language, when the subject of the independent clause is co-referential with the relevant argument in the dependent clause, the agreement in the dependent clause is said to reflect a "fourth" or a "reflexive third" person. Jacobson (1995) uses the following contrast to illustrate:
The intransitive agreement in the dependent clause ermig-pailg-an in (3) is -an, indicating that the argument of the dependent clause is a different referent than the subject of the independent clause nerellruuq, while in (4) the agreement -mi indicates that the arguments of each clause are co-referential. Some grammatical moods do not have associated agreement markers that contrast these two types of third person.
Some researchers have argued that the contrast in (3-4) exemplifies a type of switch-reference,[13] though McKenzie (2015) claims Yup'ik does not have the true characteristics of switch-reference, and that the Yup'ik system is better understood in terms of obviation or long-distance anaphora.[14]
Yup'ik nouns inflect for number, case, and show agreement with the person and number of a possessor if present.
The morphosyntactic alignment of Yupʼik is ergative-absolutive, meaning that subjects of intransitive verbs bear the same grammatical case (the absolutive) as the objects of transitive verbs, while the subjects of transitive verbs have a different case (the ergative). For example, the sentence Angyaq tak'uq ("The boat is long") features an intransitive verb, and the subject (angyaq, "the boat") is in the absolutive case. By comparison, in the sentence Angyaq kiputaa ("He buys the boat"), the verb is transitive, and it is now the object (angyaq, "the boat") that bears the absolutive. This contrasts with nominative-accusative languages like English, where the subjects of intransitives and transitives are identical in form ("He slept", "He ate the bread"), while the objects of transitives have a different case ("The moose saw him").
In addition to the absolutive and ergative structural cases (the latter of which is syncretic with the genitive; collectively the ergative and genitive are usually called the relative case), there are at least five other cases that are mostly-nonstructural: ablative-modalis (a historical syncretism of ablative and instrumental cases), allative, locative, perlative, and equalis.
| Structural | Absolutive | Identifies the sole argument of an intransitive verbIdentifies the definite object of a transitive verb | (none) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Relative | Ergative | Identifies the subject of a transitive verb | (none) | |
| Genitive | Identifies a possessor | |||
| Non-structural | Ablative-modalis | Identifies a spatial or temporal starting pointMarks nominals demoted from absolutive case under valency reduction | from(none) | |
| Allative | Identifies a spatial or temporal end pointMarks nominals demoted from relative case under valency reduction | to(none) | ||
| Locative | Identifies spatial or temporal locationsIndicates the standard of comparison in comparatives | at, in, duringthan | ||
| Perlative | Identifies a spatial or temporal route through which movement occurs | along, via, by way of | ||
| Equalis | Marks a nominal that is similar/equivalent to another; commonlyco-occurs with the verb ayuqe- "resemble" | (none) | ||
Possessed nouns, like all other nouns, inflect for number and case, but also show person and number agreement with their possessor. For example, consider a few forms of saskaq "cup". The two leftmost nouns below are unpossessed, but the third is marked for a first person singular possessor -ka (pronounced in this case as -qa after assimilating to a uvular place of articulation). The final example marks plural number for both the noun itself and its possessor.
Possessors are often optional, but when present are marked with relative case:
Yup'ik has considerably more freedom of word order than English does. In English, the word order of subjects and objects with respect to a verb reflects the thematic roles of the subject and object. For example, the English sentence The dog bit the preacher means something different than The preacher bit the dog does; this is because in English, the noun that comes before the verb must be the agent (the biter), while the noun following the verb must be the theme (the individual or thing that is bitten).
In Yupʼik, word order is freer because the rich inflectional system often serves to unambiguously identify thematic relations without recourse to word order. These Yup'ik sentences both mean "the dog bit the preacher", for instance.
The word order varies between these sentences, but the fact that qimugtem ("dog") is marked with ergative case (-m) is sufficient to identify it as the thematic agent. Thus, to say "the preacher bit the dog" in Yup'ik, one would need change which noun gets ergative case and which gets absolutive:[15]
Despite the greater freedom of word order, there seems to be a general preference for Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) order (though VSO is also common, and pragmatic factors also play a significant role). This can be observed in circumstances where the inflectional system will not unambiguously determine which noun is the agent and which is the theme. This obtains, for instance, when both arguments of an indicative transitive verb are third person plural and unpossessed: elitnauristet mikelnguut assikait can, in principle, mean either "the teachers like the children" or "the children like the teachers", since the case marking on elitnauristet "teachers" and mikelnguut "children" does not distinguish ergative from absolutive case (-t marks unpossessed ergative plurals as well as unpossessed absolutive plurals). In cases like this, the SOV preference comes into play, and the sentence is most readily interpreted as "the teachers like the children".
Yup'ik has a rich system of spatial deixis. That is, many of the spatial properties of things and events are linguistically encoded in great detail; this holds true for demonstrative pronouns (like English "this one", "that one") as well as spatial adverbs ("here", "there").
There are twelve categories that define the orientation of a thing or event with respect to the environment. The environment in this sense includes topographical features (e.g., there is a contrast between upriver and downriver), the participants in the speech event (e.g., there is a contrast between proximity to the speaker and proximity to the hearer), and the linguistic context (one of these twelve categories is used for anaphora). This twelve-way contrast is cross-cut by a trinomial contrast in horizontal extension/motion: this determines whether the referent is extended (horizontally long or moving) or non-extended, and if non-extended, whether distal (typically far away, indistinct, and invisible) or proximal (typically nearby, distinct, and visible).
To illustrate, the spatial demonstrative roots of Yup'ik (which are then inflected for case and number) are presented in the following table from Miyaoka (2012).
| Class | Translation of class | Extended | Non-extended | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Distal | Proximal | ||||
| I | here (near speaker) | mat- | u- | ||
| II | there (near hearer) | tamat- | tau- | ||
| III | aforementioned / known | im- | |||
| IV | approaching (in space or time) | uk- | |||
| V | over there | au͡g- | am- | ing- | |
| VI | across there, on the opposite bank | ag- | akm- | ik- | |
| VII | back/up there, away from river | pau͡g- | pam- | ping- | |
| VIII | up/above there (vertically) | pag- | pakm- | pik- | |
| IX | down/below there, toward river (bank) | un- | cam- | kan- | |
| X | out there, toward exit, downriver | un'g- | cakm- | ug- | |
| XI | inside, upriver, inland | qau͡g- | qam- | kiug-/kiu͡g- | |
| XII | outside, north | qag- | qakm- | kex- | |
Small changes have been made towards teaching Yupʼik to the native Alaskan Yupʼiks. In 1972, the Alaska State Legislature passed legislation mandating that if "a [school is attended] by at least 15 pupils whose primary language is other than English, [then the school] shall have at least one teacher who is fluent in the native language".[16] Then, during the mid-1970s, educational programs emerged in order to revive and sustain the Yupʼik language: MacLean notes that "In 1975, an Alaska State statute was enacted directing all school boards to '...provide a bilingual-bicultural education program for each school...which is attended by at least 8 pupils of limited English-speaking ability and whose primary language is other than English. However, "the statute addressed all languages other than English, and thus expanded bilingualism equally to immigrant languages," meaning that although the statute welcomed non-English languages into schools, its primary "aim" was to "promote English proficiency", not to keep Yupʼik alive.
Later, during the 1987-8 school year, three organizations, including members of the Alaska Native community, "initiated a process to establish an Alaska Native Language Policy for schools in Alaska," which "states that schools have a responsibility to teach and use as the medium of instruction the Alaska Native language of the local community to the extent desired by the parents of that community". This proposal for the Alaska Native Language Policy comes three years after Steven A. Jacobson's "Central Yupʼik and the Schools: A Handbook for Teachers", a guide for teachers which exemplifies differences and similarities between English and Yupʼik so that Yupʼik or English-speaking teachers might successfully engage English-speaking Eskimo Yupʼik students in a "bilingual-bicultural education" that teaches their native language.
In 2018, Anchorage's first Yup'ik immersion program was launched at College Gate Elementary.[17] Yup'ik language courses are offered at the University of Alaska Anchorage and the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The latter also offers Bachelor's degrees in Yupʼik Language and Culture, as well as associate degrees in Native Language Education with a concentration in Yupʼik, and certificates in Yupʼik Language Proficiency.[18] [19]