Labrador Inuttut (Eskimo) and the Theory of Morphology

• Published in: Studies in Language
• Main Author: Smith, Lawrence R.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: John Benjamins Publishing Company 1982
• Subjects: eskimo*; Inuttut
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/sl.6.2.04smi; http://www.jbe-platform.com/deliver/fulltext/sl.6.2.04smi.pdf

In this paper Aronoff s theory of word formation is discussed in the context of polysynthetic structures. In several areas Eskimo demonstrates characteristics that would be unexpected from the largely Indo-European perspective which Aronoff adopts. In general LI word formation exhibits a high level of regularity and productivity. This may be attributed to the involvement of syntactic rather than lexical rules in the generation of LI wordforms. Syntactic and regular word derivation, such as that documented here, play a highly important role in the grammar of Eskimo, a fact which would be unexpected from Aronoff s data and synthesis. In general, LI resists description in the lexically biased approach Aronoff was required to develop for English. Furthermore, Eskimo data requires refinements of the proposed constraints on the input and output of word formation rules.