Language Contact on Both Sides of the Bering Strait A Comparative Study of Central Siberian Yupik-Russian and Central Alaskan Yupik-English Language Contact

• Main Authors: Daria Morgounova, Supervisors Peter Harder, Michael Fortescue, Københavns Universitet, Det Humanistiske Fakultet
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2004
• Subjects: Bering Strait; Lawrence Island; central alaskan yupik; Central Siberian Yupik; Chukchi; Chukchi Peninsula; Chukotka; eskimo*; Siberian Yupik; St Lawrence Island; Yupik; Alaska
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.616.6013; http://www.connexion-dte.dk/eksp/pdf/MA-thesis_october2004.pdf

The Bering Strait region is a unique place within the Eskimo world as home for five Yupik Eskimo languages, which are found nowhere else but here. Central Alaskan Yup’ik (CAY) and Central Siberian Yupik (CSY) represent the two largest, in the terms of number of speakers, and best-preserved Yupik languages. Today, CSY is spoken on the Chukchi Peninsula, the Russian Far North (RFN) and on St. Lawrence Island, Alaska. CAY is spoken in southwestern parts of the Alaska Peninsula. Once a property of the Russian Empire, Alaska passed to the United States in the 1867. Since then, the Bering Strait became not only a geographical but also a political borderline between what once was a unified Yupik Eskimo territory. The political separation of the Yupik communities, followed by the invasion of the Americans into the CAY territory in the late 1880s and consolidation of the Soviet power in Chukotka in the early 1920s signaled a major turn in the evolution of the Yupik Eskimo languages. Over the past century, the contact of Yupik languages with English and Russian, on each side respectively, has been intense. The time of the contact of CSY RFN with Russian and of CAY with American English as well as the cultural pressure imposed on the Eskimo people by the colonial groups has been approximately the same. Yet, the linguistic situation on both sides of the Bering Strait is not alike. Under the influence of Russian, CSY RFN has greatly declined. A great many Russian loanwords have entered the language, and there has been some phonological and syntactic interference from Russian into CSY RFN. The reopening of the Russian-American border in 1988 (completely closed in 1948) and