Labrador Inuttut Inverted Number Marking: Ongoing Questions

• Published in: Études/Inuit/Studies
• Main Author: Smith, Lawrence R.
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Centre interuniversitaire d’études et de recherches autochtones (CIÉRA) 2019
• Subjects: Inuktitut; Inuttut; second person; number inversion; tool grammar; cognitax; seconde personne; inversion de nombres; outil de grammaire; Études/Inuit/Studies; inuktitut
• Online Access: http://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1071950ar; https://doi.org/10.7202/1071950ar

There is a fascinating and prima facie perplexing patterning in Inuttut, the Labrador dialect of Inuktitut, wherein the quite regular markers of singular and plural in verbal inflectional markers appear inverted in second person forms. We explore this linguistic problem and show two things: that progress toward a solution is facilitated by incorporating representations of linguistic intent, and also that the consideration of intent, by adding a level of data, opens the phenomenon for deeper understanding by presenting new hypotheses to be explored. Making such features available in grammatical derivations allows the systematic generation of patterns that would otherwise be impossible, thereby obviating gaps in the potential for grammatical explanation and highlighting psychologically plausible mechanisms for diachronic change. It is disadvantageous for any theory of grammatical competence to allow any phenomenon of strong grammatical patterning to remain unaccounted for. By viewing grammatical structures as the result of tool invention by individuals and groups in the linguistic past, the study of the intellectual history of linguistic innovation can potentially uncover particularly clever and insightful processes related to desiderata of cultural adhesion. This approach opens new hypotheses for the evolution of the language from the proto stage. Il existe en Inuttut, le dialecte labradorien de l’inuktitut, un motif surprenant et fascinant à première vue, dans lequel les marqueurs assez réguliers du singulier et du pluriel dans les marqueurs flexionnels verbaux apparaissent inversés à la seconde personne. Nous explorons ce problème linguistique et montrons deux choses : que l’avancement vers une solution est facilité par l’incorporation de représentations de l’intention linguistique et que la prise en compte de l’intention, en ajoutant un autre niveau de données, ouvre le phénomène à une compréhension plus profonde, en présentant de nouvelles hypothèses à explorer. Rendre ces caractéristiques disponibles dans ...