| Summary: | Language provides a unique window into the ways that a community conceptualizes and relates to its spatial environment. Calling attention to both similarities and differences in the cross-linguistic structuring of space, investigations into the linguistic encoding of space and place yield much insight into the interactions between language, cognition, and the external environment (Levinson & Wilkins 2003). Insofar as language documentation is concerned with “provid[ing] a comprehensive record of the linguistic practices characteristic of a given speech community” (Himmelmann 1998:166), it is important to document how people use language to interact with and navigate their spatial environment and create a sense of place, especially in communities where such practices reflect a fundamental way of life. This is clearly illustrated by our work with Kalaallisut (Greenlandic) speakers in Greenland. Our research works to elucidate the frameworks of knowledge embedded within Kalaallisut speech for referencing the Arctic environment, illustrating variation among speakers in the use of speech and kinds of knowledge embedded in place names and landscape terminology. Across the Inuit-Yupik languages of the Arctic, we find a rich framework of spatial understanding embedded with environmental and sociocultural knowledge within speech patterns, paralleling a deep connection between the Inuit and their physical environment. Studies of Inuit place names and landscape (e.g. Alia 2006; Collignon 2006 for Canadian Inuit; Holton 2011 for Alaskan Inuit; Nuttall 1991 for NW Greenland) emphasize the multidimensional nature of these place names as well as the culturally specific conceptual ontologies encoded in landscape terms. In Greenland, we find sociolinguistic variation across such spatial reference that correlates not only with age and gender but primarily with overall engagement with the land and hunting. However, large-scale changes in the Arctic environment associated with climate change and economic development are rapidly ...
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