Linguistic Field Research of Southwestern Alaskan Natives (Eskimo and Aleut)

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The three years research project on the study of Alaskan Native languages (Eskimo and Aleut) were carried out from 1988 to 1990 by two Japanese researchers (Osahito Miyaoka and Minoru Oshima) with partial participation by two Alaskan researchers (Michael E. Krauss and Jeff Leer) and with partial assistance from two graduate students (Nobukatsu Minoura and Honore Watanabe). The research was mainly conducted through field work in Alaska a few months every summer in the period. The main aim of the project was to deepen the understanding and the analysis of phonological and grammatical aspects of the two languages concerned for the purpose of preparing the basic descriptions of them.The Eskimo (i. e. Central Alaskan Yupik) research concentrated itself on the grammatical problems but with particular emphasis on the syntactic or 'generative' aspect in the morphology by which this polysynthetic language is remarkably characterized.The Aleut (mainly Eastern Aleut) research concentrated itself on the phonological problems and attempted to elucidate phenomena of vowel syncopation which are found to be partly connected with accentuation.A part of the results obtained in this project was already presented at the 7th lnuit Studies Conference held at University of Alaska, Fairbanks, in August 1990. The results were also included in the papers at the symposium of Languages of the North Pacific Rim presided by the chief investigator of this project (May 1990, Hokkaido University) and the whole presentation of the symposium will be published in the form of an approximately 600-page book by the end of this year by Sanseido Publishing Co., Tokyo. In addition to this, a plan is being made to compile a volume in English on Alaska Native languages with contributions from each participant of this research project.