Completion of a Descriptive Grammar of Eskimo

这项语言学研究的最终目标是通过彻底分析研究者在该领域积累了30多年的音频数据和现场记录，并通过重新检查他自己发表的文章，为阿拉斯加西南部的Yup'ik爱斯基摩人准备一个“详尽”（尽可能）的语法描述。人们普遍承认，对一种语言的语法结构的全面阐释，即使是一百个学生工作一个世纪也不可能完成，而且，研究人员碰巧开始研究的语言几乎没有任何可靠的研究积累，因此，从严格意义上讲，几乎不可能达到描述的“详尽”。手稿中800多页的语法，在任何意义上都远未“完成”，这是他在四年的研究期间设法准备的，然而，在音韵学，形态学和句法的整个领域都是详细的。它可以合理地声称是对世界上没有字母的少数民族语言所做的这种规模的相当罕见的语法描述之一，此外，所涉及的语言是一种多合成语言，它不仅几乎没有记录，而且还显示出一种相当独特的多合成类型，研究人员相信，尽管仍然是一个适度的描述，但可能对一般语言学有所贡献。他充分意识到在描述、解释和需要重新审视的描述方式等方面的“残留”，他打算尽快发表，希望通过结合该领域其他专家的评论以及持续的实地工作和研究，做出一个更令人满意的版本。

The ultimate objective of this linguistic research is to prepare an "exhaustive" (as much as possible) grammatical description of Yup'ik Eskimo spoken in Southwestern Alaska by thoroughly analyzing the audio data and field notes the researcher has accumulated in the field for more than 30 years and by rechecking his own published articles as well.Given that, as is generally admitted, a full elucidation of grammatical structure of one language will not be achieved even by one hundred students working for one century and, moreover, that the language the researcher happened to begin working on is one which had seen hardly any reliable research accumulation, it would be hardly possible to attain "exhaustiveness", in its strict sense, of the description.The grammar of more than 800 pages in the manuscript, far from 'completed' in any sense, which he managed to prepare during the four-year period of this research, is nevertheless a detailed one in the whole areas of phonology, morphology, and syntax. It may reasonably claimed to be one of rather uncommon grammatical descriptions of this size done about unlettered minorities' languages in the world and, moreover, the language concerned is a polysynthetic language which is not only documented hardly but also shows a rather unique type of polysynthesis, the researcher is confident that the description, albeit still a modest one, may possibly be some contribution in general linguistics.Fully aware of 'residues' in description, interpretations and manners of descriptions to be reexamined, and so on, he intends to publish it very soon as it is, hoping to make a more satisfying version by incorporating comments of other specialists in the field as well as by continued fieldwork and research.