Alutor language
| Alyutor | |
|---|---|
| nəməlʔu | |
| Native to | Russia |
| Region | Kamchatka |
| Ethnicity | 2,000 Alyutors (1997) |
|
Native speakers
|
25 (2010 census) |
|
Chukotko-Kamchatkan
|
|
| Dialects |
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | alut1245 |
Alyutor or Alutor is a language of Russia that belongs to the Chukotkan branch of the Chukotko-Kamchatkan languages.
The Alutor are the indigenous inhabitants of the northern part of the Kamchatka Peninsula. The language is unwritten and moribund; in the 1970s residents of the chief Alutor village of Vyvenka under the age of 25 did not know the language. In recent years the Vyvenka village school has started teaching the language. Until 1958 the language was considered the "village" (settled) dialect of the Koryak language, but it is not intelligible with traditionally nomadic varieties of Koryak. The autonym [ˈnəməlʔən] means "villager".
Alutor is a polysynthetic language.
The morphology is agglutinative, with extensive prefixes and suffixes.
The argument structure is ergative.
The word order is variable, and it is difficult to say which typology is basic. The verb-absolutive orders AVO and VAO are perhaps most common.
Alyutor has six vowels, five of which may be long or short. The /ə/ is a schwa, and cannot be stressed.
There are 18 consonants in Alyutor.
Stress is generally on the second syllable of the word. However, it cannot fall on a schwa or the last syllable, so in two-syllable words stress is transferred to the first syllable, as long as that vowel is not a schwa. In cases where it is a schwa, a third syllable is added to the word, and the second syllable is stressed.
Examples: /ˈmi.məl/ 'water', /qə.ˈla.vul/ 'husband', /pə.ˈla.kəl.ŋən/ 'a mukluk (boot)', /ˈta.wə.ja.tək/ 'to feed'.
...
Wikipedia