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" dialect of the Koryak language, but it is not intelligible with traditionally nomadic varieties of Koryak. The autonym means "villager".
Orthography
Typology
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.
Phonology
Vowels
Alyutor has six vowels, five of which may be long or short. The schwa cannot be long.
Front
Central
Back
Close
Mid
Open
Consonants
There are 18 consonants in Alyutor.
Stress
Stress is generally on the second syllable of the word. However, it cannot fall on an open-syllable containing the vowel schwa or on the last syllable, so in two-syllable words stress is transferred to the first syllable, as long as that syllable is not open or contains the schwa. In cases where it is an open-syllable containing the schwa, a third syllable is added to the end of the word and the second syllable is stressed E.g -> 'mosquito' Examples: 'water', 'husband', 'a mukluk ', 'to feed' 'skin'.
Syllable structure
All Alyutor syllables begin with a single consonant. If the vowel is short, including a schwa, they may also close with a single consonant. Consonant cluster are not permitted in the word initial or word final positions. The schwa is used to brake disallowed clusters. Examples are 'to work', 'eagle', 'parka'. Alyutor word boundaries always coincide with syllable boundaries.
Morphology
Alyutor has the following parts of speech: nouns, adjectives, numerals, pronouns, verbs, participles, adverbs, postpositions, conjunctions, and "particles".
Nouns
Nouns are inflected for number, case, definiteness, and grammatical person. There are three grammatical numbers: singular, dual and plural. There are eleven cases: absolutive, ergative, locative, dativelative, prolative, contractive, causative, equative, comitative, and associative. Number and case are expressed using a single affix. A suffix is used for all cases except the comitative and associative, which are expressed using circumfixes. There are two declensions, taught as three noun classes. The first class are nonhuman nouns of the first declension. Number is only distinguished in the absolutive case, though verbal agreement may distinguish number when these nouns are in the ergative. The second class are proper names and kin terms for elders. They are second declension, and distinguish number in the ergative, locative, and lative cases, as well as the absolutive. The third class are the other human nouns; they may be either first or second declension.
Case roles
The absolutive case is the citation form of a noun. It is used for the argument of an intransitive clause and the object of a transitive clause, for "syntactic possessives", and for the vocative.
The locative is used for position and direction, as well as arguments which are "driven away"
The dative is used for recipients, benefactors, directional objects, and subjects of experiential verbs
Lative is used for motion toward a goal
Prolative is used for movement along and movement from
Equative is used with the meanings 'like X', 'as X', usually with verbs like 'to become', 'to turn into', 'to work as,' etc.
Contactive is used for objects that make contact
Causative is used for noun phrases that cause or motivate an action
Comitative is used for...
Associative is used for.... It is only attested in the declension of nouns of the first declension, usually inanimate.
Grammatical person
Grammatical first and second person suffixes on nouns are used to equate a noun with participants in the discourse. They only appear in the absolutive, with an intervening j on nouns ending in a vowel and an i on nouns ending in a consonant.
sg.
du.
pl.
1st person
-j-ɣəm
-muri
-muru
2nd person
-j-ɣət
-turi
-turu
…ʡopta am-ʡujamtawilʔ-ə-muru "yes we the people"
japlə=q ʡujamtawilʔ-iɣəm "and I'm a man"
Numerals
Alyutor has simple numerals for the numbers one to five, ten, and twenty. All other numbers are compounds based on these numerals.
ənnan
one
ŋitaq
two
ŋəruqqə
three
ŋəraqqə
four
məlləŋin
five
ənnanməlləŋ
six
ŋitaqməlləŋ
seven
ŋəruqməlləŋ
eight
ŋəraqməlləŋ
nine
mənɣətkin
ten
mənɣətək ənnan
eleven
qəlikkə
twenty
qəlikək ənnan
twenty one
ŋəraqmənɣətkin
forty
ŋəraqmənɣətkin ŋəraqqə
forty four
ŋitaqməlləŋin mənɣətkin
seventy
mənɣətək mənɣətkin
hundred
Verbs
There are finite and non-finite verbs. There are several conjugations.
Polypersonal conjugation
Finite verbs agree in person and number with their nuclear arguments; agreement is through both prefixes and suffixes. Transitive verbs agree with both arguments, whereas intransitive verbs agree with their sole argument. Verbs distinguish two aspects, perfective, the bare stem, and imperfective, using the suffix -tkə / -tkəni. There are five moods, indicative, imperative, optative, potential, and conjunctive.
Monopersonal conjugation
Monopersonal verbs include two conjugations, one with the third-person singular in ɣa-...-lin, and the other in ''n-...-qin.
Impersonal conjugation
For impersonal forms of conjugation include verbal predicate and imperative. Non-finite forms Impersonal forms include the verbal predicate with the circumfixa…ka, and the imperative in ɣa…a/ta.
Non-finite forms
These include the infinitive, supine, gerunds, and participles.
