Yup'ik language in the context of "Ergative–absolutive alignment"

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⭐ Core Definition: Yup'ik language

Central Alaskan Yupʼik (also rendered Yupik, Central Yupik, or indigenously Yugtun) is one of the languages of the Yupik family, in turn a member of the Eskimo–Aleut language group, spoken in western and southwestern Alaska. Both in ethnic population and in number of speakers, the Central Alaskan Yupik people form the largest group among Alaska Natives. As of 2010 Yupʼik was, after Navajo, the second most spoken aboriginal language in the United States. Yupʼik should not be confused with the related language Central Siberian Yupik spoken in Chukotka and St. Lawrence Island, nor Naukan Yupik likewise spoken in Chukotka.

Yupʼik, like all Eskimo languages, is polysynthetic and uses suffixation as primary means for word formation. There are a great number of derivational suffixes (termed postbases) that are used productively to form these polysynthetic words. Yupʼik has predominantly ergative alignment: case marking follows the ergative pattern for the most part, but verb agreement can follow an ergative or an accusative pattern, depending on grammatical mood. The language grammatically distinguishes three numbers: singular, dual, and plural. There is no marking of grammatical gender in the language, nor are there articles.

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Yup'ik language in the context of Root (linguistics)

A root (also known as a root word or radical) is the core of a word that is irreducible into more meaningful elements. In morphology, a root is a morphologically simple unit which can be left bare or to which a prefix or a suffix can attach. The root word is the primary lexical unit of a word, and of a word family (this root is then called the base word), which carries aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents.Content words in nearly all languages contain, and may consist only of, root morphemes. However, sometimes the term "root" is also used to describe the word without its inflectional endings, but with its lexical endings in place. For example, chatters has the inflectional root or lemma chatter, but the lexical root chat. Inflectional roots are often called stems. A root, or a root morpheme, in the stricter sense, is a mono-morphemic stem. An etymon is the root word in a proto-language from which the descendant forms arose.

The traditional definition allows roots to be either free morphemes or bound morphemes. Root morphemes are the building blocks for affixation and compounds. However, in polysynthetic languages with very high levels of inflectional morphology, the term "root" is generally synonymous with "free morpheme". Many languages have a very restricted number of morphemes that can stand alone as a word: Yup'ik, for instance, has no more than two thousand.

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LINKED FROM (PARENTS)
← Root (linguistics) ← Word roots ← Root word ← Base word
LINKS TO (CHILDREN)
Yupik languages → Eskimo–Aleut languages → Alaska → Yup'ik → Alaska Natives → Navajo language → Central Siberian Yupik language → Chukchi Peninsula → St. Lawrence Island → Naukan Yupik language → Polysynthetic language → Suffixation → Productivity (linguistics) → Ergative–absolutive alignment → Case marking → Verb agreement → Nominative–accusative alignment → Grammatical mood → Grammatical number → Dual (grammatical number) → Plural → Grammatical gender → Article (grammar) →