Innu-aimun
Encyclopedia
Innu-aimun or Montagnais is an Algonquian language
spoken by over 11,000 people, called the Innu
, in Labrador
and Quebec
in Eastern Canada
. It is a member of the Cree
-Montagnais-Naskapi
dialect continuum and is spoken in various dialects depending on the community.
and France
due to the success of the rock music band Kashtin
and the later solo careers of its founders Claude McKenzie
and Florent Vollant
. Widely heard hit songs with Innu-language lyrics have included Ish-kuess ("Girl"), E Uassiuian ("My Childhood"), Tipatshimun ("Song of the devil") and in particular Akua tuta ("Take care of yourself"), which appeared on soundtrack compilations for the popular television series Due South
and the documentary Music for The Native Americans
. The lyrics of Akua Tuta are featured on over 50 websites, making this one of the most broadly accessible pieces of text written in any native North American language. Florent Vollant has also rendered several well known Christmas carols into Innu in his 1999 album Nipaiamianan.
The voiceless stops are voiced to [b d j ɡ ɡʷ] between vowels.
, head-marking
language with relatively free word order
. Its three basic parts of speech are noun
s, verb
s, and particles. Nouns are grouped into two genders
, animate and inanimate, and may carry affix
es indicating plural
ity, possession
, obviation
, and location. Verbs are divided into four classes based on their transitivity
: animate intransitive (AI), inanimate intransitive (II), transitive inanimate (TI), and transitive animate (TA). Verbs may carry affixes indicating agreement (with both subject and object arguments
), tense
, mood
, and inversion
. Two different sets, or orders, of verbal affixes are used depending on the verb's syntactic context
. In simple main clauses, the verb is marked using affixes of the independent order, while in subordinate clauses and content-word questions, affixes of the conjunct order are used.
Algonquian languages
The Algonquian languages also Algonkian) are a subfamily of Native American languages which includes most of the languages in the Algic language family. The name of the Algonquian language family is distinguished from the orthographically similar Algonquin dialect of the Ojibwe language, which is a...
spoken by over 11,000 people, called the Innu
Innu
The Innu are the indigenous inhabitants of an area they refer to as Nitassinan , which comprises most of the northeastern portions of the provinces of Quebec and some western portions of Labrador...
, in Labrador
Labrador
Labrador is the distinct, northerly region of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It comprises the mainland portion of the province, separated from the island of Newfoundland by the Strait of Belle Isle...
and Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
in Eastern Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
. It is a member of the Cree
Cree language
Cree is an Algonquian language spoken by approximately 117,000 people across Canada, from the Northwest Territories and Alberta to Labrador, making it the aboriginal language with the highest number of speakers in Canada. It is also spoken in the U.S. state of Montana...
-Montagnais-Naskapi
Naskapi
The Naskapi are the indigenous Innu inhabitants of an area they refer to as Nitassinan, which comprises most of what other Canadians refer to as eastern Quebec and Labrador, Canada....
dialect continuum and is spoken in various dialects depending on the community.
Literature
In recent years, Innu-aimun has had considerable exposure in the popular culture of CanadaCanada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
and France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
due to the success of the rock music band Kashtin
Kashtin
Kashtin were a Canadian folk rock duo in the 1980s and 1990s, one of the most commercially successful and famous musical groups in First Nations history....
and the later solo careers of its founders Claude McKenzie
Claude McKenzie
Claude McKenzie is a Canadian singer-songwriter. An Innu from Maliotenam, he was half of the popular folk music duo Kashtin, the most commercially successful musical group in First Nations history....
and Florent Vollant
Florent Vollant
Florent Vollant is a Canadian singer-songwriter. An Innu from Maliotenam, Quebec, he was half of the popular folk music duo Kashtin, one of the most important musical groups in First Nations history....
. Widely heard hit songs with Innu-language lyrics have included Ish-kuess ("Girl"), E Uassiuian ("My Childhood"), Tipatshimun ("Song of the devil") and in particular Akua tuta ("Take care of yourself"), which appeared on soundtrack compilations for the popular television series Due South
Due South
Due South is a Canadian crime drama series with elements of comedy. The series was created by Paul Haggis, produced by Alliance Communications, and stars Paul Gross, David Marciano, and latterly Callum Keith Rennie...
and the documentary Music for The Native Americans
Music for The Native Americans
Music for The Native Americans is a 1994 album by Robbie Robertson, compiling music written by Robertson and other colleagues for the television documentary film The Native Americans....
. The lyrics of Akua Tuta are featured on over 50 websites, making this one of the most broadly accessible pieces of text written in any native North American language. Florent Vollant has also rendered several well known Christmas carols into Innu in his 1999 album Nipaiamianan.
Phonology
Innu-aimun has the following phonemes (written using the standard orthography, with IPA equivalents in brackets):| Bilabial Bilabial consonant In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:... |
Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth... |
Post- alveolar Postalveolar consonant Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate... |
Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum).... |
Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider... |
||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| center | Labial | |||||
| Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :... |
m /m/ | n /n/ | ||||
| Stop Stop consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &... |
p /p/ | t /t/ | tsh /tʃ/ | k /k/ | kᵘ/ku /kʷ/ | |
| Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or... |
ss /s/ | sh /ʃ~s/ | (h /h/) | |||
| Lateral Lateral consonant A lateral is an el-like consonant, in which airstream proceeds along the sides of the tongue, but is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth.... |
(l /l/) |
The voiceless stops are voiced to [b d j ɡ ɡʷ] between vowels.
- Long vowels: î /i/, e /e~ɛ/, â /a/, û /o/
- Short vowels: i /ɪ~ə/, a /ʌ~ə/, u /o~ʊ~u/
- The circumflex accents over the long vowels are omitted in general writing.
Grammar
Innu-aimun is a polysyntheticPolysynthetic language
In linguistic typology, polysynthetic languages are highly synthetic languages, i.e., languages in which words are composed of many morphemes. Whereas isolating languages have a low morpheme-to-word ratio, polysynthetic languages have extremely high morpheme-to-word ratios.Not all languages can be...
, head-marking
Head-marking language
A head-marking language is one where the grammatical marks showing relations between different constituents of a phrase tend to be placed on the heads of the phrase in question, rather than the modifiers or dependents. In a noun phrase, the head is the main noun and the dependents are the...
language with relatively free word order
Word order
In linguistics, word order typology refers to the study of the order of the syntactic constituents of a language, and how different languages can employ different orders. Correlations between orders found in different syntactic subdomains are also of interest...
. Its three basic parts of speech are noun
Noun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
s, verb
Verb
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...
s, and particles. Nouns are grouped into two genders
Grammatical gender
Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
, animate and inanimate, and may carry affix
Affix
An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. Affixes may be derivational, like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed. They are bound morphemes by definition; prefixes and suffixes may be separable affixes...
es indicating plural
Plural
In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one...
ity, possession
Possession
In law, possession is the control a person intentionally exercises toward a thing. In all cases, to possess something, a person must have an intention to possess it. A person may be in possession of some property...
, obviation
Obviative
Obviate third person person is a grammatical person marking that distinguishes a non-salient third person referent from a more salient third person referent in a given discourse context...
, and location. Verbs are divided into four classes based on their transitivity
Transitivity (grammatical category)
In linguistics, transitivity is a property of verbs that relates to whether a verb can take direct objects and how many such objects a verb can take...
: animate intransitive (AI), inanimate intransitive (II), transitive inanimate (TI), and transitive animate (TA). Verbs may carry affixes indicating agreement (with both subject and object arguments
Verb argument
In linguistics, a verb argument is a phrase that appears in a syntactic relationship with the verb in a clause. In English, for example, the two most important arguments are the subject and the direct object....
), tense
Grammatical tense
A tense is a grammatical category that locates a situation in time, to indicate when the situation takes place.Bernard Comrie, Aspect, 1976:6:...
, mood
Grammatical mood
In linguistics, grammatical mood is a grammatical feature of verbs, used to signal modality. That is, it is the use of verbal inflections that allow speakers to express their attitude toward what they are saying...
, and inversion
Inversion (linguistics)
In linguistics, grammatical inversion is any of a number of different distinct grammatical constructions in the languages of the world. There are three main uses in the literature which, unfortunately, have little if any overlap either formally or typologically: syntactic inversion, thematic...
. Two different sets, or orders, of verbal affixes are used depending on the verb's syntactic context
Syntax
In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....
. In simple main clauses, the verb is marked using affixes of the independent order, while in subordinate clauses and content-word questions, affixes of the conjunct order are used.
External links
- Innu Aimun orthography and phonology (Languagegeek)
- Native Languages page for Montagnais Innu
- Ethnologue entry for Montagnais
- Innu-aimun.ca Information about the language.