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42-518: The Polar Party ( Greenlandic : Issittup Partiia , Danish : Polarpartiet ) was a nationalist and conservative political party in Greenland led by Nikolaj Heinrich . The party won a single seat in the 1987 elections , which it retained in the 1991 elections . However, it received just 90 votes in the 1995 elections , losing its seat in Parliament . This article about politics in Greenland

84-635: A 100% literacy rate. As the Western Greenlandic standard has become dominant, a UNESCO report has labelled the other dialects as endangered, and measures are now being considered to protect the Eastern Greenlandic dialect. Kalaallisut and the other Greenlandic dialects belong to the Eskimo–Aleut family and are closely related to the Inuit languages of Canada and Alaska . Illustration 1 shows

126-626: A chisel-like edge. They were probably either used for engraving or for carving wood or bone. Burins were also used by Pre-Dorset groups and had a distinctive mitten shape. The Dorset were highly skilled at making refined miniature carvings, and striking masks. Both indicate an active shamanistic tradition . The Dorset culture was remarkably homogeneous across the Canadian Arctic , but there were some important variations which have been noted in both Greenland and Newfoundland / Labrador regions. There appears to be no genetic connection between

168-596: A terminal phase (from c.  1000 onwards). The terminal phase, if it existed, would likely be closely related to the onset of the Medieval Warm Period , which started to warm the Arctic considerably around the mid-10th century. With the warmer climates, the sea ice became less predictable and was isolated from the High Arctic. The Dorset were highly adapted to living in a very cold climate, and much of their food

210-405: A transitive verb in another. For example, " he plays the guitar" would be in the ergative case as a transitive agent, whereas "I bought a guitar " and "as the guitar plays" (the latter being the intransitive sense of the same verb "to play") would both be in the absolutive case. Nouns are inflected by one of eight cases and for possession. Verbs are inflected for one of eight moods and for

252-567: Is ergative-absolutive , but verbal morphology follows a nominative-accusative pattern and pronouns are syntactically neutral. The language distinguishes four persons (1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th or 3rd reflexive (see Obviation and switch-reference ); two numbers (singular and plural but no dual , unlike Inuktitut); eight moods (indicative, interrogative, imperative, optative, conditional, causative, contemporative and participial) and eight cases (absolutive, ergative, equative, instrumental, locative, allative, ablative and prolative). Greenlandic (including

294-403: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Greenlandic language Greenlandic is a polysynthetic language that allows the creation of long words by stringing together roots and suffixes . The language's morphosyntactic alignment is ergative , treating both the argument (subject) of an intransitive verb and the object of a transitive verb in one way, but the subject of

336-435: Is contrastive only in loanwords . The alveolar stop /t/ is pronounced as an affricate [t͡s] before the high front vowel /i/ . Often, Danish loanwords containing ⟨b d g⟩ preserve these in writing, but that does not imply a change in pronunciation, for example ⟨baaja⟩ [paːja] "beer" and ⟨Guuti⟩ [kuːtˢi] "God"; these are pronounced exactly as /p t k/ . The broad outline of

378-525: Is fronted to [ʉ] between two coronal consonants. The allophonic lowering of /i/ and /u/ before uvular consonants is shown in the modern orthography by writing /i/ and /u/ as ⟨e⟩ and ⟨o⟩ respectively before ⟨q⟩ and ⟨r⟩ . For example: The palatal sibilant [ʃ] has merged with [s] in all dialects except those of the Sisimiut – Maniitsoq – Nuuk – Paamiut area. The labiodental fricative [f]

420-421: Is the most innovative by further simplifying its structure by eliding /n/ . The Greenlandic three- vowel system, composed of /i/ , /u/ , and /a/ , is typical for an Eskimo–Aleut language. Double vowels are analyzed as two morae and so they are phonologically a vowel sequence and not a long vowel. They are also orthographically written as two vowels. There is only one diphthong, /ai/ , which occurs only at

462-466: Is the most innovative of the Greenlandic dialects since it has assimilated consonant clusters and vowel sequences more than West Greenlandic. Kalaallisut is further divided into four subdialects. One that is spoken around Upernavik has certain similarities to East Greenlandic, possibly because of a previous migration from eastern Greenland. A second dialect is spoken in the region of Uummannaq and

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504-576: Is the only word that is required in a sentence. Since verbs inflect for number and person of both subject and object, the verb is in fact a clause itself. Therefore, clauses in which all participants are expressed as free-standing noun phrases are rather rare. The following examples show the possibilities of leaving out the verbal arguments: Sini-ppoq sleep- 3SG / IND Sini-ppoq sleep-3SG/IND "(S)he sleeps" Angut man. ABS sinippoq sleep- 3SG / IND Angut sinippoq man.ABS sleep-3SG/IND Dorset culture The Dorset

546-613: Is the policy of "Greenlandization" of Greenlandic society that began with the home rule agreement of 1979. The policy has worked to reverse the former trend towards marginalization of the Greenlandic language by making it the official language of education. The fact that Greenlandic has become the only language used in primary schooling means that monolingual Danish-speaking parents in Greenland are now raising children bilingual in Danish and Greenlandic. Greenlandic now has several dedicated news media:

588-596: Is thought to have been from hunting sea mammals that breathe through holes in the ice. The massive decline in sea-ice which the Medieval Warm Period produced would have strongly affected the Dorset. They could have followed the ice north. Most of the evidence suggests that they disappeared some time between 1000 and 1500. Radiocarbon dating has shown the Dorset were living in the Cambridge Bay area as late as 1350 CE, while

630-603: The Disko Bay . The standard language is based on the central Kalaallisut dialect spoken in Sisimiut in the north, around Nuuk and as far south as Maniitsoq . Southern Kalaallisut is spoken around Narsaq and Qaqortoq in the south. Table 1 shows the differences in the pronunciation of the word for "humans" in the two main dialects and Inuktun. It can be seen that Inuktun is the most conservative by maintaining ⟨gh⟩ , which has been elided in Kalaallisut, and Tunumiisut

672-508: The number and person of its subject and object . Both nouns and verbs have complex derivational morphology. The basic word order in transitive clauses is subject–object–verb . The subordination of clauses uses special subordinate moods. A so-called fourth-person category enables switch-reference between main clauses and subordinate clauses with different subjects. Greenlandic is notable for its lack of grammatical tense ; temporal relations are expressed normally by context but also by

714-529: The 11th century, ended up spreading through the lands previously inhabited by the Dorset. It is not fully known whether the Inuit and Dorset ever met. Some modern genetic studies show the Dorset population were distinct from later groups and that "There was virtually no evidence of genetic or cultural interaction between the Dorset and the Thule peoples." However, the question of why the Dorset disappeared so completely has led some to suggest that Thule invaders wiped out

756-404: The 1700s. Greenlandic's first orthography was developed by Samuel Kleinschmidt in 1851, but within 100 years, it already differed substantially from the spoken language because of a number of sound changes . An extensive orthographic reform was undertaken in 1973 and made the script much easier to learn. This resulted in a boost in Greenlandic literacy , which is now among the highest in

798-673: The Dorset also extensively used a breathing-hole sealing technique and perhaps they would have taught this to the Inuit. But this has been questioned on the grounds that there is no evidence that the Dorset had dogs. Some elders describe peace with an ancient group of people, while others describe conflict. Scholars had thought that the Sadlermiut, a people living in near isolation mainly on and around Coats Island , Walrus Island , and Southampton Island in Hudson Bay up until 1902–03, might have been

840-543: The Dorset and the Thule who replaced them. Archaeological and legendary evidence is often thought to support some cultural contact, but this has been questioned. The Dorset people, for instance, engaged in seal-hole hunting, a method which requires several steps and includes the use of dogs. The Thule apparently did not use this technique in the time they had previously spent in Alaska. Settlement pattern data has been used to claim that

882-481: The Dorset people and their culture. The origins of the Dorset people are not well understood. They may have developed from the previous cultures of Pre-Dorset , Saqqaq or (less likely) Independence I . There are, however, problems with this theory: these earlier cultures had bow and arrow technology which the Dorsets lacked. Possibly, due to a shift from terrestrial to aquatic hunting, the bow and arrow became lost to

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924-520: The Dorset people in "an example of prehistoric genocide." Inuit legends recount them encountering people they called the Tuniit (in syllabics : ᑐᓃᑦ, singular ᑐᓂᖅ Tuniq ). According to legend, the first inhabitants were giants, taller and stronger than the Inuit but afraid to interact and "easily put to flight". In 1925 anthropologist Diamond Jenness received artifacts from Cape Dorset , now Kinngait. As they were quite different from those of

966-540: The Dorset. Another piece of technology that is missing from the Dorset are drills : there are no drill holes in Dorset artifacts. Instead, the Dorset gouged lenticular holes. For example, bone needles have long, narrow holes that were painstakingly carved or gouged. Both the Pre-Dorset and Thule (Inuit) had drills. Dorset culture and history is divided into periods: the early (500–1  BCE ), middle (1–500  CE ), and late phases (500–1000  CE ), as well as perhaps

1008-483: The Greenlandic National Radio, Kalaallit Nunaata Radioa , which provides television and radio programming in Greenlandic. The newspaper Sermitsiaq has been published since 1958 and merged in 2010 with the other newspaper Atuagagdliutit/Grønlandsposten , which had been established in 1861 to form a single large Greenlandic language publishing house. Before June 2009, Greenlandic shared its status as

1050-507: The Greenlandic grammar is similar to other Eskimo languages, on the morpholological and syntactic plan. The morphology of Greenlandic is highly synthetic and exclusively suffixing (except for a single highly-limited and fossilized demonstrative prefix). The language creates very long words by means of adding strings of suffixes to a stem. In principle, there is no limit to the length of a Greenlandic word, but in practice, words with more than six derivational suffixes are not so frequent, and

1092-492: The Inuit, he speculated that they were indicative of an ancient, preceding culture. Jenness named the culture "Dorset" after the location of the find. These artifacts showed a consistent and distinct cultural pattern that included sophisticated art distinct from that of the Inuit. For example, the carvings featured uniquely large hairstyles for women, and figures of both sexes wearing hoodless parkas with large, tall collars. Much research since then has revealed many details of

1134-600: The Sadlermiut and the Dorset. A genetic study published in Science in August 2014 examined the remains of nineteen Dorset people buried in Canada and Greenland between ca. 170  BCE and 1320  CE . The sixteen samples of mtDNA extracted were determined to belong to haplogroup D2a1 (twelve samples), D2a (three samples) and D. These haplogroups also predominate in the preceding Saqqaq culture, suggesting genetic continuity between

1176-579: The Thule Inuit moved into the area around 1200 CE. Scientists have suggested that they disappeared because they were unable to adapt to climate change or that they were vulnerable to newly introduced disease. The Dorset adaptation was different from that of the whaling -based Thule Inuit. Unlike the Inuit, they rarely hunted land animals, such as polar bears and caribou . They did not use bows or arrows. Instead, they seem to have relied on seals and other sea mammals that they apparently hunted from holes in

1218-495: The average number of morphemes per word is three to five. The language has between 400 and 500 derivational suffixes and around 318 inflectional suffixes. There are few compound words but many derivations. The grammar uses a mixture of head and dependent marking . Both agent and patient are marked on the predicate, and the possessor is marked on nouns, with dependent noun phrases inflecting for case. The primary morphosyntactic alignment of full noun phrases in Kalaallisut

1260-412: The distinct differences in the technologies relating to hunting and tool making. Artifacts include distinctive triangular end-blades, oil lamps ( qulliq ) made of soapstone , and burins . The Dorset were first identified as a separate culture in 1925. The Dorset appear to have been extinct by 1500 at the latest and perhaps as early as 1000. The Thule people, who began migrating east from Alaska in

1302-767: The eastern Tunumiisut variety) is the only Eskimo language having lost its dual. Verbs carry a bipersonal inflection for subject and object. Possessive noun phrases inflect for both possessor and case. In this section, the examples are written in Greenlandic standard orthography except that morpheme boundaries are indicated by a hyphen. Greenlandic distinguishes three open word classes : nouns , verbs and particles . Verbs inflect for person and number of subject and object as well as for mood. Nouns inflect for possession and for case. Particles do not inflect. Oqar-poq say- 3SG / IND Oqar-poq say-3SG/IND "(S)he says" Angut man. ABS Angut man.ABS "A man" Naamik No Naamik No "No" The verb

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1344-428: The ends of words. Before a uvular consonant ( /q/ or /ʁ/ ), /i/ is realized allophonically as [e] , [ɛ] or [ɐ] , and /u/ is realized allophonically as [o] or [ɔ] , and the two vowels are written ⟨e, o⟩ respectively (as in some orthographies used for Quechua and Aymara ). /a/ becomes retracted to [ɑ] in the same environment. /i/ is rounded to [y] before labial consonants. /u/

1386-468: The first Greenlandic dictionary in 1750 and the first grammar in 1760. From the Danish colonization in the 1700s to the beginning of Greenlandic home rule in 1979, Greenlandic experienced increasing pressure from the Danish language. In the 1950s, Denmark's linguistic policies were directed at strengthening Danish. Of primary significance was the fact that post-primary education and official functions were conducted in Danish. From 1851 to 1973, Greenlandic

1428-423: The ice. Their clothing must have been adapted to the extreme conditions. Triangular end-blades and burins are diagnostic of the Dorset. The end-blades were hafted onto harpoon heads. They primarily used the harpoons to hunt seal, but also hunted larger sea mammals such as walrus and narwhals . They made lamps, called qulliq , from soapstone and filled them with seal oil. Burins were a type of stone flake with

1470-485: The last remnants of the Dorset culture, as they had a culture and dialect distinct from the mainland Inuit . Encounters with Europeans and exposure to infectious disease caused the deaths of the last members of the Sadlermiut. A 2002 paper suggested that the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of Sadlermiut people was related to that of both the Dorset and Thule peoples, perhaps suggesting local admixture. A subsequent 2012 genetic analysis, however, showed no genetic link between

1512-441: The locations of the different Inuit languages, among them the two main dialects of Greenlandic and the separate language Inuktun ("Avanersuaq"). The most prominent Greenlandic dialect is Kalaallisut, which is the official language of Greenland. The name Kalaallisut is often used as a cover term for all of Greenlandic. The eastern dialect ( Tunumiit oraasiat ) , spoken in the vicinity of Ammassalik Island and Ittoqqortoormiit ,

1554-530: The official language in Greenland with Danish. Since then, Greenlandic has become the sole official language. That has made Greenlandic a unique example of an indigenous language of the Americas that is recognized by law as the only official language of a semi-independent country. Nevertheless, it is still considered to be in a "vulnerable" state by the UNESCO Red Book of Language Endangerment . The country has

1596-542: The two. The authors of the study suggested that the ancestors of the Saqqaq and Dorset entered North America from Siberia in a single distinct migration about 4000  BCE , after which they remained genetically largely isolated for thousands of years. The Dorset were genetically distinct from the Thule people who, after expanding out of Siberia, completely replaced the Dorset people around 1300  CE . The study also found no evidence of genetic mixing between Dorset people and

1638-804: The use of temporal particles such as "yesterday" or "now" or sometimes by the use of derivational suffixes or the combination of affixes with aspectual meanings with the semantic lexical aspect of different verbs. However, some linguists have suggested that Greenlandic always marks future tense . Another question is whether the language has noun incorporation or whether the processes that create complex predicates that include nominal roots are derivational in nature. When adopting new concepts or technologies, Greenlandic usually constructs new words made from Greenlandic roots, but modern Greenlandic has also taken many loans from Danish and English . The language has been written in Latin script since Danish colonization began in

1680-481: The world . Greenlandic was brought to Greenland by the arrival of the Thule people in the 1200s. The languages that were spoken by the earlier Saqqaq and Dorset cultures in Greenland are unknown. The first descriptions of Greenlandic date from the 1600s. With the arrival of Danish missionaries in the early 1700s and the beginning of Danish colonization of Greenland, the compilation of dictionaries and description of grammar began. The missionary Paul Egede wrote

1722-578: Was a Paleo-Eskimo culture, lasting from 500  BCE to between 1000  CE and 1500  CE , that followed the Pre-Dorset and preceded the Thule people (proto-Inuit) in the North American Arctic . The culture and people are named after Cape Dorset (now Kinngait) in Nunavut , Canada, where the first evidence of its existence was found. The culture has been defined as having four phases due to

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1764-435: Was written in a complicated orthography devised by the missionary linguist Samuel Kleinschmidt . In 1973, a new orthography was introduced, intended to bring the written language closer to the spoken standard, which had changed considerably since Kleinschmidt's time. The reform was effective, and in the years following it, Greenlandic literacy has received a boost. Another development that has strengthened Greenlandic language

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