Deciphering the Underlying Meanings of Inuit Words

When parsed into their lexical components, many words of the Inuit language yield composite meanings. Bringing such underlying significations to light may be called morphosemantic analysis. Morphosemantics may make use of synchronic parsing, morphemic inference, and etymological reconstruction, or some combination of these, according to the semantic depth to be reached. The present article discusses this technique of lexical analysis, explaining its results, limits, and possible interest for Inuit speakers desirous of envisioning the full wealth of their language and culture, presenting numerous examples of underlying meanings of words, mostly in the Nunavik dialect of eastern Canadian Inuktitut

Linguistics · History · Lexicography and Language Studies · Philosophy