"Inupiatun Uqaluit Taniktun Sivuni ""it/Inupiaq to English Dictionary, "with approximately 19,000 entries (word stems, suffixes, and endings) and thirty-one appendices, is a rich cultural and linguistic resource of the Inupiaq language, the ancestral language of approximately five thousand Inupiat who live in eight villages on the North Slope of Alaska. Inupiaq word stems, suffixes, and endings can combine to form thousands of combinations, and each entry has an English translation. Many entries contain a verbal illustration in Inupiaq also translated into English. Every entry contains a morpheme by morpheme analysis. Of the dictionary s thirty-one appendices, twenty-four contain lists of terms from different categories, including: kin terms, ice and snow terms, temporal terms, names of constellations, ocean currents, and winds, area references, spatial terms, an explanation of the Inupiat counting system (also a list of cardinal and ordinal numbers), Inupiaq personal names, names of plants and animals (including mammals, insects, birds, fish, molluscs, and crustaceans), a list of exclamations, and names of the seasons/months. The other seven appendices are illustrations of an umiak, a kayak, a bowhead whale, a human skull, a human skeleton, and a traditional sod house. The various parts of each item are identified and named. "

This volume is the first comprehensive comparative dictionary to cover the whole of the Chukotko-Kamchatkan family. The genealogical status of this family (whether from a common source or due to convergence) has long been controversial, but its coherence as a family can now be taken as proven. Its geographical position between Siberia and northernmost America renders it crucial in any attempt to relate the languages and peoples of these large linguistic regions. The dictionary consists of cognate sets arranged alphabetically according to reconstructed proto-forms and covers all published lexical sources for the languages concerned (plus a good deal of unpublished material). The criterion for setting up Proto-Chukotian sets is the existence of clear cognates in at least two of the four languages: Chukchi, Koryak, Alutor, and (now extinct) Kerek, and for Proto-Chukotko-Kamchatkan sets cognates in at least one of these plus Itelmen. Internal loans between the two branches of the family are indicated - this is particularly important in the case of the many loans from Koryak to modern western Itelmen. Proto-Itelmen sets without clear cognates in Chukotian are listed separately, without reconstructions. The data is presented in a reader-friendly format, with each set divided into separate lines for the individual languages concerned and with a common orthography for all reliable modern forms (given as full word stems, not just 'roots'). The introduction contains information on the distribution of the individual languages and dialects and all sound correspondences relating them, plus a sketch of what is known of their (pre)historical background. Inflections and derivational affixes are treated in separate sections, and Chukchi and English proto-form indexes allows multiple routes of access to the data. A full reference list of sources is included.

Related words from the modern Eskimo languages are grouped together in comparative sets with English equivalents. Ten linguistic varieties are compared, including five Inuit dialect groups, the four Yupik languages, and Sirenikski. Separate sections are devoted to derivational suffixes, inflectional endings, and demonstratives. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The culmination of forty years of research, The Language of the Inuit maps the geographical distribution and linguistic differences between the Eskaleut and Inuit languages and dialects. Providing details about aspects of comparative phonology, grammar, and lexicon as well as Inuit prehistory and historical evolution, Louis-Jacques Dorais shows the effects of bilingualism, literacy, and formal education on Inuit language and considers its present status and future. An enormous task, masterfully accomplished, The Language of the Inuit is not only an anthropological and linguistic study of a language and the broad social and cultural contexts where it is spoken but a history of the language's speakers.

Without exception, all people are faced with the inevitability of death, a stark fact that has immeasurably shaped societies and individual consciousness for the whole of human history. Mirrors of Passing offers a powerful window into this oldest of human preoccupations by investigating the interrelationships of death, materiality, and temporality across far-flung times and places. Stretching as far back as Ancient Egypt and Greece and moving through present-day locales as diverse as Western Europe, Central Asia, and the Arctic, each of the richly illustrated essays collected here draw on a range of disciplinary insights to explore some of the most fundamental, universal questions that confront us.