258 



S Gr. ki"'<p-at (plur. of ki^faq]. Since this peculiarity is com- 

 mon to these two groups, which are geographically so widely 

 separated, it must already have developed at a time when they 

 composed a group together or both belonged to another group 

 as against the remaining Greenlanders, in relation to the fri- 

 catives of Middle and South Greenlandic, then, these stopped 

 consonants are scarcely secondary*), but rather parallel develop- 

 ments of the same voiced sounds from which the fricatives have 

 developed. The fact that they almost completely take the place 

 of the unvoiced fricatives is so important that it makes the 

 whole consonant-system of this "northeastern» group different 

 not only from the South Greenlandic but also from the sound- 

 systems of all the other dialects which it has been possible to 

 analyze phonetically. — On the other hand. South Greenlandic 

 and the Labrador dialect agree in this respect (cf. pag. 203). 



If we now turn to the relation between s and _/ in these 

 dialects, their distribution is at first glance different. The s- 

 sounds seem to connect the Upernawik dialect with Middle 

 and South Greenlandic. The Labrador dialect differs from 

 South Greenlandic in that it has j. Yet on closer inspection 

 the case assumes a different aspect. The transition from j to 

 s (unvoiced) between two vowels 1 think may be considered as 

 peculiar to Middle and South Greenlandic. If the inhabitants of 

 Upernawik have this s throughout, and I have reason to believe 

 that they have, yet it is not certain that they have got it at the 

 same time as their neighbors to the south; for instance it is 

 possible that after they had settled down in their present 

 territory, they have been influenced by intercourse with their 

 neighbors and have adopted the sound from them. In favor of 



*) Within the Indo-European family of languages, the stopped consonants, 

 for instance p t k, are generally primary in relation to the Germanic 

 unvoiced fricatives. But the case is dilVerent in the Eskimo language- 

 group; the stopped consonants in question are here geminated sounds. 

 Long consonants are always unvoiced in Greenlandic in so far as they 

 are not nasalized. 



