A grammar of Pite Saami, 2014

1.2 Linguistic documentation of Pite Saami
Note that these studies deal with Pite Saami as it was spoken before 1950.
Finno-Ugristian studies have traditionally dealt with historical-comparative studies,
and have not always been concerned with the synchronic state of Saami languages.
Indeed, the distance some scholars keep from the synchronic situation
is highlighted by the erroneous claim by Lehtiranta that Pite Saami is “now extinct”
(Lehtiranta 1992: English abstract). Consequently, the present study is the
first extensive description of the Pite Saami language in English and for a general
linguistic audience.
Since the present study is intended to be a synchronic description of the Pite
Saami language as used in the early 21 st century and reflected by the Pite Saami
Documentation Project corpus, the previous work mentioned above have played
an indirect but important role in its creation. However, these works were referred
to in detail particularly when the data from the corpus were not substantial
enough to allow relatively certain conclusions to be drawn. Data based at
least partly on sources other than the documentation corpus are clearly marked
as such in this description. Specifically, the sections in Lagercrantz (1926) concerning
phrasal and sentence-level syntactic phenomena in Part A ‘Ausdruckslehre’
(pp. 19–99) were informative, while Part B ‘Formenlehre’ (pp. 103-141), the
paradigms throughout Halász (1896) as well as the paradigms in the appendix
to Lehtiranta (1992: 150–166) were consulted regarding morphology. In writing
Chapter 10 on derivational morphology, Ruong’s thesis (particularly Chapters 6
through 40, which present his data) provided valuable insights into the variety
and complexity of Pite Saami derivation from both morphological and semantic
perspectives.
In addition to the academic linguistic studies mentioned above, a number of
other texts exist concerning the Pite Saami language and its people. Valijärvi
& Wilbur (2011) describe the current state of the Pite Saami language from the
point of view of sociology of language. Sjaggo (2010) deals with the etymology
of a selection of Pite Saami place names along the river Piteälven in the Arjeplog
municipality. A large number of Pite Saami vuole 14 (songs in the Saami singing
tradition of yoik) were recorded in the first half of the 20 th century. These can
be found transcribed in a number of works: Tirén (1942) includes 139 transcriptions
of Pite Saami melodies and lyrics, with German translations; Grundström
& Väisänen (1958) have 93 songs by Jonas Eriksson Steggo in the form of transcribed
melodies and lyrics, with translations in Swedish and German; Grundström
& Smedeby (1963) provide 73 songs by a variety of Pite Saami individuals
in the form of transcribed melodies and lyrics, also with translations in Swedish
14 This is nominative plural; the nominative singular form is vuolle.
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