In this talk I report the research on the languages of Alaska, conducted by myself and my colleagues. The modern state of Alaska is a large territory of North America with a variety of languages. The history of Alaska is strongly connected with Russia, the first European country that explored and colonized Alaska beginning from the mid-18th century. The early colonization of Alaska by Russian was economically motivated. Alaska interested Russians as a source of furs that played a major role in the trade between Siberia and China. Subsequently Russians explored other Alaskan resources and interacted with the indigenous population. Our research group focuses on two linguistic realms of modern Alaska. One of those is the languages of the Athabaskan, or Dene, languages, primarily the Upper Kuskokwim language of interior Alaska. Upper Kuskokwim Indians are a small group traditionally residing in the upper drainage of the Kuskokwim river. The Upper Kuskokwim people probably never included more that several hundred people, but they exploited a large territory in a semi-nomadic fashion. I will cover topics such as language contacts with other indigenous and non-indigenous groups, dialectal variation, linguistic identities of the Upper Kuskokwim people, and the modern language policy in the community. Another linguistic realm in Alaska that we also research is Alaskan Russian. During the time of Russian America, a social class of creoles was formed. These were people of mixed descent, mostly born from Russian fathers and indigenous mothers. They developed a special variety of Russian that is different from all forms and dialects of Eurasian Russian. I will explain the rise of Alaskan Russian, the linguistic and sociolinguistic aspects of this variety, and its present day status. In addition, in my talk I will provide a context of other languages of Alaska that are different in important ways from Upper Kuskokwim and Alaskan Russian.
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