This compelling and rigorous book is concerned with the historical development of Inuktitut and its linguistic relatives. Dorais describes the Asian and Alaskan origins of the Eskaleut languages, the migrations that brought some of them to Canada and Greenland, their subsequent diversification into dialects, and the processes that induced linguistic change.Dorais also engages other, related topics: semantics; coining new words for modern concepts; the introduction of writing systems and a brief overview of the theory of language change. This is a fundamental text both for students of Inuktitut and those with a deep interest in the historical processes that affect language.