Carrier language

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Carrier
Dakeɬ (Dakelh)
Spoken in: Canada 
Region: central interior British Columbia
Total speakers: 1,000
Language family: Na-dene
 Athabaskan-Eyak
  Athabaskan
   Northern Athabaskan
    Carrier
Language codes
ISO 639-1: none
ISO 639-2: ath
ISO/FDIS 639-3: either:
crz — 
caf — 

The Carrier language is a Northern Athabaskan language. It is named after the Dakelh people, a First Nations people of the central interior of British Columbia, Canada, for whom Carrier is the usual English name. People who are referred to as Carrier speak two related languages. One, Babine-Witsuwit'en is sometimes referred to as Northern Carrier. The other, Carrier proper, includes what are sometimes referred to as Central Carrier and Southern Carrier.

Contents

[edit] Phonology

[edit] Inventory

[edit] Consonants

All dialects of Carrier have essentially the same consonant system. There are three series of stops and affricates: aspirated, unaspirated (written voiced in the practical orthography), and ejective.

/r/ is not native to the language but has been introduced by loans from French and English. /f/ occurs in a single loanword "coffee". The labialized voiced velar fricative is found only in the speech of the most conservative speakers; for most speakers it has merged with /w/. The palatal nasal occurs allophonically before palatal consonants. Otherwise, it occurs only in a small set of 2nd person singular morphemes. For most speakers it has become an /nj/ sequence, with the /n/ syllabic. Similarly, the velar nasal occurs allophonically before velar consonants but is found distinctively in one or two morphemes in each dialect.

  Bilabial Alveolar Post-alveolar Velar Glottal
central lateral plain labial
Stop unaspirated p t     k  
aspirated       kʷʰ  
ejective   t’     k’ k’ʷ ʔ
Affricate unaspirated   ʦ ʧ      
aspirated   ʦʰ tɬʰ ʧʰ      
ejective   ʦ’ tɬ’ ʧ’      
Nasal   m n   (ɲ) (ŋ)    
Fricative voiceless f s ɬ ʃ x h
voiced   z     ɣ (ɣʷ)  
Approximant     r l j   w  

[edit] Vowels

Carrier has six surface-phonemic vowels: /i/, /u/, /e/, /o/, /a/, and /ʌ/. The first four are tense in open syllables and lax in closed syllables. The reduced vowel /ʌ/ is quite variable in its realization: it approaches [i] immediately preceding /j/ and approaches [a] when either or both adjacent consonants are laryngeal. Unlike in some related languages, there is no distinctive nasalization; that is, Carrier does not contrast oral and nasal vowels.

The great majority of instances of /ʌ/ are predictable from the phonotactics, introduced in order to create an acceptable syllable structure. The remaining instances are all found in certain forms of the verb where the morphology requires some vowel to be present.

In most if not all dialects there are surface-phonemic distinctions of vowel length. However, all of the long vowel that create such distinctions are morphophonemically derived. There is no need to represent vowel length in lexical representations.

[edit] Phonotactics

In general the Carrier syllable is maximally CVC. All consonants other than the extremely rare /ɳ/ are found in syllable-initial position. The possible coda consonants, on the other hand, are restricted. All of the sonorants except for the extremely rare palatal nasal may occur in the coda, but of the obstruents only the pulmonic unaspirated series occur. Affricates are not found in the coda with the exception of a few instances of /ts/. Palatals are also absent from the coda.

Word-internally consonant clusters occur only at the juncture between two syllables. Tautosyllablic clusters are found only word-initially, where any of the onset consonants may be preceded by /s/ or /ɬ/.

Nasals at all points of articulation are syllabic word-initially preceding a consonant.

[edit] Writing system

The writing system in general use today is the Carrier Linguistic Committee writing system, a Roman-based system developed in the 1960s by Summer Institute of Linguistics missionaries and a group of Carrier people with whom they worked. The CLC writing system was designed to be typed on a standard English typewriter. It uses numerous digraphs and trigraphs to write the many Carrier consonants not found in English, e.g. <gh> for [ɣ] and <lh> for [ɬ], with an apostrophe to mark glottalization, e.g. <ts'> for the ejective alveolar affricate. Letters generally have their English rather than European values. For example, <u> represents /ʌ/ while <oo> represents /u/.

The only diacritic it uses in its standard form is the underscore, which is written under <s>, <z>, <ts>, and <dz> to indicate that the consonant is lamino-dental rather than apico-alveolar. An acute accent is sometimes used to mark high tone, but tone is not routinely written in Carrier.

A grave inscribed in Carrier Syllabics
Enlarge
A grave inscribed in Carrier Syllabics

Carrier was formerly written in a derivative of the Cree Syllabics known variously as the Carrier Syllabics or Dene Syllabics[1]. This writing system was widely used for several decades from its inception in 1885 but began to fade in the 1930s. Today only a few people can read it.

A good deal of scholarly material, together with the first edition of the "Little Catechism" and the Third Edition of the Prayerbook, is written in the writing system used by Father Adrien-Gabriel Morice in his scholarly work. This writing system is a somewhat idiosyncratic version of the phonetic transcription of the time. It is subphonemic and was never used by Carrier people themselves, though many learned to read the Prayerbook in it.

[edit] Morphology

[edit] Nouns

Carrier nouns are inflected for possession and number. Possession is marked by prefixation as well, in some cases, as changes in the noun stem. Number is marked only on nouns denoting human beings and dogs, and these distinguish only singular and plural. Some dialects of Carrier have no number distinctions in nouns at all.

A noun has six basic personal possessive forms:

Possessive Paradigm of stick

sg pl
1 /sdʌtʃʌn/ /nedʌtʃʌn/
2 /ndʌtʃʌn/ /nahdʌtʃʌn/
3 /udʌtʃʌn/ /bʌdʌtʃʌn/

Reading row-wise, these mean "my stick", "our stick", "your (1 person) stick", "your (two or more people) stick", "his/her/its stick", and "their stick".

There are five additional third person possessive forms:

Areal /xwʌdʌtʃʌn/
Reflexive /dʌdʌtʃʌn/
Disjoint /jʌdʌtʃʌn/
Plural disjoint /hidʌtʃʌn/
Reciprocal /ɬdʌtʃʌn/

The areal form is used when the possessor is saliently areal, spatial, or an extent of time. The reflexive is used when the subject of the clause and the possessor are the same, whether singular or plural. The disjoint form is used when both subject and possessor are third person singular and are not the same. The plural disjoint form is used when the subject is third person plural, the possessor is third person singular, and the possessor is not one of the individuals in the subject group. The reciprocal form, meaning "each other's", was used into the early twentieth century but has since fallen out of use.

The twelfth possessive form is found almost always on inalienably possessed nouns. These are nouns that may not occur as words in their own right. In Carrier, the great majority of such nouns are either body parts or kinship terms. For example, although we can abstract the stem /ke/ from forms for "foot" such as /ske/ "my foot", /neke/ "our feet", and /uke/ "his foot", /ke/ by itself is not a word. It must either occur with a possessive prefix or as part of a compound, such as /kek'etɬ'u/ "sock". To refer to an inalienably possessed noun without specifying its owner, the indefinite possessive prefix /ʔ/ is used. The approximate equivalent of "a foot" is therefore /ʔʌke/.

To describe alienable possession of an inalienably possessed noun, the regular possessive forms are used with the indefinite form as a base rather than the bare stem. Thus, to say "my foot" if the foot is not your own foot but is, for example, a rabbit's foot, you would say /seʔʌke/. (The fact that the vowel is /e/ rather than /ʌ/ is the result of a phonological rule that changes /ʌ/ to /e/ immediately preceding /ʔ/ in noun prefixes and in the disjunct zone of the verb.)

Most Dakelh nouns do not have distinct singular and plural forms. How many items are under discussion may be inferred from context or may be specified by using a number or quantifier; otherwise, it remains ambiguous. With very limited exceptions, only nouns denoting human beings and dogs have distinct plural forms.

The most common way of forming the plural is by adding the suffix /-ne/. Thus, we have dʌne "man", dʌnene "men", dakelh "Dakelh person", dakelhne "Dakelh people".

Nouns derived from verbs by adding the suffix /-ʌn/ form their plurals by replacing /-ʌn/ with /-ne/. Thus we have hodʌɬʔeh-ʌn "teacher", hodʌɬʔeh-ne "teachers".

A smaller but nonetheless considerable number of nouns take the plural suffix /-ke/, e.g. ɬi "dog", ɬike "dogs". This is the usual way of making the plural of kinship terms, e.g. nelu "our mother", neluke "our mothers". The plural suffix /-ne/ is occasionally heard on kinship terms, but the suffix /-ke/ is more widely used and generally considered to be more correct. The plural of "dog" is invariably ɬike, never ɬine.

In addition, there are a handful of nouns with irregular plurals:

Singular Plural Gloss
ʔat ʔatku wife
tʃiɬ tʃilke young man
-tʃʌl -tʃisle younger brother
-dʌs -dʌsneke ancestor
k'eke k'ekuke friend
t'et t'edʌku young woman
ts'eke ts'eku woman

ʔat "wife" is also found with the more regular plural ʔatke. t'et is sometimes found with the double plural t'edʌkune. -dʌs "parent" is also found with the undoubled plural -dʌske.

The exceptions to the statement that only nouns denoting human beings and dogs have disinct plurals are all nouns derived from verbs. The form of the underlying verb may vary with number in such a way as to create distinct number forms for the derived noun.

Where the deverbal noun is derived by means of the agentive suffix -ʌn the verb is almost invariably in the third person singular form, which is to say, not marked for number. Plurality in these forms is normally marked only by the use of the duo-plural agentive suffix -ne in place of singular -ʌn. Zero-derived agentive nouns may show plurality by means of subject markers. For example, "shaman" may be either dʌjʌn-ʌn, with an overt agentive suffix, but the zero-marked dʌjʌn is more common. There are two plural forms: dʌjʌn-ne, with the duo-plural agentive suffix, and hʌdʌjʌn, in which the zero-marked form is based on the plural form of the verb.

There are two other cases in which the underlying verb may lead to a number distinction in the derived nouns. One is when the verb is restricted in the number of its absolutive argument. For example, there are two verbs "to kill", one that takes a singular or dual object, another that takes a strictly plural object. Since the word "prey" is derived from "kill", there are a singular-dual form be'dʌzʌlgɣe-i, based on the stem -ghe "kill one or two" and a plural form be'dʌɣan-i, based on the stem ɣan "kill three or more".

The other case in which the underlying verb induces a number distinction in the derived noun is when the verb contains a prefix such as distributive /n/. For example, nati "cross-road" has the duo-plural nanʌti. Similarly, 'ʌdzatbeti "rabbit trail" has the duo-plural 'ʌdzatbenʌti. Such examples arise because the "noun" ti "road, trail" is really a verb and takes the distributive prefix.

Even if a noun possesses a plural form, it is not necessary for it to take on the plural form in order to have a plural meaning. Indeed, there is a strong tendency to avoid overt marking of the plural if plurality is indicated in other ways, in particular, by an immediately following possessed noun. For example, the full form of "Dakelh language" is dakeɬne bʌɣʌni, literally "the words of the Dakelh people". Here dakeɬne consists of dakeɬ "Dakelh person with the plural suffix -ne, and bʌɣʌni is the third person plural possessed form of xʌni "words". The plurality of the possessor is indicated by the use of the third person duo-plural possessive prefix instead of the third person singular u. The form dakeɬ bʌɣʌni, in which dakeɬ is not overtly plural-marked, is much preferred.

[edit] Postpositions

Most postpositions are inflected for their object in a manner closely resembling the marking of possession on nouns. Here is the paradigm of /ba/ "for":

Object Paradigm of for

sg pl
1 /sba/ /neba/
2 /mba/ /nohba/
3 /uba/ /bʌba/
Areal /hʌba/
Reflexive /dʌba/
Disjoint /jʌba/
Plural disjoint /hiba/
Reciprocal /ɬba/

Whereas the reciprocal possessive form of nouns is obsolete, the reciprocal object of postpositions remains in common use. The form /ɬba/, for example, may be used in roughly the same contexts as the English phrase "for each other".

[edit] Verbs

The Carrier verb is extremely complex. A single verb may have hundreds of thousands of forms. Verbs are marked for the person and number of the subject, object, and indirect object, tense, mood, numerous aspectual categories, and negation. The subjects of verbs, and in some dialects objects and indirect objects, distinguish singular, dual, and plural numbers. Verbs are also marked for numerous "derivational" categories. For example, a basic motion verb, such as "walk" has derivatives meaning "walk into water", "walk into a hole", "walk ashore", "walk around" and "walk erroneously" (that is, "get lost walking").

The basic paradigm of a verb consists of three persons in three numbers, with the tenses and modes Imperfective, Perfective, Future, and Optative, in both affirmative and negative forms. Notice how the stem of the verb changes with tense/aspect/mode and negation, e.g. /ke/ in the Imperfective Affirmative but /koh/ in the Imperfective Negative and /ki/ in the Perfective Affirmative. In addition to the stem, the forms below contain the prefix /n/ "around, in a loop".


Go Around By Boat
Imperfective Affirmative Negative
Singular Dual Plural Singular Dual Plural
1 nʌske nike nʌts'ʌke nʌɬʌzʌskoh nʌɬʌzikoh nʌɬts'ʌskoh
2 ninke nahke nahke nʌɬʌzinkoh nʌɬʌzahkoh nʌɬʌzahkoh
3 nʌke nʌhʌke nʌhʌke nʌɬʌskoh nʌɬʌhʌskoh nʌɬʌhʌskoh
Perfective Affirmative Negative
Singular Dual Plural Singular Dual Plural
1 sʌski siki nʌts'ʌski nʌɬʌskel nʌɬikel nʌɬts'ikel
2 sinki sahki sahki nʌɬinkel nʌɬʌhkel nʌɬʌhkel
3 sʌki nʌhʌzʌki nʌhʌzʌki nʌɬikel nʌɬehikel nʌɬehikel
Future Affirmative Negative
Singular Dual Plural Singular Dual Plural
1 nʌtiskeɬ nʌtakeɬ nʌztikeɬ nʌɬtʌziskel nʌɬtʌzakel nʌɬts'ʌtiskel
2 nʌtankeɬ nʌtihkeɬ nʌtihkeɬ nʌɬtʌzankel nʌɬtʌzihkel nʌɬtʌzihkel
3 nʌtikeɬ notikeɬ notikeɬ nʌɬtʌziskel nʌɬotiskel nʌɬotiskel
Optative Affirmative Negative
Singular Dual Plural Singular Dual Plural
1 noskeʔ nokeʔ nʌts'ukeʔ nʌɬʌzuskeʔ nʌɬʌzokeʔ nʌɬts'uskeʔ
2 nonkeʔ nohkeʔ nohkeʔ nʌɬʌzonkeʔ nʌɬʌzuhkeʔ nʌɬʌzuhkeʔ
3 nokeʔ nʌhukeʔ nʌhukeʔ nʌɬuskeʔ nʌɬʌhuskeʔ nʌɬʌhuskeʔ

[edit] Syntax

In general terms, Carrier is a head-final language: the verb comes at the end of the clause, adpositions are postpositions rather than prepositions, and complementizers follow their clause. However, it is not consistently head-final: in head-external relative clauses, the relative clause follows the head noun. Carrier has both head-internal and head-external relative clauses. The subject usually precedes the object if one is present.

Carrier is an "everything drop" language. A verb can form a grammatical sentence by itself. It is not in general necessary for the subject or object to be expressed overtly by a noun phrase or pronoun.

[edit] Semantics

[edit] Scope phenomena

Verb-internal negation has low scope, meaning that, with certain exceptions, the scope of negation is restricted to the verb itself. Thus, a sentence like:

ɬeʔzʌst'ʌt "I am not smoking (unspecified object)"

is acceptable since the object marker (underlyingly just /ʔ/, with epenthetic /ʌ/ changed to /e/ because it immediately precedes /ʔ/ in the disjunct zone) is part of the verb, but

dek'a ɬʌzʌst'ʌt "I am not smoking tobacco"

is bizarre because the object dek'a "tobacco" is a separate noun phrase. The bizarreness results from the fact that the negative morphology of the verb does not have scope over the NP object. In order to bring the object within the scope of negation, it must follow the negative particle ʔaw:

ʔaw dek'a ɬʌzʌst'ʌt "I am not smoking tobacco"

[edit] Classification

Carrier is generally regarded as one of three members of the central British Columbia subgroup of Athabascan, the other two being Babine-Witsuwit'en and Chilcotin. As noted above, the term "Carrier" has often been applied to both Carrier proper and Babine-Witsuwit'en but this distinction is now rejected by specialists. The Ethnologue treats Carrier proper as consisting of two languages Carrier (code: crx) and Southern Carrier (code: caf), where the latter consists of the dialects of the Ulkatcho, Kluskus, Nazko, and Red Bluff bands. More recent research disputes the treatment of "Southern Carrier" as a distinct language and in fact classifies this dialect group as one of two parts of a larger "Southern Carrier" dialect group that contains all of Carrier proper except for the Stuart/Trembleur Lake dialect. Southern Carrier in the sense of the Ethnologue, that is, the Blackwater dialect group, is mutually comprehensible with all other Carrier dialects.

[edit] Dialects

Current research divides Carrier into two major dialect groups, a Stuart-Trembleur Lake group, and a Southern group. The Southern group, in turn, is divided into two subgroups, the Fraser-Nechako group, comprising the communities of Cheslatta, Stelako, Nadleh, Saik'uz, and Lheidli, and the Blackwater group, comprising the communities of Lhk'acho (Ulgatcho), Lhoosk'uz (Kluskus), Nazko, and Lhtakoh (Red Bluff).

The Carrier Region
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The Carrier Region

Much of the literature distinguishes Central Carrier from Southern Carrier. Unfortunately, the usage of these terms is quite variable. Almost all material in or about Central Carrier is in the Stuart Lake dialect. However, Central Carrier cannot be taken to be a synonym for Stuart-Trembleur Lake dialect because some of the more northerly of the Southern Carrier dialects, particularly Saik'uz dialect, are sometimes included in Central Carrier.

Although all speakers of all varieties of Carrier can communicate with each other with little difficulty, the dialects are quite diverse. They differ from each other not only in phonological details and lexicon but in morphology and even syntax.

[edit] Contact with other languages

Carrier is neighbored on the west by Babine-Witsuwit'en and Haisla, to the north by Sekani, to the southeast by Shuswap, to the south by Chilcotin, and to the southwest by Nuxalk. Furthermore, in the past few centuries, with the westward movement of the Plains Cree, there has been contact with the Cree from the East. Carrier has borrowed from some of these languages, but apparently not in large numbers. Loans from Cree include [mʌsdus] "cow" from Cree (originally "buffalo" but extended to "cow" already in Cree) and [sunija] "money, precious metal". There are also loans from languages that do not directly neighbor Carrier territory. A particularly interesting example is [maj] "berry, fruit", a loan from Gitksan, which has been borrowed into all Carrier dialects and has displaced the original Athabascan word.

Carrier and the neighbouring languages
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Carrier and the neighbouring languages

European contact has brought loans from a number of sources. The majority of demonstrable loans into Carrier are from French, though it is not generally clear whether they come directly from French or via Chinook Jargon. Loans from French include [ligok] "chicken" (form French "rooster"), [lisel] "salt", and [lizas] "angel". As these examples show, the French article is normally incorporated into the Carrier borrowing. A single loan from Spanish is known: [mandah] "canvas, tarpaulin", apparently acquired from Spanish-speaking packers.

The trade language Chinook Jargon came into use among Carrier people as a result of European contact. Most Carrier people never knew Chinook Jargon. It appears to have been known in most areas primarily by men who had spent time freighting on the Fraser River. Knowledge of Chinook Jargon may have been more common in the southwestern part of Carrier country due to its use at Bella Coola. The southwestern dialects have more loans from Chinook Jargon than other dialects. For example, while most dialects use the Cree loan described above for "money", the southwestern dialects use [tʃikʌmin], which is from Chinook Jargon. The word [daji] "chief" is a loan from Chinook Jargon.

European contact brought many new objects and ideas. The names for some were borrowed, but in most cases terms have been created using the morphological resources of the language, or by extending or shifting the meaning of existing terms. Thus, [tl'uł] now means not only "rope" but also "wire", while [k'a] has shifted from its original meaning of "arrow" to mean "cartridge" and [ʔʌłtih] has shifted from "bow" to "rifle". [hut'ʌp] "leeches" now also means "pasta". A microwave oven is [ʔa benʌlwʌs] "that by means of which things are warmed quickly". "mustard" is [ts'udʌnetsan] "children's feces", presumably after the texture and color rather than the flavor.

[edit] Status

Like most of the languages of British Columbia, Carrier is an endangered language. Only about 10% of Dakelh people now speak the Carrier language, hardly any of them children. Members of the generation following that of the last speakers can often understand the language but they do not contribute to its transmission.

Carrier is taught as a second language in both public and band schools throughout Carrier territory. This instruction provides an acquaintance with the language but has not proven effective in producing functional knowledge of the language. Carrier has also been taught at the University of Northern British Columbia and the College of New Caledonia.

The Yinka Dene Language Institute (YDLI) is charged with the maintenance and promotion of Carrier language and culture. Its activities include research, archiving, curriculum development, teacher training, literacy instruction, and production of teaching and reference materials. Prior to the founding of YDLI in 1988 the Carrier Linguistic Committee, a group based in Fort Saint James affiliated with the Summer Institute of Linguistics, produced a number of publications in Carrier, literacy materials for several dialects, a 3000-entry dictionary of the Stuart Lake dialect, and various other materials. The Carrier Linguistic Committee is largely responsible for literacy among younger speakers of the language. The Carrier Bible Translation Committee produced a translation of the New Testament that was published in 1995. An adaptation to Blackwater dialect appeared in 2002.

[edit] See also

[edit] Bibliography

(A full bibliography is available at: http://www.ydli.org/biblios/lingbib.htm.)

  • Antoine, Francesca, Bird, Catherine, Isaac, Agnes, Prince, Nellie, Sam, Sally, Walker, Richard, and David B. Wilkinson (1974) Central Carrier Bilingual Dictionary. Fort Saint James, British Columbia: Carrier Linguistic Committee.
  • Cook, Eung-Do (1976) A Phonological Study of Chilcotin and Carrier. Report to the National Museum on Contract No. E10-75-8. Part II: Central Carrier Phonology.
  • Kari, James (1975) "Babine, a New Athabaskan Linguistic Grouping," ms. Alaska Native Language Center, Fairbanks, Alaska.
  • Kari, James and Sharon Hargus (1989) "Dialectology, Ethnonymy and Prehistory in the Northwest Portion of the `Carrier' Language Area," ms. Alaska Native Language Center, Fairbanks, Alaska, and University of Washington, Seattle, Washington.
  • Morice, Adrien-Gabriel (1932) The Carrier Language. Mödling bei Wien, St. Gabriel, Austria: Verlag der Internationalen Zeitschrift "Anthropos".
  • Poser, William J. (1998) Nak'albun/Dzinghubun Whut'enne Bughuni (Stuart/Trembleur Lake Carrier Lexicon). Vanderhoof, BC: Yinka Dene Language Institute. Second edition.
  • Poser, William J. (2000) Saik'uz Whut'en Hubughunek (Stoney Creek Carrier Lexicon). Vanderhoof, BC: Saik'uz First Nation. Fourth edition. (March 2000)
  • Poser, William J. (2005) "Noun Classification in Carrier". Anthropological Linguistics 47.2.143-168.
  • Story, Gillian L. (1984) Babine and Carrier Phonology: A Historically Oriented Study. Arlington, Texas: Summer Institute of Linguistics.
  • Walker, Richard (1979) "Central Carrier Phonemics," in Eric P. Hamp et al. (eds.) Contributions to Canadian Linguistics. Ottawa: National Museums of Canada. pp.93-107.
  • Yinka Dene Language Institute "Dialects"

[edit] External links

  • The Yinka Dene Language Institute Website contains extensive information about the Carrier language and other First Nations languages of British Columbia.
  • The Carrier Sekani Tribal Council represents many of the Carrier bands. Its web site contains information about the tribe and about current political issues.
  • Map of Northwest Coast First Nations Note, however, that the Carrier-speaking region is marked incorrectly on this map. The area around Babine Lake and Takla Lake, included in the Dakelh region on the map, is actually Babine speaking. A correct map would attach the Babine and Takla Lake areas to what is show on this map as "Wet'suwet'en" and label the combination "Babine-Witsuwit'en".
  • Ethnologue entry