Na-Dené languages

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Pre-contact distribution of Na-Dené languages (in red)

Na-Dené (also Na-Dene, Nadene, Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit) is a Native American language family which includes the Athabaskan languages, Eyak, and Tlingit.

1 Family division
2 Genetic relation proposals
3 References
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Family division

The Na-Dene family include:

Tlingit language: 700 speakers (M. Krauss, 1995)
Athabaskan-Eyak
- Eyak language: extinct
- Athabaskan languages

Navajo is the most widely spoken language of the Na-Dené family, spoken in Arizona, New Mexico, and other regions of the American Southwest. Dene or Dine is a widely distributed group of Native languages and peoples spoken in Canada, Alaska, and parts of Oregon and northern California. Eyak was spoken in south central Alaska; the last speaker died in 2005.

[edit] Genetic relation proposals

Haida, with 15 fluent speakers (M. Krauss, 1995), was originally included in the proposed family by Franz Boas. Most linguists today consider the evidence inconclusive and have classified it as a language isolate, however Joseph Greenberg reincluded Haida based on his highly controversial method of mass lexical comparison. To emphasise the exclusion of Haida the family is often termed Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit. The original Na-Dené proposal has been recently revived through the work of Haida linguist John Enrico.

According to Greenberg's controversial classification of the languages of Native North America, Na-Dené-Athabaskan is one of the three main groups of Native languages spoken in the Americas, and represents a distinct wave of migration from Asia to the Americas. The other two are the widely accepted Eskimo-Aleut family, spoken in Siberia, Alaska, the Canadian Arctic and Greenland, and Amerind, Greenberg's most controversial classification which includes every language native to the Americas that is not Eskimo-Aleut or Na-Dené.

Contemporary supporters of Greenberg's theory such as Merritt Ruhlen have suggested that the Na-Dené language family represents a distinct migration of people from Asia to the New World. This migration is estimated to have occurred six to eight thousand years ago, placing it around four thousand years later than the previous migration into the Americas by Amerind speakers. Ruhlen speculates that the Na-Dené speakers may have arrived in boats, initially settling near the Queen Charlotte Islands, now in British Columbia, Canada. [1]

According to the similarly controversial theory of Sergei Starostin, Na-Dené is a member of the Dene-Caucasian superfamily, along with the North Caucasian languages, Sino-Tibetan languages, Yeniseian languages and Basque. This idea was considered by Edward Sapir. Professor Edward Vajda of Western Washington University suggests that these languages are related to Yeniseian (or Yeniseic) languages in Siberia, which would also support the controversial theory of Starostin and others.

This proposal also is supported by biological studies (Rubicz 2002) showing greater genetical differences between Na-Dene speakers and other native Americans than between speakers of Na-Dene and peoples in Eurasia, particularly speakers of Yeniseian languages.

[edit] References

Dürr, Michael & Egon Renner. 1995. The history of the Na-Dene controversy: A sketch. Language and Culture in North America: Studies in Honor of Heinz-Jürgen Pinnow, ed. by Egon Renner & Michael Dürr, 3-18. (Lincom Studies in Native American Linguistics 2). Munich: Lincom Europa.
Enrico, John. 2004. Toward Proto–Na-Dene. Anthropological Linguistics 46(3).229–302.
Goddard, Pliny E. 1920. Has Tlingit a genetic relationship to Athapascan. International Journal of American Linguistics 1.266–279.
Hamp, Eric P. 1979. Tongass Tlingit and Na-Dene. Berkeley Linguistics Society 5.460–463.
Hymes, Dell. 1956. Na-Dene and positional analysis of categories. American Anthropologist 58.624–628.
Hymes, Dell. Na-Dene ethnopoetics: A preliminary report: Haida and Tlingit. Language and Culture in North America: Studies in Honor of Heinz-Jürgen Pinnow, ed. by Egon Renner & Michael Dürr, 265–311. (Lincom Studies in Native American Linguistics 2). Munich: Lincom Europa.
Krauss, Michael E. 1964. Proto-Athapaskan-Eyak and the problem of Na-Dene: The phonology. International Journal of American Linguistics 30(2).118–36.
Krauss, Michael E. 1965. Proto-Athapaskan-Eyak and the problem of Na-Dene II: The morphology. International Journal of American Linguistics 31(1).18–28.
Krauss, Michael E. 1968. Noun classification systems in Athapaskan, Eyak, Tlingit, and Haida verbs. International Journal of American Linguistics 34(3).194–203.
Krauss, Michael E. 1973. Na-Dene. Linguistics in North America, ed. by Thomas A. Sebeok, 903-78. (Current Trends in Linguistics 10). The Hague: Mouton.
Leer, Jeff. 1979. Proto-Athabaskan verb stem variation, part one: Phonology. (Alaska Native Language Center Papers 1). Fairbanks, Alaska: Alaska Native Language Center.
Leer, Jeff. 1989. Directional systems in Athapaskan and Na-Dene. Athapaskan linguistics: Current perspectives on a language family, ed. by Eung-Do Cook & Keren Rice, ch. 15, pp. 575–622. (Trends in linguistics: State of the art reports 15). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 0-89925-282-6.
Levine, Robert D. 1979. Haida and Na-Dene: A new look at the evidence. International Journal of American Linguistics 45(2).157–70.
Pinnow, Heinz-Jürgen. 1962. Two problems of the historical phonology of Na-Dene languages. International Journal of American Linguistics 28.162–166.
Pinnow, Heinz-Jürgen. 1964. On the historical position of Tlingit. International Journal of American Linguistics 30.155–164.
Pinnow, Heinz-Jürgen. 1966. Grundzüge einer historischen Lautlehre des Tlingit. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrasowitz.
Pinnow, Heinz-Jürgen. 1968a. Genetic relationships versus borrowing in Na-Dene. International Journal of American Linguistics 34(3).194–203.
Pinnow, Heinz-Jürgen. 1968b. Sprachhistorische Studien zur Verbstammvariation im Tlingit. Orbis 17.509–531.
Pinnow, Heinz-Jürgen. 1970. Notes on the classifiers in the Na-Dene languages. International Journal of American Linguistics 36(1).63–67.
Rubicz, R., Melvin, K.L., Crawford, M.H. 2002. Genetic Evidence for the phylogenetic relationship between Na-Dene and Yeniseian speakers. Human Biology, Dec 1 2002 74(6).743–761.
Sapir, Edward. 1915. The Na-Dene languages: A preliminary report. American Anthropologist 17.534–558.
Thompson, Chad. 1996. The Na-Dene middle voice: An impersonal source of the D-element. International Journal of American Linguistics 62(4).351–378.