Na-Dené languages

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Na-Dené
Geographic
distribution:		 North America
Genetic
classification:		 Dené-Yeniseian
Subdivisions:
Athabaskan-Eyak

Na-Dené (also Na-Dene, Nadene, Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit) is a proposed Native American language family which includes the Athabaskan languages, Eyak, Tlingit, and possibly Haida. The connection of Haida to the other languages is controversial. In February 2008 a proposal relating Na-Dene to the Yeniseian language Ket, spoken in Siberia, has been published and well received by a number of linguists[1].

Contents

[edit] Family division

The Na-Dene family include:

Dene or Dine is a widely distributed group of Native languages and peoples spoken in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Saskatchewan, Yukon, Alaska, and parts of Oregon and northern California. Eyak was spoken in south central Alaska; the last speaker died in 2008. Navajo is the most widely spoken language of the Na-Dené family, spoken in Arizona, New Mexico, and other regions of the American Southwest.

[edit] Genetic relation proposals

Haida, with 15 fluent speakers (M. Krauss, 1995), was originally included in the proposed family by Franz Boas. Linguists such as Lyle Campbell (1997) today consider the evidence inconclusive and have classified Haida as a language isolate. In order to emphasise the exclusion of Haida, Campbell refers to the language family as Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit rather than Na-Dene.

[edit] Dené-Yeniseian

Main article: Dené-Yeniseian languages

Recently, Professor Edward Vajda of Western Washington University has presented compelling evidence that the Na-Dene languages are actually related to Yeniseian (or Yeniseic) languages of Siberia.[1], the only living representative of which is the Ket language. His paper has been favorably reviewed by several experts on Na-Dene and Yeniseic languages, including Michael Krauss, Jeff Leer, James Kari, and Heinrich Werner, as well as a number of other well-known linguists, including Bernard Comrie, Johanna Nichols, Victor Golla, Michael Fortescue, and Eric Hamp. It was also the conclusion of this seminar that this comparison of Yeniseic and Na-Dene "shows conclusively that Haida, sometimes associated with Na-Dene, is not related."[2]

[edit] Earlier Proposals

According to Joseph 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 the far less widely accepted 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. Ruhlen claims this migration 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. [2]

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. Most linguists, however, do not believe that these hypotheses rest on sufficiently sound linguistic data for them to deserve recognition.[3]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ See Vajda 2008b
  2. ^ Dene-Yeniseic Symposium. Alaska Native Language Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks
  3. ^ Campbell, Lyle (1997). American Indian Languages: The Historical Linguistics of Native America. Oxford: Oxford University Press

[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.
  • 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 Harrassowitz.
  • 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.
  • Pinnow, Heinz-Jürgen. 1976. Geschichte der Na-Dene-Forschung. (Indiana : Beihefte ; 5). Berlin: Mann. ISBN 3-7861-3027-2
  • Rubicz, R., Melvin, K.L., Crawford, M.H. 2002. Genetic Evidence for the phylogenetic relationship between Na-Dene and Yeniseian speakers. Human Biology, Dec(6).743 – 761.
  • Ruhlen M. 1998. "The Origin of the Na-Dene". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 95, no. 23: 13994-6.
  • 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.
  • Vajda, Edward (2008). A Siberian Link with Na-Dene Languages (PDF). Dene-Yeniseic Symposium, Fairbanks.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links