Talk:Navajo language

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[edit] Yi/bi

Hi. In the section on "Yi-/bi- Alternation (animacy)", the animacy hierarchy is addressed, but the actual yi-/bi- alternation isn't even mentioned, let alone explained, and there aren't any examples. Given its prominence and imporance in Navajo linguistic studies, it seems like a good thing to include. I'm not entirely clear on the specific workings of the system, myself, though, so I hesitate to try adding that info. Take care, --Miskwito 06:20, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi. Yes, that remains to be written. The section on pronominal marking should probably be a written first. You can a read brief description with Navajo examples here: Southern Athabascan grammar#yi-/bi- Alternation (Animacy). I think I'll eventually replace those Navajo examples there with Western Apache examples. Obviously, much more can be written about it. – ishwar  (speak) 16:59, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Witherspoon??

Hi there. I'm very surprised that no one has made use of Gary Witherspoon's work here. He's a leading expert on the language.--Dylanfly 16:37, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Just a note--the work by William Morgan & Robert W. Young is the accepted standard used for all Navajo language classes including those offered by Diné College. All language text books for modern Navajo are based on their work which, I assume, includes Witherspoon Asdzani Bah (talk) 23:20, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Witherspoon is not the primary author of "Diné Bizaad Bóhoo'aah" I or II. I've checked three different college library catalogs and each has "Navajo Language Institute (N.M.)" listed as the author so it should be treated as having a corporate or institution/association author. Even the Library of Congress Online Catalog does not list a personal name for the author. Asdzani Bah (talk) 02:40, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Rising/Falling short vowels?

Just a quick general question. Do the Navajo language have rising and falling tones associated with short vowels, or are the moving tones only associated with the long vowels? Or another way of asking this question is if short vowels are subjectable to only low/high tones only or can short vowels also experience shifting tones in addition to low/high tones? CJLippert 16:00, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Hi. I missed this earlier. Rising and falling tones are only seen on long vowels or diphthongs. So, another way to analyze this is to say that Navajo only has two tones, high and low, and that the rising and falling pitch melodies are the result of sequences of different tones.
As for short vowels experiencing shifting tones, there are alternations between short vowels and long vowels. In these cases, you can find alternations betweeen short vowel with high tone and long vowel with falling tone. For example, the verb naashá "I go about" ends in short vowel with a high tone, but when you add the subordinating enclitic -go to the end of this verb, you get naasháago in which case the previously high short vowel is lengthen and partially lowered to a falling tone due the influence of the enclitic -go (which has a low tone). This pattern affects stem-final high short vowels in verb stems that are followed by enclitics with low tones. This doesnt happen when these enclitics follow nouns stems, postposition stems, or particles. – ishwar  (speak) 16:24, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Thanks again. That was simple and clear. CJLippert 01:34, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Where is "Ń"?

Looking at the Navajo language curriculum, it seems they allow several letters with diacritics, mainly a, e, i and o with no diacritic, accute, ogonyek or accute-ogonyek... to indicate tone and nasality for the vowels. However, they also provide two consonants with diacritics: Ł ł and Ń ń. The article speaks of Ł ł, but where is Ń ń? CJLippert 16:06, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

BTW, it would be helpful if the current Navajo Alphabet is first introduced rather delving right into the pronunciation and throwing letters with diacritics at the reader who may not be familiar with the current orthography or the alphabet used in the current orthography. CJLippert 16:12, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
The Navajo alphabet consonants are presented in the Consonant table - where the letters in bold is the written letter and the letters in brackets are the IPA pronunciation of that letter. There is no "Ń". Whether this is a mistake I am not sure about at present but I am inclined to think that it is deliberate.·Maunus· ·ƛ· 17:23, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
Table is good but it doesn't give the parsing order... which an alphabet implies. CJLippert 18:21, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
This presentation of the Navajo alphabet also has no "Ń".·Maunus· ·ƛ· 17:26, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
But... see the following:
CJLippert 18:00, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
I see. It seems we will have to do some research.·Maunus· ·ƛ· 07:45, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
Hi. These symbols (both capital and lowercase) represent syllabic nasals with a high tone. They are optional (but very common) contractions of the syllable ní. This also happens with low toned syllable ni turning into a syllabic n. Example: ní’séłt’i’ or ń’séłt’i’ meaning "extend it around/set them in a circle" (perfective mode). Yeah, the whole writing system needs to be better explained. – ishwar  (speak) 01:44, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
yes, thanks, that was helpful. CJLippert 14:28, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

the navajos are the largest american indian tribe in the us. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.117.239.32 (talk) 01:01, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Visual aspects and Classifiers

Here is a passage from "For Hearing People Only" (3rd Ed, Deaf Life Press 2003; it's an introduction to Deaf culture for outsiders) which leads me to believe that Navajo has visual aspects which are important, but don't seem to be mentioned in the article: "Classifiers are also found in Navajo, a highly visual spoken language that, until recently, lacked a written form. ASL and Navajo use classifiers in the exact same way; their morphology (word formation) is similar. ASL is thus structurally closer to Navajo than to English!" (71) Are there noteworthy visual aspects of Navajo? Are the classifiers visual? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.123.186.208 (talk) 03:33, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Where to find citation for ł in Navajo?

The article L with stroke has the following statement:

In Navajo, ł is used for a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative (ɬ), like the Welsh Ll.[citation needed]

Where could I find a citation for this? Jindřichův Smith (talk) 22:28, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Is the language in decline, or incline?

In the intro of Navajo language the article states that "..more than 100,000 native speakers, and this number has actually increased with time." then right after that in the current use section, it claims that "the language is in decline" Which is it? 76.166.177.72 (talk) 17:14, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Grammar: polysynthetic?? SOV??

The article says that Navajo is polysynthetic and SOV, but I wonder if these are really accurate statements. The examples in the article don't seem to illustrate the degree of incorporation of noun and verb morphemes into a single word that I thought was characteristic of polysynthetic languages. And given the effect of animacy on the ordering of nouns in a sentence, it seems that the most that can really be said is that Navajo word order is verb-final, but not specifically either SOV or OSV. Can any experts comment on these issues? Richwales (talk) 06:24, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Navajo verbs can have around 8 prefixes attached to the verb stem, which is kind of a lot. It is not as much as some other languages which are even more polysynthetic (e.g. Eskimo langs which can have theoretically infinitely long verbs with recursion of affixes internal to the verb). If you're talking about noun incorporation, Navajo doesnt have productive lexical noun incorporation like Northern Athabascan languages, but you can see incorporated noun elements that seem to be nouns historically. Whether you consider them as incorporated nouns or as something else depends on your analysis. Also the pronominal prefixes are often analyzed as being pronouns that are incorporated into the verb. Others consider these prefixes as agreement markers. Again depends on the analysis. Clearly the prefixes at the leftmost edge of the verb appear to be more recently incorporated into the verb complex historically including postpositions which look similar to postpositions that are syntactically independent from the verb. At any rate, incorporation is not a defining characteristic of polysynthesis. And polysynthesis is a matter of degree rather than clearly defined type.
The unmarked order is SOV. The OSV order is usually called subject object inversion. Accordingly, the OSV sentences are translated and/or analyzed as passive sentences (which are marked compared to active sentences). Although there analyses of the OSV order as being sensitive to animacy, other analyses consider it be topicalization due to pragmatics. It should be noted, however, that Navajo usually does not have two overt nouns in sentences because the verb prefixes indicate both subjects and objects which are usually recoverable via the linguistic or situational context. So, a SOV or a OSV sentence is rather rare. But SOV occurs more often than OSV. One study of written Navajo narrative only found one OSV clause out of 294 (which is only 0.3%). But you're right to think about pressures conditioning word order because it may be the word order is determined by pragmatics and not by syntax at all. We can compare this to Lakhota which had only 0.9% deviance from SOV order (out of a 500 clause sample) and Tuscarora with 68% deviance from SOV. Navajo and Lakhota seem to have a more rigid order (at least from these counts) while Tuscarora is rather free. However, there needs to be more research done on their frequency of occurrence. I dont think that 294 clauses is a very big sample. – ishwar  (speak) 08:16, 31 May 2008 (UTC)