Athabaskan or Athabascan (also Dene, Athapascan, Athapaskan) is a large group of indigenous peoples of North America, located in two main Southern and Northern groups in western North America, and of their language family. The Athabaskan family is the second largest family in North America in terms of number of languages and the number of speakers, following the Uto-Aztecan family which extends into Mexico. In terms of territory, only the Algic language family covers a larger area. Most Athabaskans prefer to be identified by their specific language and location. Although, the general term Athabascan persists in linguistics and anthropology, in August of 2012 the annual Athabaskan Languages Conference changed its name to the Dene Languages Conference.
The word Athabaskan is an anglicized version of a Cree language name for Lake Athabasca (Woods Cree: Aδapaska˙w “[where] there are reeds one after another”) in Canada. The name was assigned by Albert Gallatin in his 1836 (written 1826) classification of the languages of North America. He acknowledged that it was his own preference to assign this name to the group of languages and peoples, writing:
Albert Gallatin’s arbitrary designation has unfortunate connotations as the term describes a shallow, weedy lake rather than a coherent people with shared language and culture. Most Athabaskans prefer to be identified by their specific language and location, however the general term persists in linguistics and anthropology despite alternative suggestions such as “Dene”. As noted above, in August of 2012 the annual Athabaskan Languages Conference changed its name to the Dene Languages Conference.I have designated them by the arbitrary denomination of Athabascas, which derived from the original name of the lake.—1836:116-7
The four spellings of “Athabaskan”, “Athabascan”, “Athapaskan”, and “Athapascan” are in approximately equal use. There are various preferences for one or another spelling depending on the particular community. For example, the Alaska Native Language Center prefers the spelling “Athabascan,” following a decision in favor of this spelling by the Tanana Chiefs Conference in 1997. Michael Krauss had previously endorsed the spelling “Athabaskan” (1987). Ethnologue uses “Athapaskan” in naming the language family and individual languages.
The word Athabaskan is an anglicized version of a Cree language name for Lake Athabasca (Woods Cree: Aδapaska˙w “[where] there are reeds one after another”) in Canada. The name was assigned by Albert Gallatin in his 1836 (written 1826) classification of the languages of North America. He acknowledged that it was his own preference to assign this name to the group of languages and peoples, writing:
Albert Gallatin’s arbitrary designation has unfortunate connotations as the term describes a shallow, weedy lake rather than a coherent people with shared language and culture. Most Athabaskans prefer to be identified by their specific language and location, however the general term persists in linguistics and anthropology despite alternative suggestions such as “Dene”. As noted above, in August of 2012 the annual Athabaskan Languages Conference changed its name to the Dene Languages Conference.I have designated them by the arbitrary denomination of Athabascas, which derived from the original name of the lake.—1836:116-7
The four spellings of “Athabaskan”, “Athabascan”, “Athapaskan”, and “Athapascan” are in approximately equal use. There are various preferences for one or another spelling depending on the particular community. For example, the Alaska Native Language Center prefers the spelling “Athabascan,” following a decision in favor of this spelling by the Tanana Chiefs Conference in 1997.[2] Michael Krauss had previously endorsed the spelling “Athabaskan” (1987). Ethnologue uses “Athapaskan” in naming the language family and individual languages.
Languages
Linguists conventionally divide the Athabaskan family into three groups, based largely on geographic distribution:The 31 Northern Athabaskan languages are spoken throughout the interior of Alaska and the interior of northwestern Canada in the Yukon and Northwest Territories as well as in the provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Several Athabaskan languages are official languages in the Northwest Territories, including Dëne Sųłiné (Chipewyan), Dogrib or Tłįchǫ Yatʼiì, Gwich’in (Kutchin, Loucheux), and Slavey.
The seven Pacific Coast Athabaskan languages are spoken in southern Oregon and northern California. The six Southern Athabaskan languages are distantly isolated from both the Pacific Coast languages and the Northern languages as they are spoken in the American Southwest and the northwestern part of Mexico. This group includes Navajo and the six Apache languages.
As a crude approximation of differences among the languages in the family, one can compare differences between Athabaskan languages to differences between Indo-European languages. Thus, Koyukon and Dena’ina are about as different as French and Spanish, while Koyukon and Gwich’in are as different as English and Italian.
The following list gives the Athabaskan languages organized by their geographic location in various North American states and provinces. Note that several languages such as Navajo and Gwich’in span the boundaries between different states and provinces, and hence they appear in this list multiple times. For alternative names for the languages, see the classifications given later in this article.
- Alaska: Ahtna, Deg Hit’an, Dena’ina/Tanaina, Gwich’in/Kutchin, Hän, Holikachuk, Koyukon, Lower Tanana, Middle Tanana, Tanacross, Upper Tanana, Upper Kuskokwim
- Yukon Territory: Gwich'in/Kutchin, Hän, Kaska, Mountain, Tagish, Northern Tutchone, Southern Tutchone, Upper Tanana
- Northwest Territories: Bearlake, Dëne Sųłiné/Chipewyan, Gwich’in, Hare, Mountain, Slavey, Tłįchǫ Yatʼìi/Dogrib
- Nunavut: Dëne Sųłiné
- British Columbia: Babine–Witsuwit’en, Bearlake, Beaver, Chilcotin, Dakelh/Carrier, Hare, Kaska, Mountain, Nicola, Sekani/Tsek’ene, Slavey, Tagish, Tahltan, Tsetsaut
- Alberta: Beaver, Dëne Sųłiné, Slavey, Tsuut’ina/Sarcee
- Saskatchewan: Dëne Sųłiné
- Washington: Chilcotin, Kwalhioqua-Clatskanai (Willapa, Suwal), Nicola
- Oregon: Applegate, Clatskanie, Galice, Rogue River (Chasta Costa, Euchre Creek, Tututni, Upper Coquille), Tolowa, Upper Umpqua
- Northern California: Eel River, Hupa, Mattole–Bear River, Tolowa
- Utah: Navajo
- Colorado: Jicarilla, Navajo
- Arizona: Chiricahua, Navajo, Western Apache
- New Mexico: Chiricahua, Mescalero, Jicarilla, Lipan, Navajo
- Texas: Mescalero, Lipan
- Oklahoma: Chiricahua, Jicarilla, Plains Apache
- Northwestern Mexico: Chiricahua
Eyak and Athabaskan together form a genealogical linguistic grouping called Athabaskan–Eyak (AE) - well demonstrated through consistent sound correspondences, extensive shared vocabulary, and cross-linguistically unique homologies in both verb and noun morphology.
Tlingit is distantly related to the Athabaskan–Eyak group to form the Na-Dené family - also known as Athabaskan–Eyak–Tlingit (AET). With Jeff Leer's 2010 advances the reconstructions of Na-Dene (or Athabascan-Eyak-Tlingit] consonants this latter grouping is considered by Alaskan linguists to be a well-demonstrated family. Because both Tlingit and Eyak are fairly remote from the Athabaskan languages in terms of their sound systems, comparison is usually done between them and the reconstructed Proto-Athbaskan language which resembles both Tlingit and Eyak much more than most of the daughter languages in the Athabaskan family. Although Ethnologue still gives the Athabaskan family as a relative of Haida in their definition of the Na-Dene family, linguists who work actively on Athabaskan languages discount this position. The Alaska Native Language Center, for example, takes the position that recent improved data on Haida have served to conclusively disprove the Haida-inclusion hypothesis, thus making Haida unrelated to Athabaskan languages.
The major advance in Athabaskan and Na-Dene external classification was a symposium in Alaska in February 2008. Edward Vajda of Western Washington University summarized ten years of research, based on verbal morphology and reconstructions of the proto-languages, indicating that the Yeniseian and Na-Dené families might be related. Vajda's research was published in June 2010 in The Dene–Yeniseian Connection in the Anthropological Papers of the University of Alaska (ISBN 978-0-615-43296-0). This 369-page volume, edited by James Kari and Ben Potter, contains papers from the 2008 symposium plus several contributed papers. Accompanying Vajda's lead paper are primary data on Na-Dene historical phonology by Jeff Leer, along with critiques by several linguistic specialists and articles on a range of topics (archaeology, prehistory, ethnogeography, genetics, kinship, and folklore) by experts in these fields.
The internal structure of the Athabaskan language family is complex and its exact shape is still a hotly debated issue among experts. The conventional three-way split into Northern, Pacific Coast, and Southern is essentially based on geography and the physical distribution of Athabaskan peoples rather than sound linguistic comparisons. Despite this inadequacy, it is clear from current comparative Athabaskan literature that most Athabaskanists still use the three-way geographic grouping rather than any of the proposed linguistic groupings given below because none of them have been widely accepted. This situation will presumably change as both documentation and analysis of the languages improves.
Besides the traditional geographic grouping described previously, there are a few comparatively based subgroupings of the Athabaskan languages. Below the two most current viewpoints are presented.
The following is an outline of the classification according to Keren Rice based on those published in Goddard (1996) and Mithun (1999), and representing what is generously called the “Rice–Goddard–Mithun” classification (Tuttle & Hargus 2004:73), although it is almost entirely due to Keren Rice.
- Southern Alaska (Dena’ina, Ahtna)
- Central Alaska–Yukon (Deg Hit’an, Holikachuk/Kolchan, Koyukon, Upper Kuskokwim, Lower Tanana, Tanacross, Upper Tanana, N. Tutchone, S. Tutchone, Gwich’in, Hän)
- Northwestern Canada (Tagish, Tahltan, Kaska, Sekani, Dunneza/Beaver, Slavey, Mountain, Bearlake, Hare, Tłįchǫ Yat’iì/Dogrib, Dëne Sųłiné/Chipewyan)
- Tsetsaut
- Central British Columbia (Babine–Witsuwit’en, Dakelh/Carrier, Chilcotin, Nicola?)
- Tsuut’ina/Sarsi
- Kwalhioqua–Clatskanai
- Pacific Coast Athabaskan (Upper Umpqua, Tututni, Galice–Applegate, Tolowa, Hupa, Mattole, Eel River, Kato)
- Apachean (Navajo, W. Apache, Mescalero–Chiricahua, Jicarilla, Lipan, Plains)
A different classification by Jeff Leer is the following, usually called the “Leer classification” (Tuttle & Hargus 2004:72–74):
- Alaskan (Ahtna, Dena’ina, Deg Hit’an, Koyukon, Holikachuk/Kolchan, Lower Tanana, Tanacross, Upper Tanana, Gwich’in, Hän)
- Yukon (Tsetsaut, N. Tutchone, S. Tutchone, Tagish, Tahltan, Kaska, Sekani, Dunneza/Beaver)
- British Columbia (Babine–Witsuwit’en, Dakelh/Carrier, Chilcotin)
- Eastern (Dëne Sųłiné/Chipewyan, Slavey, Mountain, Bearlake, Hare, Tłįchǫ Yat’iì/Dogrib)
- Southerly Outlying (Tsuut’ina/Sarsi, Apachean, Pacific Coast Athabaskan, Kwalhioqua–Tlatskanai)
The Northern group is particularly problematic in its internal organization. Due to the failure of the usual criteria of shared innovation and systematic phonetic correspondences to provide well-defined subgroupings, the Athabaskan family – especially the Northern group – has been called a “cohesive complex” by Michael Krauss (1973, 1982). Therefore, the Stammbaumtheorie or family tree model of genetic classification may be inappropriate. The languages of the Southern branch are much more homogeneous and are the only clearly genealogical subgrouping.
There is active debate whether the Pacific Coast languages actually forms a valid genealogical grouping, or whether it may instead have internal branches that are tied to different subgroups in Northern Athabaskan. The position of Kwalhioqua–Clatskanai is also debated since it may fall in either the Pacific Coast group – if that exists – or into the Northern group. The records of Nicola are so poor – Krauss describes them as “too few and too wretched” (Krauss 2005) – that it is difficult to make any reliable conclusions about it, although Nicola might possibly be intermediate between Kwalhioqua–Tlatskanai and Chilcotin.
Similarly to Nicola, there is very limited documentation on Tsetsaut, and consequently it is difficult to place it in the family with much certainty. Athabaskanists have concluded that it is a Northern Athabaskan language consistent with its geographical occurrence, and that it might have some relation to its distant neighbor Tahltan. Tsetsaut however shares its primary hydronymic suffix (“river, stream”) with Sekani, Beaver, and Tsuut’ina – PA *-ɢah – rather than that of Tahltan, Tagish, Kaska, and North and South Tutchone – PA *-tuʼ (Kari, Fall, & Pete 2003:39). The ambiguity surrounding Tsetsaut is why it is placed in its own subgroup in the Rice–Goddard–Mithun classification.
For detailed lists including languages, dialects, and subdialects, see the respective articles on the three major groups: Northern Athabaskan, Pacific Coast Athabaskan, Southern Athabaskan. For the remainder of this article the conventional three-way geographic grouping will be followed except as noted.
The Northern Athabaskan languages are the largest group in the Athabaskan family, although this group varies internally about as much as do languages in the entire family. The urheimat of the Athabaskan family is most likely somewhere in central southern Alaska, probably overlapping where the Dena’ina and Ahtna languages are spoken today (Kari 2009)[citation needed]. The Northern Athabaskan group also contains the most linguistically conservative languages, particularly Ahtna, Dena’ina, and Dakelh/Carrier (Leer 2008).
- Southern Alaskan subgroup
- Central Alaska–Yukon subgroup
- 3. Deg Xinag (AKA Deg Hitʼan, Kaiyuhkhotana, Ingalik (deprecated))
- 4. Holikachuk (AKA Innoko)
- 5. Koyukon (AKA Denaakkʼe, Tenʼa)
- 6. Upper Kuskokwim (AKA Kolchan, Goltsin)
- 7. Lower Tanana and Middle Tanana (FKA Tanana)
- 8. Tanacross
- 9. Upper Tanana
- 10. Southern Tutchone
- 11. Northern Tutchone
- 12. Gwich’in (AKA Kutchin, Loucheux, Tukudh)
- 13. Hän (AKA Han)
- Northwestern Canada subgroup
- A. Tahltan–Tagish–Kaska (AKA “Cordilleran”)
- 17. Sekani (AKA Tsekʼehne)
- 18. Dunneza (AKA Beaver)
- B. Slave–Hare
- 19. Slavey (AKA Southern Slavey)
- 20. Mountain (Northern Slavey)
- 21. Bearlake (Northern Slavey)
- 22. Hare (Northern Slavey)
- 23. Dogrib (AKA Tłįchǫ Yatiì)
- 24. Dene Suline (AKA Chipewyan, Dëne Sųłiné, Dene Soun’liné)
- Tsetsaut subgroup
- 25. Tsetsaut (AKA Tsʼetsʼaut, Wetalh)
- Central British Columbia subgroup (AKA “British Columbian” in contrast with “Cordilleran” = Tahltan–Tagish–Kaska)
- 26. Babine–Witsuwit'en (AKA North Carrier, Natutʼen, Witsuwitʼen)
- 27. Dakelh (AKA Carrier)
- 28. Chilcotin (AKA Tsilhqot’in)
- 29. Nicola (AKA Stuwix, Similkameen)
- Sarsi subgroup
- 30. Tsuut’ina (AKA Sarcee, Sarsi, Tsuu T’ina)
- Kwalhioqua–Clatskanie subgroup (also called Lower Columbia Athapaskan)
- 31. Kwalhioqua–Clatskanie (AKA Kwalhioqua –Tlatskanie)
- California Athabaskan subgroup
- 32. Hupa (AKA Hupa-Chilula, Chilula, Whilkut)
- 33. Mattole–Bear River
- 34. Eel River (AKA Wailaki, Lassik, Nongatl, Sinkyone)
- 35. Kato (AKA Cahto)
- Oregon Athabaskan subgroup
- 36. Upper Umpqua
- 37a. Lower Rogue River and Upper Coquille (AKA Tututni, Chasta Costa)
- 37b. Upper Rogue River (AKA Galice, Applegate, Dakubetede)
- 38. Tolowa (AKA Smith River, Chetco, Siletz Dee-ni)
- Plains Apache subgroup
- 39. Plains Apache (AKA Kiowa-Apache)
- Western Apachean subgroup
- A. Chiricahua–Mescalero
- 40. Chiricahua
- 41. Mescalero
- 42. Navajo (AKA Navaho)
- 43. Western Apache (AKA Coyotero Apache)
- Eastern Apachean subgroup
- 44. Jicarilla
- 45. Lipan
- The reconstruction of Proto-Athabaskan phonology is still under active debate. This section attempts to summarize the less controversial parts of the Proto-Athabaskan sound system.
- As with many linguists working on Native American languages, Athabaskanists tend to use an Americanist phonetic notation
system rather than IPA. Although some Athabaskanists prefer IPA symbols
today, the weight of tradition is particularly heavy in historical and
comparative linguistics, hence the Americanist symbols are still in
common use for descriptions of Proto-Athabaskan and in comparisons
between members of the family. In the tables in this section, the
proto-phonemes are given in their conventional Athabaskanist forms with
IPA equivalents following in square brackets.
Since transcription practices in Americanist phonetic notation are not formally standardized, there are different symbols in use for the same sounds, a proliferation partly due to changes in typefaces and computing technology. In the following tables the older symbols are given first with newer symbols following. Not all linguists adopt the newer symbols at once, although there are obvious trends such as the adoption of belted ɬ instead of barred ł, and the use of digraphs for affricates which is standard today for the laterals but not fully adopted for the dorsals. In particular, the symbols c, λ, and ƛ are rare in most publications today. The use of the combining comma above as in c̓ has also been completely abandoned in the last few decades in favor of the modifier letter apostrophe as in cʼ. Republication of older materials may preserve older symbols for accuracy although they are no longer used, e.g. Krauss 2005 which was previously an unpublished manuscript dating from 1979.
It is crucial to recognize that the symbols conventionally used to represent voiced stops and affricates are actually used in the Athabaskan literature to represent unaspirated stops and affricates in contrast to the aspirated ones. This convention is also found in all Athabaskan orthographies since true voiced stops and affricates are rare in the family, and unknown in the proto-language.
From Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athabaskan_languages
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