- 1890 East-West Rd., Moore 563
Honolulu, HI 96822 - (808) 956-3227
Gary Holton
University of Hawaii at Manoa, Linguistics, Faculty Member
- Fieldwork in linguistics, Documentary Linguistics, Na-Dene languages, Eskimo-Aleut Linguistics, Ethnogeography, Alor Island, and 18 moreAlor-Pantar languages, Alaska Native Studies, Indonesia, Historical Linguistics, Place Names (Cultural Geography), Papuan linguistics, Archiving, Athabaskan languages, Eastern Indonesia, Yup'ik language, Pantar Island, Halmahera, Tanacross, Athabaskan, Anthropology, Language Documentation, Austronesian Languages, and Papuan Languagesedit
- As a documentary linguist my work focuses on the documentation and description of indigenous languages, especially th... moreAs a documentary linguist my work focuses on the documentation and description of indigenous languages, especially the Dene (Athabascan) languages of Alaska and the non-Austronesian (Papuan) languages of eastern Indonesia. Most of these languages are in danger of disappearing, and their systematic documentation preserves endangered knowledge systems while also contributing to an understanding of the way human languages are structured.edit
This article describes findings from a workshop that initiated a dialogue between the fields of user-centered design (UCD) and language archives. One of the challenges facing language archives is the fact that they typically have multiple... more
This article describes findings from a workshop that initiated a dialogue between the fields of user-centered design (UCD) and language archives. One of the challenges facing language archives is the fact that they typically have multiple user groups with significantly different information needs, as well as varying cultural practices of data sharing, access and use. UCD, informed by design anthropology, can help developers of language archives identify the main user groups of a particular archive; work with those user groups to map their needs and cultural practices ; and translate those insights into archive design. The article describes findings from the workshop on User-Centered Design of Language Archives in Febru-ary 2016. It reviews relevant aspects of language archiving and user-centered design to construct the rationale for the workshop, relates key insights produced during the workshop, and outlines next steps in the larger research trajectory initiated by this workshop. One major insight from the workshop was the discovery that at present, most language archives are not meeting the needs of most users. Representatives from all user groups expressed frustration at the current design of most language archives. This discovery points to the value of introducing a user-centered approach, so that the design of language archives can be better informed by the needs of users.
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Lack of adequate descriptive metadata remains a major barrier to accessing and reusing language documentation. A collection management tool could facilitate management of linguistic data from the point of creation to the archive deposit,... more
Lack of adequate descriptive metadata remains a major barrier to accessing and reusing language documentation. A collection management tool could facilitate management of linguistic data from the point of creation to the archive deposit, greatly reducing the archiving backlog and ensuring more robust and reliable data.
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In the Northeast Halmaheran languages (Tobelo, Galela, Sahu, Modole, Pagu, and Tabaru) all nouns are immediately preceded by an article o or ma. These articles co-occur freely with other nominal morphology, with the exceptions of first... more
In the Northeast Halmaheran languages (Tobelo, Galela, Sahu, Modole, Pagu, and Tabaru) all nouns are immediately preceded by an article o or ma. These articles co-occur freely with other nominal morphology, with the exceptions of first and second person possessive pronouns. Since they occur on all nouns, both articles can function as ligatures within the noun phrases, particularly within possessive constructions and possessive-like attributive constructions. On simple nouns the function of the articles is less clear. This paper draws on a quantitative analysis of Tobelo narrative texts to argue that the articles function as markers of dependency relations in discourse. The article o is the default article used new or unimportant referents, while the article ma signals a dependency relationship between the following noun and another discourse entity, which may or may not be explicitly mentioned. This notion of discourse dependency not only confirms the intuition of early twentieth century observers but also helps to explain apparent head shift phenomena in complex noun phrases. This paper concludes with a discussion of relationship between Northeast ma and Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *ma, suggesting a possible additional path of contact between North Halmaheran languages and neighboring Austronesian languages.
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"The two major Alaskan language families, Inuit-Yupik (Eskimo) and Dene (Athabascan), share a border which extends in an arc nearly 2000 km long from Cook Inlet in the Gulf of Alaska, paralleling the coast of Alaska all the way to the... more
"The two major Alaskan language families, Inuit-Yupik (Eskimo) and Dene (Athabascan), share a border which extends in an arc nearly 2000 km long from Cook Inlet in the Gulf of Alaska, paralleling the coast of Alaska all the way to the Canadian border. Both families extend further into Canada; Inuit-Yupik extends all the way to the east coast of Greenland. Along this shared border many thousands of places have been named, and these names—and the place-naming strategies which underlie them—provide insight into indigenous conceptualizations of the landscape. Inuit- Yupik place-naming is grounded in human affordance; names are assigned based on people’s relationship to the land. In contrast, Dene place-naming is highly deterministic, based on a generative geographic directional system. There are of course plenty of exceptions which prove these rules, but broadly speaking these generalizations hold across the two language families.
Here I suggest that this difference in place-naming strategies can be explained in part in terms of differences in the demonstrative systems of the two language families. Both Inuit-Yupik and Dene languages have elaborate systems of words expressing spatial relations, allowing a much finer distinction than is possible with the proximal ‘this’ and distal ‘that’ in English. However, the function of the demonstrative system differs greatly in the two language families. In Inuit-Yupik languages the demonstrative system functions primarily on the local level and have limited application to the larger landscape domain. In Dene languages the demonstrative systems are fundamental to the conceptualization of landscape, playing a key role in place naming strategies."
Here I suggest that this difference in place-naming strategies can be explained in part in terms of differences in the demonstrative systems of the two language families. Both Inuit-Yupik and Dene languages have elaborate systems of words expressing spatial relations, allowing a much finer distinction than is possible with the proximal ‘this’ and distal ‘that’ in English. However, the function of the demonstrative system differs greatly in the two language families. In Inuit-Yupik languages the demonstrative system functions primarily on the local level and have limited application to the larger landscape domain. In Dene languages the demonstrative systems are fundamental to the conceptualization of landscape, playing a key role in place naming strategies."
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We argue that the Micronesian constellation centered on Altair, known in Lamotrek as Mailap, has been mistakenly identified in previous literature with another constellation centered on Sirius, known as Mannap. The latter is literally the... more
We argue that the Micronesian constellation centered on Altair, known in Lamotrek as Mailap, has been mistakenly identified in previous literature with another constellation centered on Sirius, known as Mannap. The latter is literally the “Big Bird” and is well known in parts of Polynesia as well. Confusing this “Big Bird” with Altair has led to much confusion in the literature on Carolinian navigational arts. We trace the history of how this error arose and why it has persisted over time, and we also suggest an alternate etymology for Mailap.
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This paper examines the distribution of property words in Tobelo (Papuan), a “switch-adjective” language in which any particular property word may be expressed as either a verb or a noun, with no concomitant morphological, syntactic or... more
This paper examines the distribution of property words in Tobelo (Papuan), a “switch-adjective” language in which any particular property word may be expressed as either a verb or a noun, with no concomitant morphological, syntactic or semantic distinction. The alternation between nominal and verbal forms of a property word is governed by the pragmatic status of the modified noun. A statistically significant correlation is found between the lexical category of property words and each of two text-based measures of pragmatic status: activation state and identifiability. As in languages in which property words do not switch categories, nominal property words share the referent-introducing function with nouns, while verbal property words share the referent-elaboration function with verbs.
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The historical relations of the Papuan languages scattered across the islands of the Alor archipelago, Timor, and Kisar in southeast Indonesia have remained largely conjectural. This paper makes a first step towards demonstrating that the... more
The historical relations of the Papuan languages scattered across the islands of the Alor archipelago, Timor, and Kisar in southeast Indonesia have remained largely conjectural. This paper makes a first step towards demonstrating that the languages of Alor and Pantar form a single genealogical group. Applying the comparative method to primary lexical data from twelve languages sampled across the islands of the Alor-Pantar archipelago, we use form-meaning pairings in basic cognate sets to establish regular sound correspondences that support the view these languages as genetically related. We reconstruct 97
Proto‒Alor-Pantar vocabulary items and propose an internal subgrouping based on shared innovations. Finally, we compare Alor-Pantar with Papuan languages of Timor and with Trans-New Guinea languages, concluding that there is no lexical evidence supporting the inclusion of Alor-Pantar languages in the Trans-New Guinea family.
Proto‒Alor-Pantar vocabulary items and propose an internal subgrouping based on shared innovations. Finally, we compare Alor-Pantar with Papuan languages of Timor and with Trans-New Guinea languages, concluding that there is no lexical evidence supporting the inclusion of Alor-Pantar languages in the Trans-New Guinea family.
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This chapter compares numeral classifiers in Tobelo (ISO 639-3 tlb, North Halmaheran) and Western Pantar (ISO 639-3 lev, Timor-Alor-Pantar), two genealogically unrelated Papuan outliers spoken in East Nusantara. While both languages make... more
This chapter compares numeral classifiers in Tobelo (ISO 639-3 tlb, North Halmaheran) and Western Pantar (ISO 639-3 lev, Timor-Alor-Pantar), two genealogically unrelated Papuan outliers spoken in East Nusantara. While both languages make extensive use of numeral classifiers, the number of semantic categories delineated by these classifiers is much more restricted in Western Pantar. Moreover, the two languages carve up semantic space quite differently. The languages also differ in terms of grammaticization of numeral classifiers. In this respect Western Pantar classifiers behave much more like lexical items, retaining lexical denotation alongside their classifier function. In contrast, Tobelo classifiers are generally obligatory and may have no independent lexical use.
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Traditional approaches to the documentation of indigenous astronomical knowledge often assume a one-to-one or near one-to-one correspondence between indigenous and classical constellation terms. Only a single constellation, equated with... more
Traditional approaches to the documentation of indigenous astronomical knowledge often assume a one-to-one or near one-to-one correspondence between indigenous and classical constellation terms. Only a single constellation, equated with the Big Dipper, is robustly attested across the Northern Dene languages. Here we provide evidence from Gwich’in (Dene) which shows that the equation of this single Gwich’in constellation with the classical constellation is only partial. The Gwich’in constellation yahdii is actually a whole-sky constellation which maps nearly the entire sky. The Big Dipper is the tail of yahdii, and the remaining stars in the constellation are identified by other Gwich’in body part terms, forming a unified functional conceptualization of the sky. Our work demonstrates how observational and cultural biases can prejudice the description of cultural astronomy. Dene astronomy is much richer than has been previously claimed and provides the first well-documented indigenous example of a whole-sky constellation.
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We examine the varying role of conditions on grammatical relation marking (namely animacy and volitionality) by looking at different languages of one family, using both existing descriptions and working with specially prepared video... more
We examine the varying role of conditions on grammatical relation marking (namely animacy and volitionality) by looking at different languages of one family, using both existing descriptions and working with specially prepared video stimuli. This enables us to see the degree of variation permitted within closely related languages. We look at four Alor-Pantar languages (Teiwa, Adang, Kamang, and Abui), Papuan languages of eastern Indonesia. The conditions on argument marking are manifested in different ways. Those languages with syntactic alignment index objects with a prefix, those which have semantic alignment index objects and some subjects with a prefix. In 42 video clips we systematically varied animacy and volitionality values for participants in one and two-participant events. These clips were used in fieldwork to elicit descriptions of the events. The data show that animacy of the object is an important factor which favours indexation of the object on the verb in all four languages to varying degrees. Volitionality, on the other hand, is a factor in the semantically aligned languages only. While the presence of a prefix on the verb is semantically motivated in many instances, marking is not directly determined by verbal or participant semantics, and lexical factors must also play a role.
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Recent arguments connecting Na-Dene languages of North America with Yeniseian languages of Siberia have been used to assert proof for the origin of Native Americans in central or western Asia. We apply phylogenetic methods to test support... more
Recent arguments connecting Na-Dene languages of North America with Yeniseian languages of Siberia have been used to assert proof for the origin of Native Americans in central or western Asia. We apply phylogenetic methods to test support for this hypothesis against an alternative hypothesis that Yeniseian represents a back-migration to Asia from a Beringian ancestral population. We coded a linguistic dataset of typological features and used neighbor-joining network algorithms and Bayesian model comparison based on Bayes factors to test the fit between the data and the linguistic phylogenies modeling two dispersal hypotheses. Our results support that a Dene-Yeniseian connection more likely represents radiation out of Beringia with back-migration into central Asia than a migration from central or western Asia to North America.
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The non-Austronesian languages of Alor and Pantar in eastern Indonesia have been shown to be genetically related using the comparative method, but the identified phonological innovations are typologically common and do not delineate neat... more
The non-Austronesian languages of Alor and Pantar in eastern Indonesia have been shown to be genetically related using the comparative method, but the identified phonological innovations are typologically common and do not delineate neat subgroups. We apply computational methods to recently-collected lexical data and are able to identify subgroups based on the lexicon. Crucially, the lexical data are coded for cognacy based on identified phonological innovations. This methodology can succeed even where phonological innovations themselves fail to identify subgroups, showing that computational methods using lexical data can be a powerful tool supplementing the comparative method.
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The wider genealogical affiliations of the Timor-Alor-Pantar languages have been the subject of much speculation. These languages are surrounded by unrelated Austronesian languages, and attempts to locate related languages have focused on... more
The wider genealogical affiliations of the Timor-Alor-Pantar languages have been the subject of much speculation. These languages are surrounded by unrelated Austronesian languages, and attempts to locate related languages have focused on Papuan languages 800 km or more distant. In this paper we examine three hypotheses for genealogical relatedness, drawing on both pronominal and especially lexical evidence. We rely in particular on recent reconstructions of proto-Alor-Pantar vocabulary. Of the hypotheses evaluated here, we find the most striking similarities between TAP and the West Bomberai family. However, we conclude that the evidence currently available is insufficient to confirm a genealogical relationship with West Bomberai or any other family, and hence, TAP must be considered a family-level isolate.
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One of the major motivations driving the field of documentary linguistics is the need to create a lasting record of language that can be (re)used by both speakers and linguists. However, the mere act of language documentation does not... more
One of the major motivations driving the field of documentary linguistics is the need to create a lasting record of language that can be (re)used by both speakers and linguists. However, the mere act of language documentation does not guarantee that the products of documentation are accessible. This retrieval problem can result in a false belief that a language has been adequately documented—what I refer to as an unknown unknown. This paper illustrates unknown unknowns with examples drawn from the field of place names documentation, touching briefly on unknown unknowns in other areas of language documentation. The paper concludes with some suggestions as to how to mitigate against the retrieval problem.
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Just as there is no single model for community-based research, ethical standards for community engagement are not universal. Drawing from personal experiences with language documentation among threatened communities in two very different... more
Just as there is no single model for community-based research, ethical standards for community engagement are not universal. Drawing from personal experiences with language documentation among threatened communities in two very different parts of the world, this paper examines the challenges of applying universal ethical guidelines for linguistic fieldwork.
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"Tobelo is a Papuan language spoken by approximately 15,000 persons on the islands of Halmahera and Morotai in the eastern Indonesian province of Maluku. Tobelo is one of six closely related languages (the others being Galela, Loloda,... more
"Tobelo is a Papuan language spoken by approximately 15,000 persons on the islands of Halmahera and Morotai in the eastern Indonesian province of Maluku. Tobelo is one of six closely related languages (the others being Galela, Loloda, Modole, Pagu, and Tobaru) which together with Ternate/Tidore, Sahu, and Makian Luar comprise the North Halmaheran family. The remaining fifty or so languages spoken in Maluku are Austronesian in origin. While Tobelo is still learned as a first language in outlying areas, urban regions are experiencing a shift to standard Indonesian and/or a local Malay variety. The description presented here builds on the work of early twentieth century missionary Anton Hueting and is based on extensive field work by the author, a linguist whose previous publications include an annotated bibliography of Maluku languages and several studies of Tobelo grammar and discourse. The phonemic inventory of Tobelo consists of five vowels and twenty consonants, including a palatal lateral, glide and nasal. Syllable structure is generally (C)V. Verbal morphology is relatively rich, including a system of agent and patient pronominal prefixes and optional aspectual suffixes. Nouns occur as adjuncts to pronominal arguments and are obligatorily marked by a proclitic. Word order is SOV, though not rigidly so. Complex verb constructions are paratactic, consisting of a series of verbs each cross-referencing one or more arguments and fully inflected for aspect. There is no morphological marker of subordination and no indication of finiteness.
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A report on our NSF project "Developing Standards for Data Citation and Attribution for Reproducible Research in Linguistics" (NSF SMA-1447886).
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An introduction to a project which aims to create a comprehensive digital registry of Alaska Native place names.
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Presentation given at the workshop on Hawaiian, Oceanic and Global Cultural Astronomy, Hilo, 16-20 August 2015
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Recently there has been a surge in public interest in native-origin place names in Alaska. These names attest to the rich heritage of native languages and cultures in the state. Several recent and pending proposals suggest native names... more
Recently there has been a surge in public interest in native-origin place names in Alaska. These names attest to the rich heritage of native languages and cultures in the state. Several recent and pending proposals suggest native names locations which otherwise lack an official name. Native names have also been proposed as replacements for derogatory names, such as the 2012 proposal to replace Negrohead Creek with the Athabascan name Łochenyatth Creek.
In addition to these there are a wealth of official names, carefully documented by Orth (1967), which are clearly of Native origin but are improperly spelled. These could benefit greatly by having the Native name included as a variant and displayed on maps in parentheses next to the official name. For example, Talkeetna (K’dalkitnu), could be rendered easily since K’dalkitnu is the sole variant for this name in GNIS. In other cases this approach would be more difficult. GNIS lists 47 variant names for Mt. McKinley, 33 of which appear to be of Native origin, but there is no easy way to determine that Deenaalee is the correct spelling of the Koyukon Athabascan name from which the common name Denali derives. Another situation we find on occasion is a Native-language place name that has been inadvertently assigned to the wrong feature.
Since its founding by state legislation in 1972 the Alaska Native Language Center has worked to develop standardized writing systems for all twenty Native languages in the state, while also compiling place name lists. In this presentation we suggest ways that ANLC could collaborate on Alaskan GNIS entries to make them (a) more effective for public use; and (b) more accurately mirror authentic the native language place names."
In addition to these there are a wealth of official names, carefully documented by Orth (1967), which are clearly of Native origin but are improperly spelled. These could benefit greatly by having the Native name included as a variant and displayed on maps in parentheses next to the official name. For example, Talkeetna (K’dalkitnu), could be rendered easily since K’dalkitnu is the sole variant for this name in GNIS. In other cases this approach would be more difficult. GNIS lists 47 variant names for Mt. McKinley, 33 of which appear to be of Native origin, but there is no easy way to determine that Deenaalee is the correct spelling of the Koyukon Athabascan name from which the common name Denali derives. Another situation we find on occasion is a Native-language place name that has been inadvertently assigned to the wrong feature.
Since its founding by state legislation in 1972 the Alaska Native Language Center has worked to develop standardized writing systems for all twenty Native languages in the state, while also compiling place name lists. In this presentation we suggest ways that ANLC could collaborate on Alaskan GNIS entries to make them (a) more effective for public use; and (b) more accurately mirror authentic the native language place names."
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Kinship represents one of the most complex and rich domains of language knowledge. However, linguists often lack the tools with which to approach kinship documentation, while at the same time the study of kinship systems has fallen out of... more
Kinship represents one of the most complex and rich domains of language knowledge. However, linguists often lack the tools with which to approach kinship documentation, while at the same time the study of kinship systems has fallen out of favor within mainstream anthropology. Yet, kinship systems are among the first semantic domains to erode under conditions of language shift. Classificatory systems are easily calqued onto languages of wider communication, leading to reanalysis and loss. Hence, the documentation of kinship systems must be a priority for endangered language documentation efforts (Dousset 2012).
This paper presents a tentative typology of kinship classification in the languages of the Alor-Pantar family of eastern Indonesia, drawing on data from three years of collaborative field work. Comparing sibling, cousin, and parents’ sibling classifications across four of these languages reveals a significant degree of variation, even between closely related, neighboring languages. The most elaborated systems reflect a cross-cousin pattern in which siblings and children of parent’s same-sex sibling are classed together and opposed to children of parent’s opposite-sex sibling. Additional distinctions are made based on relative age and relative gender. However, some languages have much less elaborated systems which collapse some of these distinctions. Based on these comparisons it is possible to draw some conclusions about the historical evolution of kinship systems in Alor-Pantar languages, as well as possible language contact scenarios, augmenting recent work in historical phonology of the family (Author et al. 2012).
Finally, this paper discusses two significant challenges which face field workers documenting kinship systems in endangered languages. First, kinship terms must be understood as an interrelating semantic system rather than a set of lexical items. In this sense the documentation of kinship is analogous to the documentation of ethnobiological domains, where it is not just the lexical items but also the underlying taxonomy which is important. Second, ongoing shift from indigenous languages to languages of wider communication, as well as increasing intermarriage between language groups, leads to interference from second languages. Such interference may be difficult to detect when original lexical items have been retained but the kinship system itself has shifted semantically. The paper concludes by suggesting several strategies for overcoming these challenges.
This paper presents a tentative typology of kinship classification in the languages of the Alor-Pantar family of eastern Indonesia, drawing on data from three years of collaborative field work. Comparing sibling, cousin, and parents’ sibling classifications across four of these languages reveals a significant degree of variation, even between closely related, neighboring languages. The most elaborated systems reflect a cross-cousin pattern in which siblings and children of parent’s same-sex sibling are classed together and opposed to children of parent’s opposite-sex sibling. Additional distinctions are made based on relative age and relative gender. However, some languages have much less elaborated systems which collapse some of these distinctions. Based on these comparisons it is possible to draw some conclusions about the historical evolution of kinship systems in Alor-Pantar languages, as well as possible language contact scenarios, augmenting recent work in historical phonology of the family (Author et al. 2012).
Finally, this paper discusses two significant challenges which face field workers documenting kinship systems in endangered languages. First, kinship terms must be understood as an interrelating semantic system rather than a set of lexical items. In this sense the documentation of kinship is analogous to the documentation of ethnobiological domains, where it is not just the lexical items but also the underlying taxonomy which is important. Second, ongoing shift from indigenous languages to languages of wider communication, as well as increasing intermarriage between language groups, leads to interference from second languages. Such interference may be difficult to detect when original lexical items have been retained but the kinship system itself has shifted semantically. The paper concludes by suggesting several strategies for overcoming these challenges.
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This brief article presents a preliminary report on the Nedebang language (ISO 639-3 code: nec), based on 65 pages of field notes collected by the author on Pantar Island July 27-30, 2004. Nedebang is one of four non-Austronesian... more
This brief article presents a preliminary report on the Nedebang language (ISO 639-3 code: nec), based on 65 pages of field notes collected by the author on Pantar Island July 27-30, 2004. Nedebang is one of four non-Austronesian languages spoken on the island of Pantar in the Indonesian province of Nusa Tenggara Timur, in the region of 8.275 S latitude, 124.202 E longitude.
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Indigenous place names are of undisputed value to understanding culture history (Kari 2010). In Alaska place names have been used to inform our understanding of archaeology , climate, migration, etc. Place names also provide insights... more
Indigenous place names are of undisputed value to understanding culture history (Kari 2010). In Alaska place names have been used to inform our understanding of archaeology , climate, migration, etc. Place names also provide insights into indigenous conceptualization and usage of the landscape, and there is great potential for place names to inform may other fields. Unfortunately, knowledge of place names is quickly disappearing as the shift away from Native languages accelerates. Documentation of Native place names collected over the past two centuries, and especially the last 30 years, is extremely fragile and almost as endangered as the languages themselves.
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The verbal cross-reference paradigm in the Papuan language Tobelo is here shown to pattern as an active-stative system of grammatical relations, based on an aspectual distinction between dynamic and time-stable predicates. Thus,... more
The verbal cross-reference paradigm in the Papuan language Tobelo is here shown to pattern as an active-stative system of grammatical relations, based on an aspectual distinction between dynamic and time-stable predicates. Thus, grammatical relations in Tobelo behave quite differently than those in other split intransitive systems which base verbal cross referencing on semantic properties of the participants. Although Durie (1988, 1994) has found evidence for split intransitive patterns in Acehnese (Austronesian) discourse, evidence from Tobelo narrative discourse studies presented here provides no indication of an active- stative preferred argument structure in Tobelo. The central argument of this thesis is that the observed difference between Tobelo and Acehnese discourse patterns results directly from the lexical semantic structure of the predicates used to introduce new participants in the two languages. Both languages tend to introduce new participants as non-volitional arguments of intransitive verbs. However, due to the differing semantic bases of split intransitivity in the two languages, these non-volitional arguments receive different grammatical coding in each of the two languages. Thus, lexical semantics is responsible both for the apparent correlation between Acehnese grammatical relations and discourse patterns and for the lack of such correlation in Tobelo. This study suggests that lexical semantics plays an important role in mediating preferred argument structure in languages with split intransitive systems of grammatical relations.
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This dissertation presents a linguistic description of the phonology and morphology of Tanacross Athabaskan, an endangered language spoken by approximately sixty persons in eastern interior Alaska. There is little extant documentation of... more
This dissertation presents a linguistic description of the phonology and morphology of Tanacross Athabaskan, an endangered language spoken by approximately sixty persons in eastern interior Alaska. There is little extant documentation of Tanacross; hence, this description is based primarily on data gathered from first-hand field work.
Tanacross is typical of the Athabaskan family in its typological characteristics. There is a relatively small phonemic inventory, and most of the phonemic contrasts are neutralized outside the stem-syllable onset position. The lexicon is relatively small, consisting of perhaps six thousand distinct morphemes. Noun morphology is relatively straightforward, with few active morphological processes. In contrast, verb structure is extremely complex, consisting of a possibly discontinuous root morpheme together with a string of inflectional and derivational affixes which combine via an elaborate system of non- concatenative templatic morphology. The verb word may stand alone as entire utterance. Members of other minor word classes tend to be monomorphemic.
Tanacross exhibits several unique properties which distinguish it from neighboring Athabaskan languages and invite further study. Tanacross is unique among the Alaska Athabaskan languages in having high tone as the reflex of Proto-Athabaskan constriction. In addition, more than any other tonal language in Alaska Tanacross has preserved segmental information lost via apocope through an elaborate system of compound tone. Tanacross also has many unique phonetic features, including the loss of suffix vowels and the devoicing of stem-initial fricatives. Tanacross morphology reflects its transitional status between the (historically) conservative languages of the lower Tanana river and the innovative languages of the Tanana and Yukon uplands.
Tanacross is typical of the Athabaskan family in its typological characteristics. There is a relatively small phonemic inventory, and most of the phonemic contrasts are neutralized outside the stem-syllable onset position. The lexicon is relatively small, consisting of perhaps six thousand distinct morphemes. Noun morphology is relatively straightforward, with few active morphological processes. In contrast, verb structure is extremely complex, consisting of a possibly discontinuous root morpheme together with a string of inflectional and derivational affixes which combine via an elaborate system of non- concatenative templatic morphology. The verb word may stand alone as entire utterance. Members of other minor word classes tend to be monomorphemic.
Tanacross exhibits several unique properties which distinguish it from neighboring Athabaskan languages and invite further study. Tanacross is unique among the Alaska Athabaskan languages in having high tone as the reflex of Proto-Athabaskan constriction. In addition, more than any other tonal language in Alaska Tanacross has preserved segmental information lost via apocope through an elaborate system of compound tone. Tanacross also has many unique phonetic features, including the loss of suffix vowels and the devoicing of stem-initial fricatives. Tanacross morphology reflects its transitional status between the (historically) conservative languages of the lower Tanana river and the innovative languages of the Tanana and Yukon uplands.
Research Interests: Athabaskan and Tanacross
Language archives provide crucial infrastructure supporting documentary linguistics: without protocols and facilities for preservation and access, the products of endangered language documentation would be as endangered as the languages... more
Language archives provide crucial infrastructure supporting documentary linguistics: without protocols and facilities for preservation and access, the products of endangered language documentation would be as endangered as the languages themselves. Much progress has been made in developing technical standards for language archiving (cf. Bird & Simons 2003), but access to archival data remains problematic, for several reasons. The ready availability of digital data and the increasing tendency to archive data as it is created has inadvertently pushed language archives into a dissemination role. Woodbury (2014) suggests that language archives can no longer be mere passive repositories but should actively engage with their audiences. Many language archives have attempted to mediate between resources and users (Nathan 2007, Author 2014), but top-down approaches to mediation often have less than satisfactory results (Dobrin & Author 2013). Nevertheless, the infrastructure for endangered language archiving remains decidedly top-down. Most major archives of endangered languages are based at universities, even though the users of those archives are overwhelming members of language communities without any formal connection to the academic world (Austin 2011).
In this presentation we describe a model by which local, community-based archives can be empowered through partnerships with academic endangered language archives. A collaborative, distributed model allows preservation and access issues to be separated, so that communities can focus on developing an approach to access from the bottom-up. The benefits of this collaborative approach have already been demonstrated in the creation of the first community-based language archive in Alaska (Berez et al. 2012). We present case studies from six different community-based archives which illustrate the range of solutions possible within a community-based model of language archiving. If academic archives are the trunk of the tree, then community-based language archives are the branches which reach out and allow the tree to thrive. Growing these branches is critical to the continued success of endangered language archiving.
References
Austin, Peter. 2011. Who uses digital language archives? Endangered Languages and Cultures [Internet], posted April 29. Online: http://www.paradisec.org.au/blog/2011/04/who-uses-digital-language-archives/. <Accessed 8 August 2013>.
Author. 2014. Mediating language documentation. Language Documentation and Description 12: 37-52.
Berez, Andrea L., Tana Finnesand & Karen Linnell. 2012. C’ek’aedi Hwnax, the Ahtna Regional Linguistic and Ethnographic Archive. Language Documentation and Conservation 6: 237-52.
Bird, Steven & Gary Simons. 2003. Seven dimensions of portability for language documentation and description. Language 79 (3): 557-82.
Dobrin, Lise M. & Author. 2013. The documentation lives a life of its own: The temporal transformation of two endangered language archive projects. Museum Anthropology Review 7 (1-2): 140-54.
Nathan, David. 2006. Thick interfaces: Mobilising language documentation. In J. Gippert, Nikolas P. Himmelmann & Ulrike Mosel (eds.), Essentials of Language Documentation, 363-79. Berlin: Mouton.
In this presentation we describe a model by which local, community-based archives can be empowered through partnerships with academic endangered language archives. A collaborative, distributed model allows preservation and access issues to be separated, so that communities can focus on developing an approach to access from the bottom-up. The benefits of this collaborative approach have already been demonstrated in the creation of the first community-based language archive in Alaska (Berez et al. 2012). We present case studies from six different community-based archives which illustrate the range of solutions possible within a community-based model of language archiving. If academic archives are the trunk of the tree, then community-based language archives are the branches which reach out and allow the tree to thrive. Growing these branches is critical to the continued success of endangered language archiving.
References
Austin, Peter. 2011. Who uses digital language archives? Endangered Languages and Cultures [Internet], posted April 29. Online: http://www.paradisec.org.au/blog/2011/04/who-uses-digital-language-archives/. <Accessed 8 August 2013>.
Author. 2014. Mediating language documentation. Language Documentation and Description 12: 37-52.
Berez, Andrea L., Tana Finnesand & Karen Linnell. 2012. C’ek’aedi Hwnax, the Ahtna Regional Linguistic and Ethnographic Archive. Language Documentation and Conservation 6: 237-52.
Bird, Steven & Gary Simons. 2003. Seven dimensions of portability for language documentation and description. Language 79 (3): 557-82.
Dobrin, Lise M. & Author. 2013. The documentation lives a life of its own: The temporal transformation of two endangered language archive projects. Museum Anthropology Review 7 (1-2): 140-54.
Nathan, David. 2006. Thick interfaces: Mobilising language documentation. In J. Gippert, Nikolas P. Himmelmann & Ulrike Mosel (eds.), Essentials of Language Documentation, 363-79. Berlin: Mouton.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Cultural astronomy research in contemporary societies requires knowledge of the indigenous languages which encode that knowledge of the sky. Here we discuss two examples illustrating the errors which can occur when there is inadequate... more
Cultural astronomy research in contemporary societies requires knowledge of the indigenous languages which encode that knowledge of the sky. Here we discuss two examples illustrating the errors which can occur when there is inadequate control of the relevant linguistic issues. These errors are of two types, deriving from (i) invalid assumptions about translational equivalence within complex domains of knowledge, and (ii) inattention to subtle linguistic distinctions. Avoiding these errors requires both greater attention to cultural astronomy on the part of linguists, as well as increased interdisciplinary collaboration between astronomers, anthropologists, linguists, and indigenous communities.