Dena'ina | |
---|---|
Dena’ina Qenaga, Dena'inaq' | |
Native to | United States |
Region | Alaska (Cook Inlet region, Lake Clark, Lake Iliamna) |
Ethnicity | 900 Dena'ina people (2007) [1] |
Native speakers | 75 (2007) [1] |
Dené–Yeniseian?
| |
Latin (Dena'ina alphabet) | |
Official status | |
Official language in | ![]() |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | tfn |
Glottolog | tana1289 [3] |
Dena’ina /dɪˈnaɪnə/ , also Tanaina, is the Athabaskan language of the region surrounding Cook Inlet. It is geographically unique in Alaska as the only Alaska Athabaskan language to include territory which borders salt water. Four dialects are usually distinguished:
Athabaskan is a large family of indigenous languages of North America, located in western North America in three groups of contiguous languages: Northern, Pacific Coast and Southern. Kari and Potter 2010:10 place the total territory of the 53 Athabaskan languages at 1,563,000 mi2 or 4,022,000 km2.
Cook Inlet stretches 180 miles (290 km) from the Gulf of Alaska to Anchorage in south-central Alaska. Cook Inlet branches into the Knik Arm and Turnagain Arm at its northern end, almost surrounding Anchorage. On its south end merges with Shelikof Strait, Stevenson Entrance, Kennedy Entrance and Chugach Passage.
Of the total Dena'ina population of about 900 people, only 75–95 members still speak Dena’ina. James Kari has done extensive work on the language since 1972, including his edition with Alan Boraas of the collected writings of Peter Kalifornsky in 1991. Joan M. Tenenbaum also conducted extensive field research on the language in the 1970s.
James Kari is a linguist and Professor Emeritus with the Alaska Native Language Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) specializing in the Dene or Athabascan languages of Alaska. In the past forty years he has done extensive linguistic work in many Dene languages including Ahtna, Dena'ina, Koyukon, Deg Hit'an, Holikachuk, Lower Tanana, Middle Tanana, Tanacross, Upper Tanana, and Babine-Witsuwit'en. He was on the faculty of UAF from 1973 until his retirement in 1997. He continues to work on numerous Alaska Native language projects. He is the author or editor of over 200 publications, including more than 3500 pages of bilingual texts in seven Dene languages. He is the most prolific contributor to the Alaska Native Language Archive. His special interest is Dene ethnogeography, and he has compiled or documented more than 14,000 place names in fourteen Alaska or Canadian Dene languages. He worked with Dena'ina writer and ethnographer Peter Kalifornsky on a 1991 compilation of his creative writings. In 2008 he was the organizer of the Dene–Yeniseian Symposium in Alaska, and co-editor of the volume The Dene–Yeniseian Connection published in 2010. In 2009 Alaska governor Sarah Palin selected Kari to receive the Governor's Award for the Humanities. In March 2013 Kari received the Professional Achievement Award at the 40th annual meeting of the Alaska Anthropological Association.
Alan S. Boraas is a professor of anthropology at Kenai Peninsula College in Alaska. He is known for his research into the culture, history, and archaeology of the peoples of the Cook Inlet area of Alaska, and in particular has worked closely with the Dena'ina people of the Kenai Peninsula. He is an adopted member of the Kenaitze Indian Tribe, and is helping the tribe develop a program to teach the Dena'ina language.
Peter Kalifornsky, self-named "Петр Калифорнский", was a self-taught writer and ethnographer of the Dena'ina Athabaskan of Kenai, Alaska, who wrote traditional stories, poems, and language lessons in the Outer Inlet dialect of Dena'ina, a language of the Athabaskan language group. Kalifornsky, a Dena'ina elder, participated in creating the written version of the Dena'ina language, and over 19 years worked to record as many sukdu or traditional stories as he could remember, translating them also into English. He also wrote original works in Dena'ina, including a number of autobiographical works. He was the great-grandson of Qadanalchen, who took the name Kalifornsky after working in the Russian American colony of Fort Ross in California, and for whom Kalifornsky, Alaska is named.
The word Dena'ina is composed of the dena, meaning 'person' and the human plural suffix ina. While the apostrophe which joins the two parts of this word ordinarily indicates a glottal stop, most speakers pronounce this with a diphthong, so that the second syllable of the word rhymes with English 'nine' (as in the older spelling Tanaina).
![]() | |
Problems playing this file? See media help. |
Dena'ina is one of seven Alaska Athabaskan languages which does not distinguish phonemic tone.
The consonants of Dena’ina in practical orthography, with IPA equivalents indicated in square brackets.
Labial | Dental | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
plain | lateral | sibilant | |||||||
Nasal | m[m] | n[n] | |||||||
Plosive and Affricate | plain | (b[b]) | d[t] | dl[t͡ɬ] | dz[t͡s] | j[t͡ʃ] | g[k] | gg[q] | ' [ʔ] |
aspirated | t[tʰ] | tl[t͡ɬʰ] | ts[t͡sʰ] | ch[t͡ʃʰ] | k[kʰ] | q[qʰ] | |||
ejective | t'[tʼ] | tl'[t͡ɬʼ] | ts'[t͡sʼ] | ch'[t͡ʃʼ] | k'[kʼ] | q'[qʼ] | |||
Fricative | voiceless | (f [f]) | ɬ[ɬ] | s[s] | sh[ʃ] | x[x] | h[χ] | ĥ[h] | |
voiced | v[v] | l[l] | z[z] | zh[ʒ] | ŷ[ɣ] | gh[ʁ] | |||
Approximant | (r[ɹ]) | [j] |
[ɹ] is only found in English loanwords.
The 4 vowels of Dena’ina. Note that close vowels are more open in the environment of a uvular consonant.
Front | Central | Back | |
---|---|---|---|
Close | i | u | |
Mid | e[ə] | ||
Open | a |
Generally, the vowels i, a, and u are considered 'long' vowels and are fully pronounced in words, however the e is considered a reduced vowel similar to the English schwa.
In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa is the mid central vowel sound in the middle of the vowel chart, denoted by the IPA symbol, or another vowel sound close to that position. An example in English is the vowel sound of the 'a' in the word about. Schwa in English is mainly found in unstressed positions, but in some other languages it occurs more frequently as a stressed vowel.
In the Inland dialect, syllables at the end of a semantic unit are often longer, lower in pitch, and have longer rhymes. The onset of a syllable has consonant clusters of up to three, such as CCCVC, though these are rare and more commonly, a syllable onset is one or two consonants.
Dena'ina is a polysynthetic language where a single word can mean the entirety of an English sentence.
Example:
English sentence "I will see you again."
Dena'ina word: nuntnghel'ił
Dena'ina word parts: nu-n-t-n-gh-sh-l-'ił
Word part meanings: again-you-FUTURE-see-FUTURE-I-CLASSIFIER-see/FUTURE
Verbs are the most elaborate part of speech in the Dena'ina language, which vary in verb paradigms which vary by subject, object, or aspect. The following example is of -lan the verb "to be" in the imperfective aspect and in the Nondalton dialect.
Subject | Meaning | Nondalton |
---|---|---|
1st person singular | I am | eshlan |
2nd person singular | You are | inlan |
3rd person singular | He/She/It is | nlan |
1st person plural | We are | ch'ilan |
2nd person plural | You all are | ehlan |
3rd person plural | They are | qilan |
Areal | Area is | qilan |
Dena'ina indicates classification with obligatory verb prefixes, meaning the root verb appears at the end of the word. The verb will always specify a classification and often person, gender, or object prefixes that indicate aspects of the noun or object for transitive verbs, and aspects of the speaker for intransitive verbs. Person can also be indicated by suffixes on the noun; the singular person suffix on a noun is generally -en, whereas the plural suffix is generally -na or -ina. Plurals for non-persons that are animate are indicated by the noun suffixes -qa, -ha, and -yi. Inanimate plurals are unable to be indicated by a noun suffix, and instead attach to the verb.
For examples of person indication on the verb, see the chart under the morphology section above concerning the verb root -lan. Dena'ina specifies between 1st person singular/plural, 2nd person singular/plural, 3rd person singular/plural, and areal.
Verbs fall into many categories that are broadly lumped into "active" and "neuter", where an active verb indicates movement, a state of being incomplete, something being made, or in the production of sound, and a neuter verb indicates a general state of being that is complete. Categories of classification that are affixated to a verb also can refer to certain characteristics of the object of that verb. Depending on the gender affix that follows the classificatory affix, the nature of the object can change, as indicated by the following chart:
Classificatory verbs | Gender prefixes | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
∅- | d- | n- | dn- | q- | ||
1 | Single compact object; ‘u | ball, trap, hat, sun, beaver lodge | egg, song, word | berry, bread, roe, coiled rope, head | rock, ring, mirror, box, whetstone | house, plot of land, situation, weather |
2 | Elongated object; tun | needle, sled, boat, bow, gun | pole, plate, cane, quill, pencil stick | dentalium necklace | mirror | x |
3 | Enclosed object; łtun | knife, full sack, rolled sleeping bag | pillow, mattress, lake | sack of berries, flour or fish eggs | box of rocks | q+d ravine, valley |
4 | Fabric-like object; kits | blanket, net, paper, open sleeping bag, empty sack, skin without hair | skin with hair, fur, caribou mat | |||
5 | Object in open vessel; qu | sugar, water in container | eggs or wood chips in bucket | berries or roe in container | rocks or coal in bucket | x |
6 | Animate object; ta | person, dog, doll, crucifix | x | x | x | x |
7 | Food; kit | piece of meat, dry fish | beaver’s food pile | roe | x | x |
8 | Mushy object; tlaq’ | mud, rotted food, wet cloth, butter | wet tea leaves | fish eggs (not in container) | x | pile of refuse, area of soft ground |
9 | Plural objects; lu | traps, boots, dogs | eggs, plates, cups, words, tobacco, songs, waves | sg. uncoiled rope, pl. coiled ropes, beads, berries, roe, snare | rocks, whetstones, boxes | houses, objects over area, freight |
10 | Multiple objects; chuq’ | sand, glacier ice | chips of wood | berries | rocks | earth, clouds |
However, there are other categories of classification or instrumentation that indicate how an action was done or aspects about the outcome of the action. Many instrumental affixes have become causative over time. Causality is expressed by changing a classifier in the verb to "ł". Instrumental affixes that indicate the manner or motion of an action include the following: "-aq’a", which refers to clubbing an object or leaving a depression in the snow; "-dni", which refers to causing an object to leave, disappear, or die; "-du", which refers to affecting an object with the mouth; "-eł,-eła, and -ł", which all indicate that the object being referred to was used in an instrumental sense; "-iqu (uqu)", which refers to a pointing motion; "-k’", which refers to a wiping motion; and "-lu", which refers to the use of a hand.
Dena'ina shows space relations through the addition of morphemes that are either independent or bound, known as postpositions.
Postpositions can also be incorporated into a verb as a prefix.
Space relations can also be marked by demonstratives pronouns, which indicate proximal/distal distinction.
For example:
Adverbs of location and direction can also convey space relations.
The directional system in Dena'ina is based upon river flows, and are used with directional prefixes, roots, and suffixes.
For example, yunit means "at a place far upstream", and is composed of the prefix "yu", root "ni", and suffix "t".
Temporal adverbs convey information about when an action or intent of the verb occurred.
For example:
Mode indicates when the action happens. Normal mode is also referred to as tense, and is given by mode/aspect prefix positions in the verbs. The tense modes are the imperfect (present), perfect (past) and the future represented by 4 types of imperfectives—∅, z, n, gh—and 4 types of perfectives—gh, z, n, ∅. There are also 4 modal variations: neuter, inceptive, optative-intentional, and negative.
Aspect conveys information about how the action happened, and works in conjunction with tense. The most common aspects are conclusive, momentaneous, neuter, onomatopoetic, and semelfactive. The morpheme attached to the root verb can also change depending on aspect.
Aspect | Mode | |||
---|---|---|---|---|
Imperfect | Perfect | Future | Optative | |
continuative | ya | ya | ya | Ya |
durative | nax | Yał | nax | nax |
momentaneous | ya | yał | ||
neuter | Ya' | Ya' | ||
repetitive | nash | nak | nash | nish |
Modality is most commonly and easily seen in evidentials which usually appear at the end of a sentence.
Predicate refers to the main verb and auxiliary verbs, while arguments usually refer to those words outside of the predicate.
There are two competing notions of the predicate, generating confusion concerning the use of the term predicate in general. The first concerns traditional grammar, which tends to view a predicate as one of two main parts of a sentence, the other part being the subject. The purpose of the predicate is to complete an idea about the subject, such as what it does or what it is like. For instance, in a sentence such as Frank likes cake, the subject is Frank and the predicate is likes cake.
In linguistics, an argument is an expression that helps complete the meaning of a predicate, the latter referring in this context to a main verb and its auxiliaries. In this regard, the complement is a closely related concept. Most predicates take one, two, or three arguments. A predicate and its arguments form a predicate-argument structure. The discussion of predicates and arguments is associated most with (content) verbs and noun phrases (NPs), although other syntactic categories can also be construed as predicates and as arguments. Arguments must be distinguished from adjuncts. While a predicate needs its arguments to complete its meaning, the adjuncts that appear with a predicate are optional; they are not necessary to complete the meaning of the predicate. Most theories of syntax and semantics acknowledge arguments and adjuncts, although the terminology varies, and the distinction is generally believed to exist in all languages. Dependency grammars sometimes call arguments actants, following Tesnière (1959).
Word order in the basic Dena'ina sentence is subject-object-verb (SOV). Because of this, there is a low danger of referential ambiguity. It is rare to have both the subject and the objects as nouns; instead, one or both usually occur as pronouns. Some sentences differ from the SOV structure. In subject-verb (SV), the object is embedded in the verb as a pronoun, or the sentence doesn't require an object. In object-verb (OV), the subject is a pronoun contained in the verb, and the object is a noun.
An example sentence structure: object pronoun (argument) + outer subject pronoun (argument) + (other prefixes) + inner subject pronoun (argument) + ... verb stem (predicate). This example shows multiple arguments attaching to a single predicate.
A full clause can be expressed in the verb. In the verb, the verb stem is last, and even when embedded in the verb, the object and subject necessarily come first. In Dena'ina, all verbs require a nominative (subject) and an accusative (object), which indicates a nominative-accusative case. This means the marked morphemes, or those that change to convey more specific meanings, are those that indicate the object. Distinction occurs between the nominative and accusative, and each would have its own core argument.
Obliques indicate instrumentals, locatives, and other arguments outside of core arguments. Both core and oblique arguments attach to the verb via prefixes which must occur in a certain order. In Dena'ina, obliques are prefixes to the verb which occur between the object prefix and the inner subject pronoun prefix and/or the outer subject pronoun.
In grammar, an oblique or objective case is a nominal case that is used when a noun phrase is the object of either a verb or a preposition. A noun or pronoun in the oblique case can generally appear in any role except as subject, for which the nominative case is used. The term objective case is generally preferred by modern English grammarians, where it supplanted Old English's dative and accusative. When the two terms are contrasted, they differ in the ability of a word in the oblique case to function as a possessive attributive; whether English has an oblique rather than an objective case then depends on how "proper" or widespread one considers the dialects where such usage is employed.
The instrumental case is a grammatical case used to indicate that a noun is the instrument or means by or with which the subject achieves or accomplishes an action. The noun may be either a physical object or an abstract concept.
The locative case is a grammatical case which indicates a location. It corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by". The locative case belongs to the general local cases together with the lative and separative case.
Dena'ina has inherently possessed nouns and non-verbs. Inherently possessed words consist of a prefix and a stem which are abound morphemes. For example, "shunkda" means "my mother", where "sh-" is the possessive pronoun meaning "my", and "-unkda" is the possessed root meaning "mother".
The pronouns used with inherently possessed bound morphemes:
Non-inherent possession occurs with proper nouns as the possessor, shown by -a or -'a attached as a suffix to the possessed noun. Possessive pronouns are attached as a prefix to the possessed noun and the -'a is added at the end of the word.
Complement clauses are clauses that act as the direct object of the verb, introduced by a complementizer (e.g.: in English, "that" or "which"). Complement clauses exist as subordinate clauses and bare clauses, as with other languages in the Athabaskan language family. Some complement clauses are marked by enclitics, and are always embedded as part of the sentence.
Relative suffixes are attached to nouns or verbs, and are one of the few suffixes on verbs. Common relative suffixes include:
The population of Dena'ina is 900. As of 2007, there are 75-90 speakers, and in 1970 there were only 10 speakers of the Kenai dialect.
Linguist Michael E. Krauss provides three levels of endangerment: safe; endangered, where the language is being learned by children but requires community effort to maintain it; and moribund, where the language is not being learned by children. According to this classification, the Dena'ina is a moribund language.
There are various efforts to revitalize the language.
Contributing factors to the endangerment include the policy of early territorial schools to not let native students speak their own language, especially in regards to the Kenai dialect. This policy was often enforced via corporal punishment; the trauma caused elders, all within one generation, to avoid speaking the language.
This article deals with the grammar of the Finnish language. For the ways in which the spoken language differs from the written language, see Colloquial Finnish. Unlike the languages spoken in neighbouring countries, such as Swedish and Norwegian, which are North Germanic languages, Finnish is a Uralic language, and is typologically between fusional and agglutinative languages.
The Chinookan languages were a small family of languages spoken in Oregon and Washington along the Columbia River by Chinook peoples. All are now extinct, although Upper Chinook had 270 self-identified speakers in 2009-2013.
Alyutor or Alutor is a language of Russia that belongs to the Chukotkan branch of the Chukotko-Kamchatkan languages.
The Georgian language belongs to the Kartvelian family. Georgian grammar is remarkably different from European languages and has many distinct features, such as split ergativity and a polypersonal verb agreement system.
The Carrier language is a Northern Athabaskan language. It is named after the Dakelh people, a First Nations people of the Central Interior of British Columbia, Canada, for whom Carrier is the usual English name. People who are referred to as Carrier speak two related languages. One, Babine-Witsuwit'en is sometimes referred to as Northern Carrier. The other, Carrier proper, includes what are sometimes referred to as Central Carrier and Southern Carrier.
The grammar of Classical Nahuatl is agglutinative, head-marking, and makes extensive use of compounding, noun incorporation and derivation. That is, it can add many different prefixes and suffixes to a root until very long words are formed. Very long verbal forms or nouns created by incorporation, and accumulation of prefixes are common in literary works. New words can thus be easily created.
The Ojibwe language is an Algonquian American Indian language spoken throughout the Great Lakes region and westward onto the northern plains. It is one of the largest American Indian languages north of Mexico in terms of number of speakers, and exhibits a large number of divergent dialects. For the most part, this article describes the Minnesota variety of the Southwestern dialect. The orthography used is the Fiero Double-Vowel System.
Southern Athabascan is a subfamily of Athabaskan languages spoken in the North American Southwest. Refer to Southern Athabascan languages for the main article.
This article describes the Grammar of Tigrinya, a South Semitic language which is spoken primarily in Eritrea and Ethiopia, and is written in Ge'ez script.
The Tarahumara language is a Mexican indigenous language of the Uto-Aztecan language family spoken by around 70,000 Tarahumara (Rarámuri/Ralámuli) people in the state of Chihuahua, according to an estimate by the government of Mexico.
The grammar of the Gujarati language is the study of the word order, case marking, verb conjugation, and other morphological and syntactic structures of the Gujarati language, an Indo-Aryan language native to the Indian state of Gujarat and spoken by the Gujarati people. This page overviews the grammar of standard Gujarati, and is written in a romanization. Hovering the mouse cursor over underlined forms will reveal the appropriate English translation.
Kurdish grammar has many Inflections, with prefixes and suffixes added to roots to express grammatical relations and to form words.
Bororo (Borôro), also known as Boe, is the sole surviving language of a small family believed to be part of the Macro-Gê languages. It is spoken by the Bororo, hunters and gatherers in the Central Mato Grosso region of Brazil.
Malecite–Passamaquoddy is an endangered Algonquian language spoken by the Maliseet and Passamaquoddy peoples along both sides of the border between Maine in the United States and New Brunswick, Canada. The language consists of two major dialects: Malecite, which is mainly spoken in the Saint John River Valley in New Brunswick; and Passamaquoddy, spoken mostly in the St. Croix River Valley of eastern Maine. However, the two dialects differ only slightly, mainly in accent. Malecite-Passamaquoddy was widely spoken by the indigenous people in these areas until around the post-World War II era, when changes in the education system and increased marriage outside of the speech community caused a large decrease in the number of children who learned or regularly used the language. As a result, in both Canada and the U.S. today, there are only 600 speakers of both dialects, and most speakers are older adults. Although the majority of younger people cannot speak the language, there is growing interest in teaching the language in community classes and in some schools.
Temoaya Otomi, also known as Toluca Otomi or Otomi of San Andrés Cuexcontitlan, is a variety of the Otomi language spoken in Mexico by ca. 37,000 people in and around the municipality of Temoaya, and in three communities within the municipality of Toluca: San Andrés Cuexcontitlán, San Pablo Autopan and San Cristobal Huichochitlan. The two varieties are quite different. The speakers themselves call the language Ñatho. Lastra (2001) classifies it as a southwestern dialect along with the dialects of Mexico state. Lastra also notes that the endangered Otomí dialect of San Felipe in eastern Michoacán is most similar to the Otomí spoken in San Andrés Cuexcontitlan.
This article deals with the grammar of the Udmurt language.
Serbo-Croatian is a South Slavic language that has, like most other Slavic languages, an extensive system of inflection. This article describes exclusively the grammar of the Shtokavian dialect, which is a part of the South Slavic dialect continuum and the basis for the Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian standard variants of Serbo-Croatian.
Mortlockese, also known as Mortlock or Nomoi, is a language that belongs to the Chuukic group of Micronesian languages in the Federated States of Micronesia spoken primarily in the Mortlock Islands. It is nearly intelligible with Satawalese, with an 18 percent intelligibility and an 82 percent lexical similarity, and Puluwatese, with a 75 percent intelligibility and an 83 percent lexical similarity. The language today has become mutually intelligible with Chuukese, though marked with a distinct Mortlockese accent. Linguistic patterns show that Mortlockese is converging with Chuukese since Mortlockese now has an 80 to 85 percent lexical similarity.
North Ambrym is a language of Ambrym Island, Vanuatu.
Navajo is a "verb-heavy" language — it has a great preponderance of verbs but relatively few nouns. In addition to verbs and nouns, Navajo has other elements such as pronouns, clitics of various functions, demonstratives, numerals, postpositions, adverbs, and conjunctions, among others. Harry Hoijer grouped all of the above into a word-class he called particles. Navajo has no separate words that correspond to the adjectives in English grammar: verbs provide the adjectival functionality.