Cover not available
Part of
Language Contact and Change in the Americas: Studies in honor of Marianne Mithun
Edited by Andrea L. Berez-Kroeker, Diane M. Hintz and Carmen Jany
[Studies in Language Companion Series 173] 2016
► pp. 139–166

“Excorporation” in a Dene (Athabaskan) language

| University of Toronto

In the Fort Good Hope variety of the Dene (North Slavey) language, Proto-Athabaskan *n generally is realized as [r] in an oral environment and as [n] in a nasal environment. However, in some cases where alternations between [n] and [r] are expected based on closely related varieties, only the [r] variety is found. One consequence of this restructuring is that derivational affixes that were historically closely integrated into the verb word from a phonological perspective are now less fully integrated. This type of language change is typologically unusual. I suggest that it was motivated by the pressure to retain consistency of morpheme shape, perhaps to aid communication with speakers of a related but quite different language, representing a type of contact effect.

Keywords: Dene (Athabaskan), derivational morphology, excorporation, language contact, phonology, restructuring
Published online: 19 April 2016
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.173.07ric
References
Ackroyd, Lynda
1982 Dogrib Grammar. Ms.
Cook, Eung-Do
2004 A Grammar of Dëne Su̜ɬiné (Chipewyan). Algonquian and Iroquoian Linguistics, Special Athabaskan Number, Memoir 17.Google Scholar
Firth, William
1991 Gwich’in Language Dictionary. Yellowknife NT: Department of Culture and Communications, Government of the Northwest Territories.Google Scholar
Fortescue, Michael
1992 Morphophonemic complexity and typological stability in a polysynthetic language family. International Journal of American Linguistics 58: 242-248. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2008 The typological position and theoretical status of polysynthesis. Tidsskrift for Sprogforskning 5: 1-27. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hara, Hiroko Sue
1980 The Hare Indians and their World. National Museum of Man Mercury Series. Canadian Ethnology Service Paper no. 23. Ottawa: National Museums of Canada.Google Scholar
Hargus, Sharon
1988 The Lexical Phonology of Sekani [Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics Series]. New York NY: Garland.Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin
2004 On directionality in language change with particular reference to grammaticalization. In Up and Down the Cline: The Nature of Grammaticalization [Typological Studies in Language 59], Olga Fischer, Muriel Norde & Harry Perridon (eds), 17-44. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heine, Michael, Andre, Alestine, Kritsch, Ingrid & Cardinal, Alma
2007 Gwichya Gwich’in Googwandak/The History and Stories of the Gwichya Gwich’in. As Told by the Elders of Tsiigehtshik, revised edn. Tsiigehtsihik and Fort McPherson NT: Gwich’in Social and Cultural Institute.Google Scholar
Helm, June
2000 The People of Denendeh. Iowa City IA: University of Iowa Press.Google Scholar
Jetté, Julius & Jones, Eliza
2000 Koyukon Athabaskan Dictionary. Fairbanks AK: Alaska Native Language Center.Google Scholar
Jung, Dagmar
1999 The Dynamics of Polysynthetic Morphology: Person and Number Marking in Athabaskan. PhD dissertation, The University of New Mexico.
Kari, James
1975 The disjunct boundary in the Navajo and Tanaina verb prefix complexes. International Journal of American Linguistics 41(4): 330-345. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Krauss, Michael
1965 Eyak: A preliminary report. Canadian Journal of Linguistics 10: 167-187.Google Scholar
2005 Athabaskan tone. In Athabaskan Prosody [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 269], Sharon Hargus & Keren Rice (eds), 55-136. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Krauss, Michael & Golla, Victor
1981 Northern Athapaskan languages. In Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 6: Subarctic, June Helm (ed), 67-86. Washington DC: Smithsonian.Google Scholar
Leer, Jeff
1996 The historical evolution of the stem syllable in Gwich’in (Kutchin/Loucheux) Athabaskan. In Athabaskan Language Studies: Essays in Honor of Robert W. Young, Eloise Jelinek, Sally Midgette, Keren Rice, & Leslie Saxon (eds), 193-234. Albuquerque NM: University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar
2006 Na-Dene languages. In Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World, Keith Brown & Sarah Ogilvie (eds), 428-430. Oxford: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Lehmann, Christian
1995 Thoughts on Grammaticalization. Munich: Lincom.Google Scholar
Li, Fang-Kuei
1929 Hare file slips.
1933 Chipewyan consonants. In Studies Presented to Ts’ai Yuan P’ei on his Sixty-fifth Birthday, 429-467. Peking: Academia Sinica.Google Scholar
1946 Chipewyan. In Linguistic Structures of Native America, Harry Hoijer et al. (eds), 398-423. New York NY: Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology.Google Scholar
Mackenzie, Alexander
1927 Voyages from Montreal on the River St. Laurence through the Continent of North America to the Frozen and Pacific Oceans in the Years 1789 and 1793 with a Preliminary Account of the Rise, Progress, and Present State of the Fur Trade of the Country, John W. Garvin (ed). Toronto: The Radisson Society of Canada.Google Scholar
Marinakis, Aliki, Mary K. Richardson, Leslie Saxon & Mary Siemens
(eds) 2007 Reading and Writing in Tɬi̜cho̜ Yatiì / Tɬi̜cho̜ k’è̜è̜ xè Eni̜htɬ’è k’e Yats’ehtii. Behchokò̜ NT: Tɬi̜cho̜ Community Services Agency.Google Scholar
McDonough, Joyce
2000 On a bipartite model of the Athabaskan verb. In The Athabaskan Languages: Perspectives on a Native American Language Family, Theodore B. Fernald & Paul R. Platero (eds), 139-166. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mithun, Marianne
2011 Grammaticalization and explanation. In The Oxford Handbook of Grammaticalization, Bernd Heine & Heiko Narrog (eds), 177-192. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Moore, Patrick James
2002 Point of View in Kaska Historical Narratives. PhD dissertation, University of Indiana.
Petitot, Emile-Fortune-Stanislas-Joseph
1876 Dictionnaire de la langue dènè-dindjié dialects montagnais ou chippewayan, peaux de lièvre et loucheux, renfermant en outre un grand nombre de termes propres à sept autres dialectes de la même langue ; précédé d’une monographie des Dènè- Dindjié, d’une grammaire et de tableaux synoptiques des conjugaisons. Paris: Ernest Leroux; San Francisco: A.-L. Bancroft.Google Scholar
Rice, Keren
1989 A Grammar of Slave. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2000 Morpheme Order and Semantic Scope: Word Formation in the Athapaskan Verb. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2005 Prominence and the verb stem in Slave (Hare). In Athabaskan Prosody [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 269], Sharon Hargus & Keren Rice (eds), 345-368. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2013 Language contact as an inhibitor of sound change: An Athabaskan example. In The Persistence of Language: Constructing and Confronting the Past and Present in the Voices of Jane H. Hill [Culture and Language Use. Studies in Anthropological Linguistics 8], Shannon T. Bischoff, Deborah Cole, Amy V. Fountain & Mizuki Miyashita (eds), 29-51. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rice, Sally, Libben, Gary & Derwing, Bruce
2002 Morphological representation in an endangered polysynthetic language. Brain and Language 81(1-3): 473-486. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sapir, Edward
1915 The Na-Dene languages: A preliminary report. American Anthropologist, New Series 17(3): 534-558. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Savishinsky, Joel
1974 The Trail of the Hare: Life and Stress in an Arctic Community. New York NY: Gordon and Breach Science Publishers.Google Scholar