Presentations

 

The “spurious –s-” interfix in Dene Su³iné:
A small and obscure (and pan-Dene?) morpheme that makes a big difference
John Janvier, Valerie Wood, and Shirley Cardinal
Cold Lake First Nation
Sally Rice
University of Alberta

It has been our practice, when working on Dene Su³iné transcriptions, to temporarily gloss any
unidentifiable morphemes as “GWPs” (grey wolf particles). These “grey wolves” may show
themselves on the edge of an expression and then quickly retreat into the woods just when we
think we have figured them out. They usually remain elusive and mysterious. The so-called
“spurious –s-” interfix that is the focus of this paper was such a grey wolf particle that we hope we
have finally and correctly analyzed. We present this paper in the hopes that other Dene speakers
will recognize this morpheme and help us tame it and better understand it.

 

“Hän Language Video Project”

Jonathan Manker

University of California, Berkeley

            Hän is a Dene language spoken in eastern Alaska in the village of Eagle and western Yukon around Dawson City.  This presentation will detail the progress of the Hän Language Video Project (funded by a Jacobs Research Grant), the first stage of which was completed in Summer 2013 in Eagle, Alaska.  Video documentation is useful means of both linguistic and cultural preservation and is becoming more popular as technology is becoming more widely accessible.  In particular, this project will share ideas for how to conduct a successful video project even for the novice videographer as well as for preserving an extremely endangered language such as Hän, where the few fluent speakers have few opportunities to use the language on a daily basis.  I will also show interesting examples of language that I found unique to this type of project, that show such a mode of documentation is useful to heritage language learners and linguists alike.

            This project produced three videos, each of which was narrated by a fluent speaker of Hän.  The videos feature culturally relevant activities such as sewing moccasins, making frybread, and preparing salmon (chosen by the speakers according to their interests and abilities).  The speakers were first filmed while performing each activity.  Then the speakers watched the footage and narrated the activity being performed.  Finally, the sentences were transcribed, translated, edited, and inserted as subtitles into the footage. 

            This project faced many challenges in the course of producing these videos.  In particular, Hän has only about six to eight fluent speakers, and these speakers rarely get the opportunity to use their language on a daily basis.  It was thus a challenge for speakers to remember certain words and grammatical constructions, so it was important for them to work together on the sentences to aid in memorization.  I additionally learned from many mistakes I made being primarily a linguist and having little experience as a videographer, yet what I learned should be useful for community members and other linguists using this mode of language preservation.

            The Hän Language Video Project successfully produced three videos helping to preserve an extremely endangered language.  Despite many of the challenges, this mode of preservation and documentation can be useful for both community members and linguists who share a common goal of preserving Dene languages.

 

John Alderete

 

Langauge documentation strategies for verb words in Tahltan, with special attention to the role of inflections

This paper will present interim results on an on-going project designed to document verb words in Tahltan (Northern Athabaskan). It will review the classic template analysis of verbs given in prior research, focusing classifier and conjunct prefixes and their associated phonological rules. Then, following a parallel from Navajo verbs, it will explore the idea that mode, conjugation, and subject prefixes are written as inflections and discuss the potential benefits of this assumption for learning, teaching, and linguistic analysis.

 

 

Ellavina Perkins

 

Generalizing Navajo Sentences in Fourth Person

 

A paper was presented by Ted Fernald, Swarthmore College at the Athabaskan Languages Conference in 2003, titled Generalizing Sentences in Navajo.  Building on Fernald, Perkins, and Smith (2003), this paper examines the interaction of fourth person generalizations and adds to the frequency adverbial particles considered.  The overall goal of this project is to describe how modes, aspects, plurality indicators, frequency particles, and other grammatical elements compose to yield different kinds of generalizing sentences.  I consider questions like the following:

Where do frequency particles appear in the sentence (before or after the verb, etc.)?  Some examples of frequency particles are ¬ah, once, at one time, ¬¡h¡da, rarely, now and then, once in awhile, off and on,  ¬eh, usually, customarily, t’¡¡ ’ah££h, often, t’ah doo…da.

What verb mode do these particles appear with?  Can they appear with neuter verbs?

What do the particles mean?

Can you ever get a fourth person generic with an individual-level predicate (like ‘be part-Norwegian’)?  My feeling is that fourth generics are used to instruct people about behavior and things that people can control.  Of course, there’s probably more to fourth generics than just teaching part.

 

Judith Thompson

 

In 2012, Tahltan Leadership and community members gathered to discuss social and cultural issues facing the Tahltan Nation in a range of areas, including language and culture. This resulted in a document that articulated the vision and goals for the revitalization of the Tahltan language. This presentation will discuss how a Tahltan Nation Language Plan has been created and how it is working towards meeting the vision and goals for the revitalization of our Tahltan language by focusing on governance, language programs, documentation, and training and professional development in order to build a stronger nation and to build capacity in our Tahltan communities.

 

Sharon Hargus

 Documenting for revitalization

The traditional products of language documentation are dictionaries, descriptive grammars and texts.  These have traditionally been printed materials, but even if the writing system represents the sound system of the language well, it can be difficult for some users to catch on to the writing system and adapt these materials for language pedagogy/revitalization.  The solution is to distribute grammars, dictionaries and texts by sound files. 

            On the other hand, recordings without transcriptions and translations, or with inadequate translations, have questionable value for language revitalization.  It is relatively easy to make recordings.  It takes considerably more time to prepare transcriptions and translations, and requires special expertise.

 

 

Edward John

Keeping the Wisdom and Humor in our Languages Alive

Abstract:

Many years ago when I took my "grandfather" to the airport to take a plane to go to Vancouver for medical treatment hewas amazed to see the big metal bird arrive that he was expected to enter. The way he described this was priceless and noteasy to translate because our language says and knows things about actions that are hard to put into English because weknow that everything is alive in its special way and has wisdom beyond our ken and tricks us into humor all along the way.We want to keep these languages alive and well so we can rely on this wisdom and its humor to help the Dene languageshelp us achieve the Rights of Indigenous Peoples that I helped the UN put into its Declaration. These decolonizing moveswill keep on with and through the wisdom and humor of our Dene Languages

 

Justa Monk

Let's Make It So Our Language Doesn't Laugh at How We Use It

Abstract:

We need to keep our language strong and revive it so the younger generations can laugh and learn and keep up ourtraditions and care for Mother Earth. It is important that this happens because this is the way we have been living andspeaking for thousands of years and we need to keep this alive for all the future generations of Dene peoples and for thebenefit of the Nedo as well. In keeping our language alive we will be able to share the wealth of insights it has with thenewcomer settler non-speakers too.

 

Titi Kunkel

Sadanx, Yedanx, K'andzin: Lessons from Tsilhqot?in language and culture course development

Abstract:

The Tsilhqot'in people, like many other First Nations, depend primarily on oral history and tradition for their knowledgeand yet we recently developed a written textbook for University Tsilhqot'in culture courses while paradoxically at the sametime respecting the primacy of ongoing oral traditions. Questions regarding copyright, ownership of both written and oralsource material, and who has the right to teach these courses, even in a university context, remained in the forefront ofdeveloping these new courses. This paper/ or workshop session will present the process followed in the development ofTsilhqot'in language and culture courses, including some of the successes and challenges, and how some of these challengeshave been addressed

 

 

Patrick Moore

Narrative in Language Revitalization: Possibilities and Challenges

Abstract:

This paper examines the promise of using narratives as a core element of Dene language revitalization. The many strongreasons favoring the use of indigenous language narratives (they are authentic aspects of traditional culture and oralperformance, expressive of cultural values, and embody sophisticated, artistic use of the language) are balanced byconfounding barriers to their use (language learners may need considerable fluency to understand stories and must beliterate to read them, the content may have negative associations for some educators or community members). This paperargues that narratives should be given a prominent place in language revitalization efforts for three reasons: theiravailability, their cultural value, and their sophisticated use of the language, including features most evident in stories.Overcoming the challenges to their use, however, requires dedicated language revitalization work to develop the necessaryfluency and cultural understandings among language learners. Because of the many resources required to make effective useof narratives we need to act now to build programs that will achieve the promise of narrative revitalization.

 

Tannis Reynolds

Stellakoh Talook/Stellaquo Salmon: The Relationship Between Salmon and the Stellat?en First Nation

Abstract:

The Stellaquo reserve is my home. I have lived there for most of my life. The river on our reserve is Stella Koh. Stelladescribes the situational placement and land area of the river and Koh means river. So our community is named Stellaquo.The people from Stellaquo are called Stellat'en which means the people from Stella. Of course the name Stella could beelaborated on even more by people who are fluent in the language. My aunt, Veronica Louie, once told me that, "You haveto know your language to know your culture." Working on my MA thesis and trying to explain why salmon are soimportant to the Stellat'en First Nation has clearly brought me to realize how important it is to know the language. Ourlanguage validates our practices, beliefs and values.