Dene (Athabaskan) Languages

• Main Author: Hargus, Sharon
• Format: Book Part
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford University Press 2011
• Subjects: Canada; Athabascan; Chipewyan; Dakelh; Deg Xinag; Gwich’in; Ingalik; Tanaina; Alaska
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780199772810-0054

Dene or Athabaskan is a family of about forty languages spoken in primarily three regions: (1) in the interior of Alaska and much of western Canada, (2) in northwestern California and southwestern Oregon, and (3) in eastern Arizona and western New Mexico. At the 2012 meeting of the Athabaskan Languages Conference, the participants (linguists, speakers, language activists) voted to use and promote the previous language family name Dene instead of Athabaskan (a Cree-origin name), out of respect for the fact that there is a word similar to dene meaning ‘person, man’ in all of the languages of the family. The family has been recognized as such since 1826 (Krauss 1981, cited in Histories). The languages are most famous (or infamous) for their position-class verbal morphology, classificatory verbs, recent tonogenesis (in some of them), and the “yi-/bi- alternation” (a sort of inverse marking) (in some of them). One challenge in understanding the literature on any language family is keeping track of language names. For most of the languages, the trend has been to refer to a language by a name or spelling that speakers prefer or one that reflects speakers’ pronunciation rather than Anglicization. Examples of this for languages discussed in this bibliography are Babine-Witsuwit’en (older name Babine), Dakelh (older name Carrier), Dene Sųɬiné or Dëne Sųɬiné (older name Chipewyan), Deg Xinag (older name Ingalik), Gwich’in (older names Kutchin, Loucheux), Tsuut’ina (older name Sarcee), Tsek’ene (older name Sekani), Dena’ina (older name Tanaina), and Navajo (older name Navaho). In the annotations I refer to the languages by the names used by the authors. Alternate spellings of Athabaskan are Athapaskan (used now mainly by Canadian linguists), Athabascan (the official spelling in Alaska since the early 1990s but not widely used), and Athapascan (in some older publications).