Western Apache, a Southern Athabaskan Language
Abstract Western Apache belongs to the Southern or Apachean branch of the Athabaskan language family, (Nadene phylum) and is spoken by ca. 6,000 people in central and eastern Arizona, USA. Since there are very few children acquiring the language, it is endangered. The Western Apache noun word is mor...
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| Format: | Book Part |
| Language: | English |
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Oxford University Press
2017
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| Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199683208.013.29 https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/40413/chapter/347386270 |
| Summary: | Abstract Western Apache belongs to the Southern or Apachean branch of the Athabaskan language family, (Nadene phylum) and is spoken by ca. 6,000 people in central and eastern Arizona, USA. Since there are very few children acquiring the language, it is endangered. The Western Apache noun word is morphologically simple, but the verb word is unusually complex. It can be characterized morphologically by what Sapir called “interrupted synthesis”, that is, a complex interdigitation of functionally diverse prefixal elements: inflectional prefixes, derivational prefixes, and thematic prefixes. Furthermore, the Athabaskan polysynthetic word is also characterized by extensive fusion or contraction of short prefix elements, prefix slippage, and haplology. As a result, the Athabaskan verb word is often between two and four syllables long, which is quite short when compared to words in more “orthodox” polysynthetic language families (Woodbury, Chapter 30, this volume) such as Eskimo-Aleut, Chukotko-Kamchatkan, and Wakashan. |
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