The Creation of Narrative Space: The Directional System of Upper Tanana

• Main Author: Brucks, Caleb Donald
• Other Authors: Lovick, Olga, Kuehling, Susanne, van Eijk, Jan, Holton, Gary
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina 2015
• Subjects: Athabascan
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10294/6526; http://ourspace.uregina.ca/bitstream/handle/10294/6526/Brucks_Caleb_200286061_SCMA_INTD_Fall2015l.pdf

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Special Case Master of Arts Interdisciplinary, University of Regina. vii, 142 p. This thesis shows how one portion of Upper Tanana Athabascan spatial language, the directionals, is used by storytellers to create detailed maps and descriptions of story settings. Additionally, this thesis also shows how the storytellers of Northway and Tetlin are able to use their intimate knowledge of the landscape to pick frames-of-reference and uses of directionals which are best suited to describe a narrative episode. That is, directionals may be used to both describe the immediate environment of a story—or the motion or orientation of objects in the surroundings—or to inform the audience of characters headings or locations throughout the whole valley. A subset of the Upper Tanana directional system is a lexical class of directionals adverbs anchored to rivers which create an absolute system of direction described as an ‘intermediate absolute landmark’ system (Levinson 2003:91). These Athabascan ‘riverine directionals’ are commonly reported to be abstracted from a major river, the Tanana River in this instance, in a series of non-overlapping regions. Via an analysis of spatial forms in Northway and Tetlin narratives, however, this thesis shows that Upper Tanana riverine directionals are abstracted from more than one river in the valley and thus the system can be divided into a set of smaller zones—which I term a ‘secondary riverine layer’—enclosed within the larger regional one. This adds another level of precision to storytellers already robust repertoire of spatially descriptive constructions used to describe narrative spaces. While substantial research on Athabascan directionals, and their role in narrative, has already been accomplished, descriptions of the Upper Tanana directional system are sorely lacking. Thus, this thesis looks at the linguistic form and function of the system in the ...