Proto-Athabaskan language

Proto-Athabaskan is the reconstructed ancestor of the Athabaskan languages.

The early work on Athabaskan languages ignored the existence of phonemic tone. Father Adrien-Gabriel Morice was the first linguist to describe tone for an Athabaskan language, specifically for Carrier, in 1891. Edward Sapir's first fieldwork on Athabaskan languages was with Chasta Costa and Kato, both Pacific Coast Athabaskan languages that lack tone. He documented tone in Tlingit, a Na-Dene language, in 1914 when working with Louis Shotridge, with whom Sapir described the minimal pair /qáːt/ "crippled" and /qaːt/ "sockeye salmon". He then encountered tone in Tsuut'ina (Sarcee) and thus concluded that Proto-Athabaskan must be reconstructed as a tonal language, although he came across apparently contradictory findings in Gwich'in, Deg Hit'an, and Navajo. Sapir and his student, Li Fang-Kuei, investigated tone in several other Athabaskan languages, including Mattole, Wailaki, Hupa, Dëne Sųłiné (Chipewyan), and Hare. They discovered that tone in Athabaskan languages did correspond, but in an unexpected way; different languages had seemingly opposite tones for lexical items that were clearly cognate.^[1]

Both Li and Harry Hoijer harbored suspicions that Proto-Athabaskan lacked tone entirely. In 1964, Michael E. Krauss published a paper in the International Journal of American Linguistics where he argued that Proto-Athabaskan instead had glottalization contrasts which developed independently into tones in the daughter languages or in some cases were lost.^[2] This argument was strengthened by data from the related Eyak which had a system of glottal modifications on vowels that corresponded well to Athabaskan tones, and furthermore by Jeff Leer's discovery of the now-extinct Tongass dialect of Tlingit, which had a system closely corresponding to that of Eyak.

The reconstruction of Proto-Athabaskan phonology is still under active debate. This section attempts to summarize the less controversial parts of the Proto-Athabaskan sound system.

Athabaskanists tend to use an Americanist phonetic notation system rather than IPA. Although some Athabaskanists prefer IPA symbols today, the Americanist symbols are still in common use for descriptions of Proto-Athabaskan and in comparisons between members of the family. In the tables in this section, the proto-phonemes are given in their conventional Athabaskanist forms with IPA equivalents following in square brackets.

The symbols conventionally used to represent voiced stops and affricates (e.g. ⟨d dz⟩) are actually used in the Athabaskan literature to represent unaspirated stops and affricates (i.e., /t ts/). This convention is also found in Athabaskan orthographies since true voiced stops and affricates are rare in the family, and unknown in the proto-language.

Since Americanist phonetic notation is not formally standardized, there are sometimes both historic and modern symbols for the same sounds. In the following tables, the older symbols are given first with newer symbols following. Republication of older materials may preserve older symbols for accuracy, e.g. Krauss 2005, which was previously an unpublished manuscript dating from 1979.^[3]

The traditional reconstruction of the Proto-Athabaskan sound system consists of 45 consonants, as detailed in the following table.^[4][5][6][7]

The fricative sound in the first person singular pronoun in Proto-Athabaskan has uncertain phonetic reconstruction, and is represented variously as *$^[8][9] or *šʸ.^[10] In Athabaskan languages, it usually has a reflex of /ʃ/, but in Eyak it appears as /x/ and in Tlingit as /χ/. However, in Kwalhioqua-Tlatskanai, it seems to have been /x/ in at least some forms of the first person subject verb prefix.^[8] It does not correspond well with other fricatives, a situation that led Krauss to consider it as unique. This proto-phoneme is not given in the table above, but is assumed to be a part of the Proto-Athabaskan inventory.

A newer reconstruction by Leer constitutes a reorganization of the system. Velars are reinterpreted as palatals, labialized postalveolar affricates are reinterpreted as retroflex consonants, and other labialized consonants are removed.^[10] Leer also adopted the argument by Keren Rice^[11] that there was no need to distinguish between *y and *žʸ.^[10] The resulting system is somewhat simpler than the traditional one, with 8 fewer phonemes.

Leer has argued for an asymmetric lack of retroflex fricatives in the Proto-Athabaskan, saying that "PA lacked distinctively reflexed *šʳ and *žʳ as opposed to plain *š and *ž".^[10] Although Leer did not include *ʔ and *h in his list of reconstructed consonants, those two proto-phonemes nevertheless appear in a variety of reconstructions in the same article.

Leer also offered a vowel system consisting of four long or full vowels and three short or reduced vowels which are more centralized.^[10]

The following table is adapted from Leer 2005 and shows the vowel correspondences between Proto-Athabaskan and the better documented Athabaskan languages.^[12]

Athabaskan languages often share clear cognates that nonetheless appear to have opposite tones,^[1] as demonstrated below; the first three languages shown have low tone where the next three have high tone in the word for "head," while the opposite is true with the word for "fish." The last three languages lack tone entirely.

Research has concluded that Proto-Athabaskan had a system of glottal modifications on the vowel instead of tone, much like those that existed in Eyak and in the Tongass dialect of Tlingit. The oppositions in tonal distribution are explained as an ahistorical division in Athabaskan languages whereby most languages became either "high-marked" or "low-marked" for tone. Thus, a syllable's tone in an Athabaskan language depends on the type of markedness it demonstrates and the Proto-Athabaskan reconstruction of the morpheme.

Many Athabaskan languages show properties of both marked states.^[13] However, in general, high-marked languages have high tone where low-marked languages have low tone, and vice versa.^[14] The terminology also has synchronic basis, as high-marked languages often only specify a high tone in their phonology while low-marked languages only specify a low tone.^[15]

The following table shows how the syllable codas of Proto-Athabaskan (PA) and the internal reconstruction of Pre-Proto-Athabaskan (PPA) correspond with those of the high-marked and low-marked languages.^[14]

In the above table, the symbol v represents a monomoraic reduced vowel, the VV represents a bimoraic full vowel, and the V a monomoraic full vowel in a syllable nucleus whose second mora is '.^[16] The R represents a sonorant, the S a fricative, the T a stop or affricate, and the ' a glottalization of the preceding segment.

Nearly all languages that developed tone have also lost syllable-final ejectivity, retaining only the glottalized sonorants and bare glottal stops in that position. However, syllable-initial ejective stops and affricates are generally retained.

Because obvious similarities in morphology are prevalent throughout all of the languages in the Athabaskan family, Proto-Athabaskan has an extensive reconstructed proto-morphology. Like all Athabaskan languages, it is morphologically complex.

The actual verb template of Proto-Athabaskan has not been reconstructed yet, as noted by Edward Vajda.^[17] In fact, Krauss notes that one morpheme present across multiple languages, the distributive, cannot be reconstructed for Proto-Athabaskan.^[18] Keren Rice, in her book Morpheme order and semantic scope, presented a general template for the order of verb elements, taking into account cross-language diversity and divergence.^[19]

Kibrik and Hoijer also proposed templates which generalized across a number of Athabaskan languages.^[22][23] Hoijer's proposal is missing several elements which were described in detail later, but Kibrik's is not terribly different from Rice's.

Kibrik only gives the zones rather than individual positions where the distinction matters. In addition, Kibrik did not give the domains and boundaries which have been added here for comparison.

A major distinction between the Kibrik and Rice versions is in the terminology, with Kibrik's "Standard Average Athabaskan" maintaining much of the traditional Athabaskanist terminology – still widely used – but Rice changing in favor of aspectual descriptions found in wider semantic and typological literature. The terminology in comparison:

• Rice "viewpoint aspect" = conventional "mode"^[19]
• Rice "situation aspect" = conventional "conjugation"^[19]
• Rice "subsituation aspect" ≈ Kibrik's "inceptive"^[19]

In 1989, Kari offered a rigorous foundation for the position class system that makes up the verb template in Athabaskan languages. He defined a few terms and resurrected others which have since become standard in Athabaskanist literature.^[24]

• Position: a point or slot the verb template which hosts some number of morphemes which never cooccur. Some affixes may occur in multiple positions which are usually adjacent, but most morphemes are found in a single position. Kari gives the Ahtna ɣo- mode prefix and the s- qualifier as examples of multipositional morphemes.^[25]
  • Floating position: a position which seems to move around depending on the appearance or lack of other morphemes in the verb. Kari cites the Ahtna third person plural subject pronominal q- as occurring in three different locations "under highly constrained conditions".^[25]
• Zone: a group of positions which are adjacent and semantically similar. Some previous descriptions of "position-subposition" are zones with positions within them.^[25] The qualifiers are a type of zone, being made of at least two positions. The description by Krauss and Leer of the classifier as a three-morpheme sequence in Proto-Athabaskan^[26][27] technically makes the classifier a zone, but it is monomorphemic and often treated like a single position in the analysis of documented languages. Tlingit has a classifier approaching a zone although it is morphologically a single unit, and Eyak has a true classifier zone with two phonologically separate prefixes.
• Domain: an area of zones and positions which is grouped together as a phonological unit.
  • Stem domain: a domain including the verb root and suffixes, and usually including the classifier.
  • Conjunct domain: a domain spanning from the classifier (may or may not be included) leftward to the object prefixes.
  • Disjunct domain: a domain spanning from the incorporated nouns to the preverbs, and not including any bound phrases that are considered to be word-external.
• Boundary: a morphological division between zones or domains. Each boundary has an associated conventional symbol. Not all researchers describe all the boundaries for every language, and it is not clear that there is total agreement on the existence of all boundaries.
  • Disjunct boundary (#): the boundary between the disjunct and conjunct domains. Found in most Athabaskan descriptions.
  • Qualifier-pronominal boundary (=/%): the boundary between the qualifiers and the outer pronominals (3 subjects, objects, etc.). Kari proposed using = but since that symbol is often used for clitics, many authors^[19] have used % instead.
  • Conjugation-qualifier boundary (%): the boundary between the qualifiers and the conjugation prefixes. Not commonly used, especially with the loss of the % symbol to the qualifier-pronominal boundary.
  • Stem boundary ([): the boundary between the inner pronominals (1 and 2 subject) and the classifier.

Kari uses + to indicate morpheme boundaries.^[24] This convention has been adopted by some Athabaskanists, but many others use the more common – instead. Another innovation from Kari is the use of angle brackets to mark epenthetic segments, a convention which is not often used even by Kari himself.

The classifier is a verb prefix that occurs in all Athabaskan languages as well as the Tlingit and Eyak languages. It is, as Leer puts it, "the hallmark of Na-Dene languages".^[28] The classifier is found in no other language family, although may be present in the Yeniseian family per Vajda.^[29] It is an obligatory prefix such that verbs do not exist without the classifier. Its function varies little from language to language, serving as an indicator of voice and valence for the verb.

The name "classifier" implies a classificatory function that is not obvious. Franz Boas first described a classifier for Tlingit, saying "it is fairly clear that the primary function of these elements is a classificatory one",^[30] a not inaccurate statement given that it does enter into the classificatory verb system. Previously Edward Sapir had noted it in his seminal essay on the Na-Dene family, calling it a "'third modal element'".^[31] He described it as indicating "such notions as transitive, intransitive, and passive" (id.), thus having voice and valency related functions. Once it was realized that the Tlingit and Athabaskan morphemes were functionally similar, Boas's name for the Tlingit form was extended to the Athabaskan family. However, the classifier has only some vestiges of a classificatory function in most Athabaskan languages, so in this family the name is unsuited.

Because of the confusion that occurs from the use of the term "classifier", there have been a number of proposals for replacement terms. Andrej Kibrik has used the term "transitivity indicator" with the gloss abbreviation TI,^[32][33] Keren Rice has used "voice/valence prefix" abbreviated V/V,^[19] and for Tlingit, Constance Naish and Gillian Story used "extensor".^[34] None of these alternatives has gained acceptance in the Athabaskan community, and Jeff Leer describes this situation:^[35]

A better term would be something like "valentizers", since their principal function is to indicate the valence of the verb ... However, since the name classifier is one of the few grammatical labels sanctioned by common use among Athabaskanists, it is probably not worth the trouble to try to change it.

Jeff Leer offers an early reconstruction of the Proto-Athabaskan classifier.^[35] It has two dimensions that are both phonological and functional. One dimension is the "series", which surfaces as the presence or absence of a lateral fricative (⟨ɬ⟩). The other dimension is the "D-component", surfacing as the presence or absence of an alveolar stop.

In 2008 Leer gave a more complex reconstruction, which takes into account correspondences with the Proto-Na-Dene yi- prefix.^[36] This surfaces as an additional "I-component", which was represented in Proto-Athabaskan as the presence or absence of a palatal nasal.^[37]

• Dené–Yeniseian languages

• Thompson, Chad (1984). "Athabaskan Languages and the Schools: A Handbook for Teachers". Juneau: Alaska Native Language Center. Retrieved 2 July 2020.
• Leer, Jeff (March 17, 1992). "Na-La-Dene cognate sets". Alaska Native Language Archive. CA965L1992b.
• Leer, Jeff (1996). "Comparative Athabaskan Lexicon". Alaska Native Language Archive. CA965L1996a.
• Nikolaev, Sergei (March 20–22, 2013). Na-Dene reconstruction: state of the art (PDF). Comparative-Historical Linguistics of the XXIst Century: Issues and Perspectives. Institute for Oriental and Classical Studies, Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow.

• Pan-Dene Comparative Lexicon (PanDeneComPlex; formerly the Pan-Athapaskan Comparative Lexicon Archived 2021-06-20 at the Wayback Machine)
• Comparative Athabaskan Lexicon by Jeff Leer (University of Alaska Fairbanks)