Eskimo-Aleut:
Yupik, Inuktitut... (Arctic regions)
Algic: Cree… (Cental and Eastern Canada)
Mosan: Nootka, Salish… (Western Canada, Pacific northwest)
Hokan-Siouxan: Lakhota… (Central USA)
Aztec-Tanoan: Nahuatl… (South America)
Na-Dené: Navajo... (Southwest)
1.2 Long-range comparison (Greenberg, Ruhlen, Starostin)
Greenberg (Language in the Americas, 1997): 3 families arriving in three separate migrations from Siberia to Alaska via Bering strait/land bridge:
[2] Na-Dené
(from 6-7000 BP)
/
| \
? Haida Tlingit Athabaskan-Eyak
(isolate?)
/
\
Athabaskan Eyak (extinct c. 1992)
(Navajo, Apache...)
[3] Amerind (from 12-14,000 BP or earlier):: all native American languages
except Na-Dené and Eskimo-Aleut (!)
1.2.1 Evidence for the Amerind family
| Personal
pronouns: |
Sahaptin
(Oregon) |
Wintu
(California) |
Pipil
(Mexico) |
| 1 n- | in | ni | nu- (noun prefix) |
| 2 m- | im | ma: | mu- (noun prefix) |
Kinship terms: Proto-Amerind *T’A?NA ‘child, sibling’ (t’ = glottalic
stop)
Compare Nootka t’an’a “child”, Tsimshian
luk-taen
“grandchild”, Cheyenne tatan- “older brother”,
Coeur D'Alene tune “niece”, Miskito tuk-ytan
“child, boy”, “older brother”, Atoroi dan “baby, son”
1.2.2 Na-Dené: distant relationships with language families of Eurasia?
The Dené-Caucasian hypothesis
Dené-Caucasian
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _|_______________
|
|
|
|
?N.Caucasian ?Sino-Tibetan Yeniseian
Na-Dené
(Ket) (Navajo, etc)
Evidence linking Ket (Siberia) with Athabaskan and Tlingit (Canada):
SOV: Athabaskan languages (Northwestern Canada,
Southwestern USA)
VSO, VOS: Wakashan languages (British Columbia),
Mayan languages (Guatemala)
OVS: Carib languages (e.g. Hixkaryana, Brazil)
Panare: pi? kokampö unkï?
child washes woman
"The woman washes
the child"
Eyak: extinct in 1990s (a possible missing link in Dené-Caucasian)
Catawba: extinct 1996 (last spoken by “Red Thundercloud”)
Yurok: < 10 speakers in California
Squamish: < 20 speakers in British Columbia, Canada
Cahuilla: c.20 speakers (Southern California; replaced by Apache in
film Geronimo)
Lakhota: spoken on reservations in South Dakota (used in film Dances
with Wolves)
3.2 Central America
Speakers of native American languages (1973 census):
Mexico: 3.1 million (6.5%)
Guatemala: 2.2 Million (43%)
3.3. South America
Quechua: 7 million speakers in Argentina, Bolivia,
Ecuador, Peru
Guarani: 3 million speakers; official language (with
Spanish) in Paraguay; also spoken in Brazil, Argentina
3.4 Rescuing endangered languages:
Use as code by US army in World War II
Navajo as an SOV language (like Japanese): postposition after noun
[[ 'éé'
biih PP ] náásdzá VP]
clothing into
I-got-back
'I got back into (my) clothes'
Navajo as a head-marking language (unlike Japanese): possessive relationship marked on head noun
[chidí [bi-jáád]]
[[kuruma-no] sharin]
car
its-leg
car - POSS wheel
'The wheel of a car'
'the wheel of a car'
Navajo songs (recorded at Canyon de Chelly, Arizona, 1975)
1. The potato song: Bilaga’ana Ni’masiitsoh [track 6]
A white man planted some big potatoes
When he saw the white blossoms he said 'Hallo, Jaani!'
(Ja'ani = Navajo person)
2. Moccasin song: a squaw dance about “a husband making pretty moccasins for his wife to go walking” [6]
3. Shi’naasha’ ("I Am Going"): composed when the Navajos were released from internment to return to their homeland in 1868 [6]
Ho’zho’ni’ “beauty”
4. K’adnikini’ya’ “I’m leaving”: ceremonial song to close the last night of the Squaw Dance [6]
Hozhon’go “beautiful, holy”
5. Bluebird song [9]
Bluebird said to me, 'get up, my grandchild. It is
dawn', it said to me.