My notes on Athabaskan languages

[Andrej A. Kibrik]

Hi James,

I enjoyed your site very much. I looked up the Athabaskan languages 
information, and also the page about salmon. Great job!

I am not sure, but to my ear people in Alaska pronounce Kuskokwim with the 
stress on the final syllable. Or maybe it is just a secondary stress, I am 
not sure

As for the genealogy, I doubt that Upper Kuskokwim can be closer to Tutchone 
than to Koyukon, as the tree suggests. UK and Koyukon are really similar. I 
don't know anything about Tutchone, but it should be a lot more different, 
just because of the distance and no contacts for centuries.

I was looking at some of Gary Holton's materials of Tanacross, and it looks 
to me far more distant from UK than Koyukon. However, I heard both from 
Michael Krauss and from native speakers that Lower Tanana is the closest to 
UK. I can neither confirm or refute this, as LT materials are not as 
accessible as Koyukon.

Next week I will be visiting, for the first time, in the Tlingit country - 
there will be a Russian America conference in Sitka. Is that where you are 
from originally?

Best

Andrej



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "James Crippen" <jcrippen at GMAIL.COM>
To: <ATHAPBASCKAN-L at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>
Sent: Thursday, August 05, 2010 4:04 AM
Subject: My notes on Athabaskan languages


I’ve started to put my notes on Athabaskan languages online. The main page 
is at

http://drangle.com/~james/athabaskan/athabaskan-family.html

I would appreciate comments, either sent to me personally or here on
the list. Please remember that I’m not aiming for consensus, but
I do intend to be somewhat ecumenical. I would especially appreciate
information like the indigenous language names, alternate names, and
so forth. If I’ve missed a language let me know what it is and where
to put it, and how to pronounce its name in English. Also note that
it’s not finished, I got tired of doing the conversion by the time I
got through the Northern languages, so it’s still spotty below that,
but soon to be fixed.

Feel free to explore the rest of my site too.

Cheers,
James