My notes on Athabaskan languages

[James Crippen]

On Wed, Aug 18, 2010 at 09:04, Anthony Webster <awebster at siu.edu> wrote:
> Willem and Athabaskanists,
> Thanks for your comments on the Apachean languages. What you say about the
> relations between the various Apachean languages is very much what I have
> been noticing and thinking about for awhile. Just one addition, at some
> point, the hard work of mapping the various dialects of Navajo will need to
> be done. Navajo is not homogeneous (Reichard's famous little article about
> linguistic diversity among Navajos springs to mind, as does Saville-Troike's
> work as well). Many Navajos that I have worked with can give (and enjoy
> giving) examples of various lexical and phonological diacritics that mark
> emplaced ways of speaking (i.e., "that's how they say it in Tuba" or "that's
> how they say it in Shiprock", etc.). best, akw

Thanks for bringing this up, Anthony. I have been wondering a bit
myself about Navajo dialectology. Although I know next to nothing
about the language, a population that large and spread out ought to
have some kind of relatively systematic variation. I haven’t seen
anything in the Navajo literature I’ve skimmed on any sort of
dialects, although I probably haven’t looked hard enough. Is there any
sort of even approximate list of dialects or other sorts of social
variation that I could add to the Navajo section? Whether it’s from a
published source or not, having something is better than nothing.

Same thing goes for other big languages like Dëne Sųłiné / Chipewyan.
If anyone wants to chime in with some info, feel free to post to the
list. Or if you’re shy you can email me directly.

I’ve updated my Athabaskan languages page with comments from the last
week or so. Once again:

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

Cheers,
James