Haida related to Miwok, not Na-Dene?

Thu Jul 25 11:00:58 UTC 2013

I'm intrigued by this idea.  But what is the implication?  That Haida innovated uvulars before unstressed vowels?  What would the phonological inventory of Proto-Haida-Utian look like (or Proto-Haida-Yok-Utian, depending on your assumption about the historical split)?

Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2013 21:25:45 -0400
From: geoffreycaveney at GMAIL.COM
Subject: Re: Haida related to Miwok, not Na-Dene?
To: ATHAPBASCKAN-L at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG

I have one more observation to add regarding the comparison of Haida to Proto-Miwok. Among the strongest lexical comparisons, the following rule holds:

Where Proto-Miwok *k- occurs before a stressed vowel, Haida has a velar stop.Where Proto-Miwok *k- occurs before an unstressed vowel, Haida has a uvular stop.

Haida tl'ak'úl 'liver' ; Proto-Miwok *kýlla 'liver'
Haida skuj 'bone' ; Proto-Eastern Miwok *kýč(:)yč- 'bone'
Haida -gan 'my' ; Proto-Miwok *kánni 'I'
vs.
Haida hlGahl 'black' ; Proto-Miwok *kul... 'black'
Haida Gáal 'night' ; Proto-Miwok *kawý:l 'night'
Haida sGwáansang 'one' ; Proto-Miwok *keng:... 'one'and perhaps alsoHaida qung 'moon' ; Proto-Miwok *komé- 'moon'
Haida q'ulu: 'knee' ; Proto-Miwok *koló 'foot'
Geoffrey Caveney

On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 10:43 AM, Geoffrey Caveney <geoffreycaveney at gmail.com> wrote:

Hello,

I recently shared some observations with the Haida language list, and I would like to share them with this list as well.

I am well aware of the long-standing controversy about whether Haida is related to the Na-Dene languages or not. I agree with the current standard position that it is not -- what is especially lacking in Haida - Na-Dene comparisons are any convincing sets of correspondences in the core lexical vocabulary. But that has made me curious: if Haida is not Na-Dene, then where did it come from?

Recently I have found a surprisingly substantial set of correspondences in the core lexical vocabulary between Haida and the Miwok language of the San Francisco Bay area in California. Miwok belongs to the Utian language family, and many linguists believe it is part of a broader family called Penutian, which some believe Tsimshianic belongs to as well. But I find a much stronger set of correspondences between the Haida and Miwok core lexicon, than I do between Haida and Tsimshian or any other Penutian language, or indeed between Utian and Tsimshianic.

A correspondence that caught my attention was that between a pair of the 1st person singular pronominal forms. There is the Haida form díi, and also the Haida morpheme -gan in the alienable possessive form gyáagan 'my'. Southern Sierra Miwok has the 1st person singular suffixes -nti-, -te-, and -kan in different series that follow nominal themes. In fact -nti- and -kan occur in dialectal variation in Series 1. (See Broadbent 1964:43, online at http://www.yosemite.ca.us/library/southern_sierra_miwok_language/page_43.html.)

But it is a whole series of correspondences in the core lexical vocabulary that makes the most convincing case for Haida being related to Miwok. In particular, a substantial number of Haida forms with a uvular or velar stop in onset position correspond to Miwok forms with k- in onset position.

The Proto-Miwok and Proto-Eastern Miwok forms below are cited from the article "Comparative Miwok: A Preliminary Survey" by Broadbent and Callaghan in IJAL in 1960 (IJAL 26.4:301-316), which I thank Matt Faytak for bringing to my attention. It should be noted that 4 of the 5 Miwok languages used in the reconstruction are Eastern Miwok, so in some cases such as 'bone' I believe the Proto-Eastern Miwok form is appropriate to use, as the Lake Miwok form may be irregular or not cognate at all.

Haida tl'ak'úl 'liver' ; Proto-Miwok *kylla 'liver'

Haida skuj 'bone' ; Proto-Eastern Miwok *kyč(:)yč- 'bone'

(Lake Miwok kúlum may or may not be related at all, so I don't believe it's necessary to restrict the comparison to the limited Proto-Miwok reconstruction *ky...)

Haida -gan 'my' ; Proto-Miwok *kánni 'I'
Haida hlGahl 'black' ; Proto-Miwok *kul... 'black'

Haida Gáal 'night' ; Proto-Miwok *kawy:l 'night'Haida sGwáansang 'one' ; Proto-Miwok *keng:... 'one'

S. Haida k'aw 'cold' ; Proto-Miwok *ky(:)w(e)... 'cold'

Another possible sound correspondence is Haida /X-/ : Proto-Miwok */š-/:

Haida Xángii 'eye' ; Proto-Miwok *šynt- 'eye'

Haida Xahla 'to be startled' ; Proto-Miwok *šél... 'to be afraid'

Regarding the lack (so far) of other regular sound correspondences, it is worth noting that in Haida forms with initial velar and uvular consonants make up such a large portion of the core lexicon (I count as many as 63 of them out of the 100 terms on the basic Swadesh list) that it is going to be difficult to find any numerous examples of correspondences with other Haida sounds. The best bet is Haida /d-/ and /t-/ with Miwok /t-/, a correspondence set I am still working on.

It is curious to find so many lexical correspondences but not very many grammatical correspondences between Haida and Miwok. But borrowing is not a likely explanation given the geographical distance and lack of evidence of any contact between the two peoples. Also, I find by far the greatest amount of Haida-Miwok correspondences in the core lexicon and rather fewer correspondences in the rest of the lexicon, which points to a genetic relationship rather than borrowing.

Between Haida and Na-Dene, on the other hand, one finds more structural and typological parallels but not lexical correspondences. Perhaps there is a clue here about the history of Haida: the people could have been speakers of a Miwokan language who migrated to the Haida Gwaii islands thousands of years ago, where the population of the area spoke Tlingit or a related language. The Haida language retained its core Miwok lexicon but adopted many structural features of Tlingit/Na-Dene. Of course there must have been lexical borrowings from Tlingit, Tsimshian, and other neighboring languages as well.

The fact that the Haida people, as I understand, were a nation renowned for their prowess as seafaring warriors, is consistent with this hypothesis. If their origins were from the Miwoks of the San Francisco Bay area, they would have had to be highly skilled seafarers to migrate all the way from there to the Haida Gwaii. And to conquer and settle their new territory, they would have had to be successful warriors.

By the way, if Haida does prove to be genetically related to Miwok, it would show how spurious were all the arguments of Greenberg and Ruhlen insisting for decades that Haida is related to Na-Dene. The crude division Greenberg made in his hypothesis of language relationships in the Americas was to distinguish Eskimo-Aleut and Na-Dene from everything else, which he called Amerind. If Haida is related to Miwok, even that crude division will be wrong.

If Haida is related to Miwok, a natural question to ask is where it fits in with the other languages Miwok is related to: Miwok and Costanoan are definitely related in the Utian language family, and Yokuts is likely related, but more distantly, in the Yok-Utian family.

The evidence I am finding shows substantially more comparisons between Haida and Miwok than between Haida and Costanoan. My tentative hypothesis right now is that, surprisingly, Miwok and Haida are even more closely related than Miwok and Costanoan are. Of course the amount of borrowing in Haida would obscure the closeness of its relation with Miwok. But when it comes to the very basic core lexicon of the 50 or so terms most resistant to substitution, I find the Miwok-Haida connection is closer than the Miwok-Costanoan connection, especially when the possibility of Miwok-Costanoan borrowing and areal influence is accounted for.

I would be very interested to hear the thoughts and comments of Athapbasckan language list readers about these observations.

Geoffrey Caveney

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