Received and Not-So-Received Wisdom about Athapaskan Linguistics for Archaeologists Sally Rice University of Alberta SAA 2008 Vancouver, BA Ways of Becoming: Dynamic Processes in the Creation of Athapaskan Identities and Landscapes

Received and Not-So-Received Wisdom about Athapaskan Linguistics for Archaeologists Typological Overview Facts of Lexical Life In Pursuit of Cognates and Calques (polysynthesism) (cognates) aspects of the languages that appeal to linguists vs. linguistic clues that are of use to archaeologists and anthropologists

Received and Not-So-Received Wisdom about Athapaskan Linguistics for Archaeologists Typological Overview ~30 extant languages very large & complex sound system “polysynthetic” [m-m-m-m-m] verb somewhat fusional [m-m-mnmn-m] verb verb = an array of prefixes + final stem head final, head marking [S O V, o..s..V] a classificatory verb system few POS categories: V, N, particle small stem inventory (< 1300) verb heavy, noun light little lexical borrowing

Received and Not-So-Received Wisdom about Athapaskan Linguistics for Archaeologists Typological Overview ~30 extant languages very large & complex sound system “polysynthetic” [m-m-m-m-m] verb somewhat fusional [m-m-mnmn-m] verb verb = an array of prefixes + final stem head final, head marking [S O V, o..s..V] a classificatory verb system few POS categories: V, N, particle small stem inventory (< 1300) verb heavy, noun light little lexical borrowing

Received and Not-So-Received Wisdom about Athapaskan Linguistics for Archaeologists Typological Overview ~30 extant languages very large & complex sound system “polysynthetic” [m-m-m-m-m] verb somewhat fusional [m-m-mnmn-m] verb verb = an array of prefixes + final stem head final, head marking [S O V, o..s..V] a classificatory verb system few POS categories: V, N, particle small stem inventory (< 1300) verb heavy, noun light little lexical borrowing

Received and Not-So-Received Wisdom about Athapaskan Linguistics for Archaeologists Typological Overview ~30 extant languages very large & complex sound system “polysynthetic” [m-m-m-m-m] verb somewhat fusional [m-m-mnmn-m] verb verb = an array of prefixes + final stem head final, head marking [S O V, o..s..V] a classificatory verb system few POS categories: V, N, particle small stem inventory (< 1300) verb heavy, noun light little lexical borrowing

Received and Not-So-Received Wisdom about Athapaskan Linguistics for Archaeologists Typological Overview ~30 extant languages very large & complex sound system “polysynthetic” [m-m-m-m-m] verb somewhat fusional [m-m-mnmn-m] verb verb = an array of prefixes + final stem head final, head marking [S O V, o..s..V] a classificatory verb system few POS categories: V, N, particle small stem inventory (< 1300) verb heavy, noun light little lexical borrowing

Received and Not-So-Received Wisdom about Athapaskan Linguistics for Archaeologists Typological Overview ~30 extant languages very large & complex sound system “polysynthetic” [m-m-m-m-m] verb somewhat fusional [m-m-mnmn-m] verb verb = an array of prefixes + final stem head final, head marking [S O V, o..s..V] a classificatory verb system few POS categories: V, N, particle small stem inventory (< 1300) verb heavy, noun light little lexical borrowing

Received and Not-So-Received Wisdom about Athapaskan Linguistics for Archaeologists Typological Overview ~30 extant languages very large & complex sound system “polysynthetic” [m-m-m-m-m] verb somewhat fusional [m-m-mnmn-m] verb verb = an array of prefixes + final stem head final, head marking [S O V, o..s..V] a classificatory verb system few POS categories: Vs, Ns, particles small stem inventory (< 1300) verb heavy, noun light little lexical borrowing

Received and Not-So-Received Wisdom about Athapaskan Linguistics for Archaeologists Typological Overview ~30 extant languages very large & complex sound system “polysynthetic” [m-m-m-m-m] verb somewhat fusional [m-m-mnmn-m] verb verb = an array of prefixes + final stem head final, head marking [S O V, o..s..V] a classificatory verb system few POS categories: V, N, particle small stem inventory (< 1300) verb heavy, noun light little lexical borrowing

Received and Not-So-Received Wisdom about Athapaskan Linguistics for Archaeologists Typological Overview ~30 extant languages very large & complex sound system “polysynthetic” [m-m-m-m-m] verb somewhat fusional [m-m-mnmn-m] verb verb = an array of prefixes + final stem head final, head marking [S O V, o..s..V] a classificatory verb system few POS categories: V, N, particle small stem inventory (< 1300) verb heavy, noun light little lexical borrowing

Received and Not-So-Received Wisdom about Athapaskan Linguistics for Archaeologists Typological Overview Facts of Lexical Life small stem inventory (< 1300) verb heavy, noun light little lexical borrowing why cognates are hard to find

Received and Not-So-Received Wisdom about Athapaskan Linguistics for Archaeologists Typological Overview Facts of Lexical Life small stem inventory (< 1300) verb heavy, noun light little lexical borrowing reliance on endolexicon suppletion redeployment vagueness, polysemy figurativity, noncompositionality

Received and Not-So-Received Wisdom about Athapaskan Linguistics for Archaeologists Typological Overview Facts of Lexical Life reliance on endolexicon

Received and Not-So-Received Wisdom about Athapaskan Linguistics for Archaeologists Typological Overview Facts of Lexical Life suppletion

Received and Not-So-Received Wisdom about Athapaskan Linguistics for Archaeologists Typological Overview Facts of Lexical Life redeployment

Received and Not-So-Received Wisdom about Athapaskan Linguistics for Archaeologists Typological Overview Facts of Lexical Life redeployment

Received and Not-So-Received Wisdom about Athapaskan Linguistics for Archaeologists Typological Overview Facts of Lexical Life redeployment

Received and Not-So-Received Wisdom about Athapaskan Linguistics for Archaeologists redeployment (and stem variation) Typological Overview Facts of Lexical Life

Received and Not-So-Received Wisdom about Athapaskan Linguistics for Archaeologists Typological Overview Facts of Lexical Life redeployment

Received and Not-So-Received Wisdom about Athapaskan Linguistics for Archaeologists Typological Overview Facts of Lexical Life vagueness, polysemy

Received and Not-So-Received Wisdom about Athapaskan Linguistics for Archaeologists polysemy Typological Overview Facts of Lexical Life

Received and Not-So-Received Wisdom about Athapaskan Linguistics for Archaeologists Typological Overview Facts of Lexical Life figurativity

Received and Not-So-Received Wisdom about Athapaskan Linguistics for Archaeologists Typological Overview Facts of Lexical Life non-compositionality

Received and Not-So-Received Wisdom about Athapaskan Linguistics for Archaeologists Typological Overview Facts of Lexical Life In Pursuit of Cognates and Calques Krauss (1969), Krauss & Leer (1981) 29 languages (µ < 10) 270 reconstructed forms / cognate “sets” focus on Na-Dene comparison and PA reconstruction Cook (2004) 7 languages 37 cognate sets focus on Apachean and Northern relationships

Received and Not-So-Received Wisdom about Athapaskan Linguistics for Archaeologists Typological Overview Facts of Lexical Life In Pursuit of Cognates and Calques Cook (2004)

Received and Not-So-Received Wisdom about Athapaskan Linguistics for Archaeologists Typological Overview Facts of Lexical Life In Pursuit of Cognates and Calques Cook (2004)

Received and Not-So-Received Wisdom about Athapaskan Linguistics for Archaeologists Typological Overview Facts of Lexical Life In Pursuit of Cognates and Calques Cook (2004)

Received and Not-So-Received Wisdom about Athapaskan Linguistics for Archaeologists Typological Overview Facts of Lexical Life In Pursuit of Cognates and Calques shrinking linguistic evidence vs. increasing physical evidence

Received and Not-So-Received Wisdom about Athapaskan Linguistics for Archaeologists Typological Overview Facts of Lexical Life In Pursuit of Cognates and Calques larger and less cherry-picked cognate inventory systematic and culturally informed semantic field analysis new sound recordings and transcriptions of relevant items digitized data, searchable database

Received and Not-So-Received Wisdom about Athapaskan Linguistics for Archaeologists Typological Overview Facts of Lexical Life In Pursuit of Cognates and Calques

Masi chok! ualberta.ca...and colleagues and research assistants: Tom Cook Greg Kondrak Stephanie Ball-Heming Jack Ives Eric Zhang & TAPoR Special thanks to the following speakers... Valerie Wood John Janvier Bruce Starlight Mary Koyina-Richardson Andy Norwegian Maureen Olsen