Some linguists have proposed that the Na-Dene family is related to theYeniseian languages of centralSiberia, creating aDene–Yeniseian family.[2][3] However, this proposal has not been accepted by some linguists.[4]
Edward Sapir originally constructed the termNa-Dene to refer to a combined family of Athabaskan, Tlingit, and Haida (the existence of theEyak language was not known to him at the time). In his "The Na-Dene languages: A preliminary report", he describes how he arrived at the term (Sapir 1915, p. 558):
The name that I have chosen for the stock,Na-dene, may be justified by reference to no. 51 of the comparative vocabulary.Dene, in various dialectic forms, is a wide-spread Athabaskan term for "person, people"; the element*-ne (*-n,*-η) which forms part of it is an old stem for "person, people" which, as suffix or prefix, is frequently used in Athabaskan in that sense. It is cognate with H. [= Haida]na "to dwell; house" and Tl. [= Tlingit]na "people". The compound termNa-dene thus designates by means of native stems the speakers of the three languages concerned, besides continuing the use of the old termDene for the Athabaskan branch of the stock.
The southwestern division of Athabaskan is also called Southern Athabaskan orApachean, and includesNavajo and all theApache languages. Eyak was spoken by theEyak people in south-central Alaska; the last first-language speaker died in 2008.Navajo is by far the most widely spoken language of the Na-Dene family, spoken inArizona,New Mexico, and other regions of the American Southwest.
All of these languages share a highly complex prefixing verb structure in which tense and mood markers are interdigitated between subject and object agreement markers. The morphological hallmark of the family is a series of prefixes found directly before the verb root that raise or lower the transitivity of the verb word. These prefixes, traditionally known as "classifiers", derive historically from a combination of three distinct classes of morphemes and are not found in any other Native American language family.
The phoneme system contains a large number of dorsal (velar or uvular) consonants (fronting in many modern Athabaskan languages to palatals and velars, correspondingly) as well as a general absence of labialobstruents (except where /b/ has arisen from *w). In the historical phonology there is a widespread tendency, observable across many Athabaskan languages, for phonemic tonal distinctions to arise from glottal features originally found at the end of the syllable. The glottal features in question are often evident in Eyak or Tlingit. These languages are typologically unusual in containing extensive prefixation yet being SOV and postpositional, features normally associated with suffixing languages.
Proposals of deeper genealogical relations involving Athabaskan–Eyak–Tlingit
A genealogical connection between the Tlingit, Eyak and Athabaskan languages was suggested early in the 19th century, but not universally accepted until much later.Haida, with 15 fluent speakers (M. Krauss, 1995), was originally linked to Tlingit byFranz Boas in 1894. Both Haida and Tlingit were then connected to Athabaskan by Edward Sapir in 1915. Linguists such asLyle Campbell (1997)[clarification needed] today consider the evidence inconclusive. They have classified Haida as alanguage isolate. In order to emphasise the exclusion of Haida, Campbell refers to the language family asAthabaskan–Eyak–Tlingit rather thanNa-Dene. In 2010 Jeff Leer published extensive primary materials on what he callsPAET (Proto-Athabaskan–Eyak–Tlingit).
Connections between the Na-Dené family and the Siberian languages have occasionally been proposed, possibly as early as 1923.[6] As evidence has mounted thatthe Americas were populated by people who crossed the Bering Sea land bridge from Siberia, such proposals have grown more historically plausible.
The best-known of these proposals is theDené–Yeniseian languages hypothesis fromEdward Vajda and others. Under this hypothesis, the Na-Dené languages might be related to theYeniseian (or Yeniseic) languages ofSiberia, the only living representative of which is theKet language. The core motivations for the proposed family connection are homologies in verb prefixes and a systematic correspondence between the distribution of Ket tones and consonant articulations found in Athabaskan–Eyak–Tlingit.[a][7]
A link between the Na–Dene languages and Sino–Tibetan languages, known asSino–Dene, was first proposed byEdward Sapir. Around 1920, Sapir became convinced that Na–Dene was more closely related to Sino–Tibetan than to other American families.[8] He wrote a series of letters toAlfred Kroeber where he enthusiastically spoke of a connection between Na–Dene and "Indo–Chinese". In 1925, a supporting article summarizing his thoughts, albeit not written by him, entitled "The Similarities of Chinese and Indian Languages", was published in Science Supplements. The Sino–Dene hypothesis never gained foothold in theUnited States outside of Sapir's circle, though it was later revitalized by Robert Shafer (1952, 1957, 1969) andMorris Swadesh (1952, 1965).[9]Alfredo Trombetti, who was the first to propose a relationship between the Yeniseian and Na–Dene language families (1923),[10] had also independently discovered the idea of Sino–Dene (1923, 1925).[11]
Edward Vajda's Dene–Yeniseian proposal renewed interest among linguists such asGeoffrey Caveney (2014) to look into support for the Sino–Dene hypothesis. Caveney considered a link between Sino-Tibetan, Na-Dene, and Yeniseian to be plausible but did not support the hypothesis that Sino-Tibetan and Na-Dene were related to the Caucasian languages (Sino–Caucasian and Dene–Caucasian).[12]
A 2023 analysis byDavid Bradley using the standard techniques of comparative linguistics supports a distant genetic link between the Sino–Tibetan, Na–Dene, and Yeniseian language families. Bradley argues that any similarities Sino–Tibetan shares with other language families of the East Asia area such asHmong–Mien,Altaic (which is asprachbund),Austroasiatic,Kra–Dai, andAustronesian came through contact; but as there has been no recent contact between the Sino–Tibetan, Na–Dene, and Yeniseian language families, any similarities these groups share must be residual.[13]
According toJoseph Greenberg's controversial classification of the languages of Native North America, Na-Dene (including Haida) is one of the three main groups of Native languages spoken in the Americas. Contemporary supporters of Greenberg's theory, such asMerritt Ruhlen, have suggested that the Na-Dene language family represents a distinct migration of people fromAsia into the New World that occurred six to eight thousand years ago, placing it around four thousand years later than the previous migration into the Americas byAmerind speakers; this remains an unproven hypothesis.[14] Ruhlen speculates that the Na-Dene speakers may have arrived in boats, initially settling near theHaida Gwaii, now inBritish Columbia, Canada.[15]
Bouda, in various publications in the 1930s through the 1950s, described a linguistic network that (besides Yeniseian and Sino-Tibetan) also includedCaucasian, andBurushaski, some forms of which have gone by the name of Sino-Caucasian. The works of R. Bleichsteiner[16] and O.G. Tailleur,[17] the lateSergei A. Starostin[18] andSergei L. Nikolayev[19] have sought to confirm these connections. Others who have developed the hypothesis, often expanded to Dene–Caucasian, include J.D. Bengtson,[20] V. Blažek,[21]J.H. Greenberg (withM. Ruhlen),[22] and M. Ruhlen.[23]George Starostin continues his father's work in Yeniseian, Sino-Caucasian and other fields.[24] This theory is very controversial or viewed as obsolete by other linguists.[25][26][27]
Speakers of the Na-Dene languages, while mostly closely related to other North American indigenous peoples, derive around 10% of their ancestry from a Siberian source closely related toKoryaks and not found in other Native American groups[citation needed]. The contact between the ancestors of Na-Dene speakers and this Siberian group is suggested to have occurred around 9,000-5,500 years ago.[28] Theurheimat (origin point of the family) has been suggested to have been in Alaska.[29] A large southward migration of Athabaskan peoples is thought to have occurred around 1,000 years ago, resulting in the settlement of southern North America.[30]
This phonological chart shows where the listed varieties have sounds which are the same, similar, and sometimes different. The sounds shown,obstruents, are a particular class of consonants. Where similarities are found between one or more varieties, this presents at least some evidence of genetic relatedness among those varieties.
To prevent cluttering the table, phonemes in the PAET, PAE and PA columns are not asterisked.
Leer (2008, 2010) does not reconstruct the PAET affricates*/dɮ/,*/tɬ/ and*/dz/. Judging from their rarity, he assumes they may be attributable to the resolution of former consonant clusters.
In Athabaskan and Eyak, sibilants can be diminutive variants of shibilants. In Tlingit, on the other hand, shibilants might sometimes be diminutive variants of sibilants. These correspondences are in parentheses.
^The termAthabaskan–Eyak–Tlingit may be used instead ofNa-Dene when an author wishes to clarify that Haida is excluded from the family in this theory (due to disagreements about Haida's status as an isolate).
^seeVajda (2010:34) who quotes Trombetti, Alfredo. 1923.Elementi di glottologia. Bologna. pp.486, 511
^seeVajda (2010:34) who quotes Trombetti, Alfredo. 1923.Elementi di glottologia. Bologna. pp.486, 511
^Caveney, Geoffrey (2014). "Sino-Tibetan ŋ- and Na-Dene *kw- / *gw- / *xw-: 1st Person Pronouns and Lexical Cognate Sets".Journal of Chinese Linguistics.42 (2):461–487.JSTOR24774894.
^Trask, R. L. (2000).The dictionary of historical and comparative linguistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. p. 85.ISBN978-0-7486-1001-3.
^Dalby, Andrew (1998).Dictionary of Languages: The Definitive Reference to More Than 400 Languages. New York: Columbia University Press. p. 434.ISBN978-0-231-11568-1.
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