Tlingit language
Tlingit is an endangered language indigenous to Southeast Alaska and Western Canada spoken by the Tlingit people that forms an independent branch of the Na-Dene language family. Although the number of speakers is declining, extensive effort is being put into revitalization programs in Southeast Alaska to revive and preserve the language.
Missionaries of the Russian Orthodox Church were the first to develop a written version of Tlingit by using the Cyrillic script. After the Alaska Purchase, Tlingit language use was suppressed by the United States government, though preservation programs were introduced beginning in the 20th century. Today, Tlingit is spoken natively by perhaps only 100 elders.
Tlingit's placement in the Na-Dene family has provoked much debate over the last century, with most scholars now considering it to form a separate branch in the phylum, the other being Eyak-Athabaskan. Tlingit has also attracted interest due to its unusual phonology, especially compared to Indo-European languages, and its morphological complexity.
History
The early history of Tlingit is poorly known, mostly because there was no written record until Robert de Lamanon collected numerals and five nouns during the La Pérouse expedition in 1786. The language appears to have spread northward from the Ketchikan–Saxman area towards Icy Bay since certain conservative features are reduced gradually from south to north. In fact, Tlingit northerly expansion into Eyak and Athabaskan territories was still taking place in recorded times.The first Tlingit orthography and literacy program were created by the Russian Orthodox church during the Russian colonization of Alaska. However, following the 1867 purchase of Alaska by the United States, native languages were suppressed in favor of English language homogeneity and assimilation. It was not until the mid-20th century that the language literacy movement would regain ground, but the total number of speakers continued to decline. Beginning in the late-20th century, revitalization and preservation programs were also introduced.
Classification
Tlingit is currently classified as a distinct and separate branch of Na-Dene, an indigenous language family of North America. In 1915, Edward Sapir argued for its inclusion in the Na-Dene family, a claim that was subsequently debated by Franz Boas, P.E. Goddard, and many other prominent linguists of the time. Its inclusion in the family has proven controversial due to lack of common vocabulary despite shared phonological and grammatical features.Studies in the late 20th century by Heinz-Jürgen Pinnow and Michael E. Krauss showed a strong connection to Eyak and hence to the Athabaskan languages, thus essentially proving the Na-Dene family as including Tlingit.
Sapir initially proposed a connection between Tlingit and Haida, but the debate over Na-Dene gradually excluded Haida from the discussion. Haida is now considered an isolate, with some borrowing from its long proximity with Tlingit. However, some contemporary linguists still hold that Haida is part of the Na-Dene family, such as John Enrico, a specialist in Haida.
The first proposal linking Na-Dene and thus Tlingit to the Yeniseian languages of Siberia was made by Italian linguist Alfredo Trombetti in 1923. In the early 2000s, Edward Vajda presented empirical evidence for the existence of this super family, Dene–Yeniseian. Although support for the hypothesis has not been universal, it has been called "the first demonstration of a plausible genealogical link between languages of Eurasia and languages of the Americas".
Borrowing
Historically, Tlingit has borrowed from Russian, Chinook Jargon, and English. It seems likely that Tlingit borrowed from neighboring languages such as Haida and [Coast Coast Tsimshian language|Tsimshian language|Tsimshian] before the start of the historical record, but to what extent is unknown.Geographic distribution
The Tlingit language was traditionally spoken from near the mouth of the Copper River at Controller Bay down the open coast of the Gulf of Alaska and throughout almost all of the islands of the Alexander Archipelago in Southeast Alaska. It is characterized by about four distinct dialects, but they are mostly mutually intelligible, indicating relatively recent territorial expansion. Almost all of the area where the Tlingit language is endemic is contained within the modern borders of Alaska. The exception is an area known as "Inland Tlingit" that extends up the Taku River and into northern British Columbia and the Yukon around Atlin Lake and Teslin Lake, as well as around Tagish Lake near the Chilkoot Trail. There is a small group of speakers in Washington as well.Use and revitalization efforts
Tlingit is classified as critically endangered by UNESCO. In 2007, Golla reported a maximum population of 500 speakers in Alaska, and an additional 185 in Canada. The First Peoples' Cultural Council reported 2 fluent speakers in British Columbia out of an ethnic population of 400.Tlingit courses are available at the University of Alaska Southeast, taught in part by Lance Twitchell. In 2022, the university began offering these classes for free. In April 2014, Alaska HB 216 recognized Tlingit as an official language of Alaska, lending support to language revitalization.
Dialects
Tlingit is divided into roughly four major dialects, all of which are essentially mutually intelligible:- The Northern dialect is spoken in a vast area south from Yakutat and Lituya Bay to Angoon and Sitka, also covering the area around Hoonah and Juneau.
- * The Inland Tlingit dialect, a subdialect of Northern, is spoken in Canada around Atlin Lake and Teslin Lake.
- The Transitional dialect, having features "in-between" those of the Northern and Southern dialects, was historically spoken in and around Kake, and Wrangell.
- The Southern subdialects of Sanya and Heinya are spoken from Sumner Strait south to the Alaska-Canada border, excepting the southern end of Prince of Wales Island, which is the land of the Kaigani Haida.Tongass Tlingit, the most divergent of the dialects, was once spoken south of Ketchikan to the Portland Canal, but recently died with its last speakers in the 1990s.
The tone values in two-tone dialects can be predicted in some cases from the three-tone values but not the reverse. Earlier, it was hypothesized that the three-tone dialects were older and that the two-tone dialects evolved from them. However, Jeff Leer's discovery of the Tongass dialect in the late 1970s has shown that the Tongass vowel system is adequate to predict the tonal features all the other dialects, but that none of the tonal dialects could be used to predict vocalic feature distribution in Tongass Tlingit. Thus, Tongass Tlingit is the most conservative of the various dialects of Tlingit, preserving contrasts which have been lost in the other dialects.
The fading and glottalized vowels in Tongass Tlingit have also been compared with similar systems in the Coast Tsimshian dialect, which has led some to believe that the Tongass system was inherited from Coast Tsimshian. However, the Tongass system also shows remarkable similarity to the Eyak system, suggesting that Tongass retained features from Proto-Na-Dene which instead developed into tonal systems in most of the Athabaskan languages and the other dialects of Tlingit.
Phonology
Tlingit has a complex phonological system compared to Indo-European languages such as English or Spanish. It has an almost complete series of ejective consonants accompanying its stop, fricative, and affricate consonants. The only missing consonant in the Tlingit ejective series is. The phonology is also typologically unusual because it has several laterals but no voiced nor labials in most dialects, except for and in recent English loanwords.Consonants
The consonants in the table are given in the IPA, with the popular orthography equivalents in brackets. Dialectal, obsolete, and marginal consonants are given in parentheses.Phonetic analysis shows that all Tlingit word final non-ejective stops are unaspirated. This analysis also has phonological basis, as words with final non-ejective stops that are suffixed with vowels maintain a non-aspirated pronunciation. This is reflected by the orthography, which uses the graphemes for unaspirated sounds,, when a vowel is suffixed. For example, x̱aat becomes ax̱ x̱aadí .
Phonetic analysis also shows that the ejective fricatives in Tlingit are in fact true ejectives, with complete closure of the glottis before frication begins and the larynx raising in the same manner as with ejective stops. This contrasts with common analyses in some other languages with ejective fricatives, which considers them a sequence of fricative and glottal stop.
Vowels
Tlingit has eight phonemic vowels, four of these distinguished formally by length. However, shorter vowels are typically also pronounced more centralized, or less tense.Word onset is always consonantal in Tlingit. Thus, in order to avoid a word starting with a vowel, an initial vowel is always preceded by either or. The former is most common, while the latter occurs in conjunction with the prefix i-. For example:
But when the perfective prefix ÿu- is word-initial, the glottal stop appears to ensure that the word begins with a consonant.
In contrast, when prefixed with i-, the same verbal root becomes yatʼaa rather than *itʼaa.
Tone
Tone is contrastive in all dialects of Tlingit but Tongass. In the Northern and Transitional dialects, there are high and low tones, and in the Southern dialect there is an additional falling tone. Rather than tone, Tongass Tlingit has a register system of vowel phonation and glottalization that corresponds to the tone systems of other dialects. An illustration of some of these correspondences can be seen below.Writing system
The very first instance of written Tlingit is from the La Pérouse expedition in 1786, where for example, tleixʼ was transcribed as. A more formal orthography based on the Cyrillic alphabet was created by the Russians during their colonization of Alaska. However, after Alaska was acquired by the United States, native language literacy was discouraged, and until the latter half of the 20th century, Tlingit was only written by linguists.The most widespread orthography used today is based off of the transcription systems of some of these linguists, particularly Constance Naish and Gillian Story. Like other popular writing systems, it uses the letters for voiced obstruents to represent unaspirated sounds; e.g., for. Uvular sounds are distinguished from velars by an underline; that is, for. Typing an underline was straightforward on the typewriters of the 20th century, but it is no longer so on modern computers. Thus, an alternative "email" orthography was developed in the 1990s that replaces the underline with an appended ; so, becomes, and so on.
The Inland Tlingit orthography does not use vowel digraphs. Instead, short high vowels are marked with an acute accent, long high vowels are marked with a circumflex, and long low vowels are marked with a grave accent. Short low vowels are unmarked. So, Coastal Tlingit and are Inland and respectively. Coastal and are Inland and ; Coastal and are Inland and ; and Coastal and are Inland and.
Grammar
Tlingit is highly synthetic, displaying some traits of a fusional language, and is even polysynthetic to some extent. The verb, as with all the Na-Dene languages, is morphologically complex. Nouns in comparison are relatively simple, with many being derived from verbs. Other word classes include pronouns, postpositions, directionals, and particles. Word order defaults to SOV, but it is flexible.Nouns
Nouns are classified as either possessable or unpossessable, with the possessable nouns being further classified by alienability. Alienable possessed nouns may be possessed by a pronoun, while inalienable nouns must be possessed. In contrast, unpossessable nouns cannot be possessed, and include names for people and places. Nouns may be marked for the plural with the suffix -xʼ, but it is optional.Pronouns
Pronouns in Tlingit, also known as pronominals, are distinguished in four persons, two numbers, and three miscellaneous forms. Each pronominal has five forms, which depend on the syntactic relationship between it and other sentence constituents. The third person object pronominals are additionally classified through a system of anaphora similar to that in other Na-Dene languages such as Navajo.Possessed nouns take the appropriate nominal object pronominal and the -i suffix. For example:
Postpositions
Tlingit uses postpositions to indicate spatial and temporal relationships between nouns. They are most commonly expressed as suffixes, although independent postpositions exist. For example, the prolative suffix -nax̱ is used to mean "by" or "via":Note that postpositions should be differentiated from directionals, which also express spatial relationships but are a subcategory of nouns. Directionals can also be the object of a postposition.
Verbs
Verb morphology is highly intricate, with a single verb phrase capable of expressing a full sentence. This verb phrase can communicate, among other things, aspect, mood, tense, transitivity, subject and object, and qualities of the object.The nucleus of the verb is the root, which indicates what exactly is being done. A verb root cannot appear on its own, so it always also has stem variation, which are differences in vowel length and tone that are dictated by aspect and conjugation. For example, the root *x̱a is ungrammatical by itself. Instead, the imperative form of the verb also includes a high tone on the vowel: X̱á!.
Tlingit verbs are commonly analyzed using template morphology, meaning that specific affixes are assigned a position in the verb complex relative to each other. The number of positions varies depending on the analysis given. James Crippen has criticized verb templates in analyses of Tlingit grammar, as they fail to explain interdependencies between morphemes and present a seemingly arbitrary order of affixes, but they are still the most common way for analyzing verbs in all Na-Dene languages. An example of a verb template for Tlingit by Jeff Leer is given below.
| Position | Description | Example morpheme |
| +8 | preverbs | g̱unayéi, "beginning" |
| +7 | number prefixes | has, plural |
| +6 | objects | yee- "you guys" |
| +6 | incorporated alienable nouns | ḵee- "day" |
| +5 | incorporated inalienable nouns | x̱ʼe- "mouth" |
| +4 | schetic prefixes | |
| +3 | distributive | dag̱- |
| +2 | subject | x̱- "I" |
| +1 | classifier | ÿa- |
| 0 | ROOT | |
| -1 | derivational suffixes | -kw, repetitive |
| -2 | durative suffixes | |
| -3 | inner mode suffixes | |
| -4 | outer mode suffixes | |
| -5 | clause type | -í, subordinate clause |
Another criticism of the template is that it implies that all positions can be filled; in reality, this is not true, and even the longest verb phrases do not have every affix slot filled.
Syntax
Tlingit is by default an SOV language, but nevertheless word order is quite flexible. The SOV order is most apparent when object and agent phrases both exist in the sentence. However, there is a tendency to restrict the arguments of the verb phrase to a single non-pronominal noun phrase, with any other arguments being integrated into the verb. This can cause the appearance of an OSV word order, but it has been shown that this is not a correct analysis of Tlingit syntax.Tlingit-language media
The Irish TV series An Klondike, set in Canada in the 1890s, contains Tlingit dialogue; as does the American comedy-drama Northern Exposure.In 2023, the Central Council of the Tlingit & Haida Indian Tribes released the first of nine Tlingit-language children's books and animated videos. Titled Kuhaantí, it was released on October 27 and has no accompanying English translation, which Lance Twitchell said shows that "our literature can stand on its own."