Tanacross language
Encyclopedia
Endangered language
An endangered language is a language that is at risk of falling out of use. If it loses all its native speakers, it becomes a dead language. If eventually no one speaks the language at all it becomes an "extinct language"....
Athabaskan language
Athabaskan languages
Athabaskan or Athabascan is a large group of indigenous peoples of North America, located in two main Southern and Northern groups in western North America, and of their language family...
spoken by fewer than 60 persons in eastern Interior Alaska
Alaska Interior
The Alaska Interior covers most of the U.S. state's territory. It is largely wilderness. Mountains include Mount McKinley in the Alaska Range, the Wrangell Mountains, and the Ray Mountains....
.
Overview
The word Tanacross (< Tanana Crossing) has been used to refer both to a village in eastern Alaska and to an ethnolinguistic group. The modern village of TanacrossTanacross, Alaska
Tanacross is a census-designated place in Southeast Fairbanks Census Area, Alaska, United States. At the 2000 census the population was 140...
is accessible by a short access road from the Alaska Highway
Alaska Highway
The Alaska Highway was constructed during World War II for the purpose of connecting the contiguous U.S. to Alaska through Canada. It begins at the junction with several Canadian highways in Dawson Creek, British Columbia and runs to Delta Junction, Alaska, via Whitehorse, Yukon...
, and some speakers now reside in the regional center of Tok
Tok, Alaska
Tok is a census-designated place in Southeast Fairbanks Census Area, Alaska, United States. The population was 1,393 at the 2000 census.-Geography:...
, located approximately ten miles east of the village on the highway. In addition several speakers now reside in the nearest commercial center of Fairbanks
Fairbanks, Alaska
Fairbanks is a home rule city in and the borough seat of the Fairbanks North Star Borough in the U.S. state of Alaska.Fairbanks is the largest city in the Interior region of Alaska, and second largest in the state behind Anchorage...
, located two hundred miles downstream from Tanacross village and accessible by all-weather highway.
Healy Lake, Alaska
Healy Lake is a census-designated place in Southeast Fairbanks Census Area, Alaska, United States. The population was 37 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Healy Lake is located at ....
-Joseph Village bands of Athabaskan people, whose ancestral territory encompassed an area bounded by the Goodpaster River to the west, the Alaska Range
Alaska Range
The Alaska Range is a relatively narrow, 650-km-long mountain range in the southcentral region of the U.S. state of Alaska, from Lake Clark at its southwest end to the White River in Canada's Yukon Territory in the southeast...
to the south, the Fortymile
Fortymile River
The Fortymile River is a river in Alaska and the Yukon. Prior to the Klondike Gold Rush, there was considerable mining activity along this tributary of the Yukon River. In the 1970s, there was an asbestos mine at Clinton Creek in the Yukon. When gold was discovered on the Fortymille River in 1886,...
and Tok rivers to the east, and the Yukon
Yukon
Yukon is the westernmost and smallest of Canada's three federal territories. It was named after the Yukon River. The word Yukon means "Great River" in Gwich’in....
Uplands to the north.
In the late nineteenth century trading post
Trading post
A trading post was a place or establishment in historic Northern America where the trading of goods took place. The preferred travel route to a trading post or between trading posts, was known as a trade route....
s were established at Tanana Crossing, a ford
Ford (crossing)
A ford is a shallow place with good footing where a river or stream may be crossed by wading or in a vehicle. A ford is mostly a natural phenomenon, in contrast to a low water crossing, which is an artificial bridge that allows crossing a river or stream when water is low.The names of many towns...
along the Eagle Trail, directly across the Tanana River
Tanana River
The Tanana River is a tributary of the Yukon River in the U.S. state of Alaska. According to linguist and anthropologist William Bright, the name is from the Koyukon tene no, tenene, literally "trail river"....
from the present-day village of Tanacross. A telegraph station followed in 1902, and an Episcopal mission in 1909. Both the Mansfield-Kechumstuk and Healy Lake-Joseph Village bands eventually settled in Tanana Crossing, eventually shortened to Tanacross (McKennan 1959). The village was relocated across the river to its present location in the early 1970s, and most present-day Tanacross speakers live in or near the village of Tanacross.
Etymology
The name Tanacross has only recently been applied to the language and still has limited currency outside academic circles. Many other logonymLogonym
Within the field of linguistics the term logonym is used to refer to the name of a particular language, dialect, language variety. Logonyms may be either officially recognized names or less formalized or standardized names used by speakers or non-speakers to denote a particular language...
s have been used. Wrangell’s 1839 wordlist refers to the language as the “Copper River Kolchan”, though Wrangell certainly had no notion of the linguistic geography of the Tanacross region. The first extensive ethnographic research in the area was conducted by McKennan in 1929-30, who excludes Tanacross from his map of what he labels as the Upper Tanana region (1959: 16). However, McKennan later appears to lump Tanacross and Upper Tanana together under the label Upper Tanana, noting:
“In considering the Tanana River as a whole, however, the [Tanana] Crossing and Upper Tanana natives should be lumped together, for between the Crossing and Healy River occur a whole series of rapids which today make navigation exceedingly dangerous and in earlier days practically prevented it.” (23)
McKennan mistakenly assumes that the Tanana River was a major transportation corridor, when in fact the various Tanacross bands have never had a true riverine culture, having only settled on the Tanana River in the twentieth century. The rapids referred to by McKennan serve as a barrier to salmon
Salmon
Salmon is the common name for several species of fish in the family Salmonidae. Several other fish in the same family are called trout; the difference is often said to be that salmon migrate and trout are resident, but this distinction does not strictly hold true...
migration and remove a major incentive for river settlement (de Laguna & McClellan 1960). In contrast, land travel in this region is relatively easy, and extensive networks of trails connect the villages of the Tanacross region. Many of these trails are still used for hunting access. And at least until the construction of the Alaska Highway in 1942, foot and sled travel between Healy Lake, Mansfield
Mansfield
Mansfield is a town in Nottinghamshire, England. It is the main town in the Mansfield local government district. Mansfield is a part of the Mansfield Urban Area....
and Kechumstuk was extremely common (Ellen Demit, p.c.).
Osgood (1936) uses the term Tanana for the entire region of the Tanana River drainage below the Tok River to the confluence of the Tanana and Yukon
Yukon River
The Yukon River is a major watercourse of northwestern North America. The source of the river is located in British Columbia, Canada. The next portion lies in, and gives its name to Yukon Territory. The lower half of the river lies in the U.S. state of Alaska. The river is long and empties into...
rivers. Shinen (1958), who recorded a word list from Mary Charlie and Oscar Isaac in Tanacross village, refers to the language as the “Nabesna dialect”, and Shinen’s term was repeated in Hoijer
Harry Hoijer
Harry Hoijer was a linguist and anthropologist who worked on primarily Athabaskan languages and culture.He additionally documented the Tonkawa language, which is now extinct...
(1963). Nabesna was actually Osgood’s preferred term for Upper Tanana, so Shinen appears to have followed McKennan in lumping Tanacross and Upper Tanana together but adopted Osgood’s logonym. Shinen’s list is clearly of Tanacross, not Upper Tanana origin. De Laguna & McClellan (1960) use the term Tanacross language, but only in a restricted sense referring to the language of Tanacross village proper. Krauss originally included Tanacross with Lower Tanana, but after a more extensive linguistic survey of the region in the 1960s, he began using the term “Transitional Tanana”, recognizing the distinction between Tanacross and the remainder of Tanana
Tanana languages
The Tanana languages are Athabaskan languages that include two languages which are Lower Tanana and Upper Tanana . They are spoken in Canada and Alaska. About 30 people speak Lower Tanana and 100 people speak Upper Tanana. Mostly the elders speak it but many young people are trying to learn it to...
(Krauss, p.c.). As the significance of this distinction grew to justify a language rather than dialect boundary, the name Tanacross was applied to the Tanacross linguistic region, appearing for example in Krauss’ 1973 survey of the Athabaskan languages. The preferred self-designation for the language is simply “Indian”, though “Native Language” is sometimes used in more formal contexts. The term “Athabaskan” is disliked. The indigenous word neò/aòneg, usually translated as ‘our language’, is also sometimes heard, though this is likely a neologism.
Tanacross is part of a large language/dialect complex, and the Tanacross linguistic region is bordered by several other closely related Athabaskan languages. To the northwest is Han
Hän language
The Hän language is a Native American endangered language spoken in only two places: Eagle, Alaska and Dawson City, Yukon. There are only a few fluent speakers left , all of them elderly....
, spoken in Eagle and across the Canadian border in Dawson and Moosehide. To the east is the language known by the geographic term Upper Tanana, spoken in the villages of Tetlin, Northway, Scottie Creek, Beaver Creek, and (formerly) Chisana. Tanacross and Upper Tanana share a high degree of mutual intelligibility, though the tonal patterns (with the exception of the Tetlin dialect, which is apparently toneless) are reversed. To the south near the headwaters of the Copper River in Mentasta is the Ahtna language
Ahtna language
Ahtna or Ahtena is the Na-Dené language of the Ahtna ethnic group of the Copper River area of Alaska. The language is also known as Copper River or Mednovskiy...
. The Mentasta dialect of Ahtna is the most divergent of the four main Ahtna dialects and shares many lexical and phonological features with Tanacross rather than with the other Ahtna dialects. McKennan remarks:
“The Tanana Crossing people have always been in much closer contact with the Indians of Copper River, the valley of the Tok [River] leading to the easy Mentasta Pass and thence down Slana River to the Copper. The Upper Tanana natives maintain that the Crossing dialect is much more similar to that of the Copper River than is their own.” (23)
Dialectology
Until very recently Lower Tanana was spoken at SalchaSalcha, Alaska
Salcha is a census-designated place in Fairbanks North Star Borough in the U.S. state of Alaska. It is part of the 'Fairbanks, Alaska Metropolitan Statistical Area'. The population was 854 at the 2000 census.-Geography:...
(Saagescheeg), just west of the Tanacross language area near the mouth of the Salcha River
Salcha River
The Salcha River is a river in Alaska in the United States located southeast and east of Fairbanks, in the eastern portion of Fairbanks North Star Borough. It is long and drains an area of some , making it the second largest tributary of the Tanana River, joining it at Aurora Lodge...
. As might be expected, Salcha shares many features with Healy Lake, the westernmost dialect of Tanacross, though the two are readily distinguished as separate languages (in particular by the presence of high marked tone in Healy Lake). With the passing of the Salcha dialect, the nearest Lower Tanana villages are located more than one hundred miles downstream at Nenana
Nenana, Alaska
Nenana is a Home Rule City in the Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area of the Unorganized Borough of the U.S. state of Alaska. Nenana lies at the juncture of the Nenana River and the Tanana River. The population was 402 at the 2000 census. "Nenana" means 'a good place to camp between two rivers.'-History...
and Minto
Minto, Alaska
Minto is a census-designated place in Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area, Alaska, United States. As of the 2000 census, the population of the CDP is 258. The name is an anglicized version of the Lower Tanana Athabaskan name Menh Ti, meaning 'among the lakes'. After repeated flooding the village was...
, and the linguistic boundary between Tanacross and Lower Tanana is now even more distinct.
The Tanacross linguistic region is geographically small by Alaska Athabaskan standards and hence contains little dialectal variation. A small number of phonological features distinguish two major dialects. The Mansfield-Kechumstuk (MK) dialect of Tanacross was formerly spoken at Mansfield Lake (dihTa$òd/) and Kechumstuk, until those bands combined and later moved to Tanacross village. This is the dialect spoken in Tanacross village and the dialect upon which this study is based. Unless indicated otherwise reference to Tanacross language should be assumed to mean the MK dialect. A second dialect of Tanacross is spoken at Healy Lake and Dot Lake to the west, and formerly at Joseph Village, and is linguistically distinguished by the retention of schwa
Schwa
In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa can mean the following:*An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in some languages, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel...
suffix
Suffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs...
es.
Viability
As with all of the Athabaskan languages of Alaska, Tanacross is extremely endangeredEndangered language
An endangered language is a language that is at risk of falling out of use. If it loses all its native speakers, it becomes a dead language. If eventually no one speaks the language at all it becomes an "extinct language"....
. Although most children have passive understanding of simple commands and phrases, most fluent
Language proficiency
Language proficiency or linguistic proficiency is the ability of an individual to speak or perform in an acquired language. As theories vary among pedagogues as to what constitutes proficiency, there is little consistency as to how different organizations classify it...
speakers of Tanacross are at least fifty years old. Only among the oldest speakers is Tanacross the language of daily communication. Based on the age of the youngest speakers, Krauss (1997) estimates 65 speakers out of a total population of 220. In spite of the relatively small number of speakers, the percentage of speakers out of the total population is quite high for an Alaska Athabaskan language
Northern Athabaskan languages
Northern Athabaskan is a geographic sub-grouping of the Athabaskan language family spoken in the northern part of North America, particularly in Alaska and the Yukon...
. Outside Tanacross village
Tanacross, Alaska
Tanacross is a census-designated place in Southeast Fairbanks Census Area, Alaska, United States. At the 2000 census the population was 140...
proper the percentage is much lower. Although 1990 census figures place the combined populations of Dot Lake and Healy Lake at 117, Kari (p.c.) estimates fewer than four speakers at Healy Lake and perhaps two or three at Dot Lake.
In spite of its small size (population 140) and proximity to predominantly non-native community of Tok
Tok, Alaska
Tok is a census-designated place in Southeast Fairbanks Census Area, Alaska, United States. The population was 1,393 at the 2000 census.-Geography:...
, Tanacross village maintains its own school, where Tanacross literacy is sometimes taught. In addition, most households in the village contain at least one fluent Tanacross speaker.
Recently there has been an increase in interest in language revitalization, particularly among middle aged adults. A Tanacross Language Workshop was conducted in 1990, and several training sessions were held at the Yukon Native Language Centre in Whitehorse
Whitehorse, Yukon
Whitehorse is Yukon's capital and largest city . It was incorporated in 1950 and is located at kilometre 1476 on the Alaska Highway in southern Yukon. Whitehorse's downtown and Riverdale areas occupy both shores of the Yukon River, which originates in British Columbia and meets the Bering Sea in...
throughout the 1990s. These training sessions resulted in Native Language teaching
Native-language instruction
Native-language instruction is the practice of teaching schoolchildren in their native language instead of in the official language of their country of residence....
certification for at least one speaker. Tanacross language classes are planned at the University of Alaska
University of Alaska System
The University of Alaska is a land-grant university founded in 1917 in Fairbanks in the State of Alaska. However, its largest campus by number of students was established in the much-more populous Anchorage area....
regional center in Tok.
Phonology
Tanacross in one of four Athabaskan tone languagesTone (linguistics)
Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information, and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called...
spoken in Alaska. The others are Gwichʼin, Han
Hän language
The Hän language is a Native American endangered language spoken in only two places: Eagle, Alaska and Dawson City, Yukon. There are only a few fluent speakers left , all of them elderly....
, and Upper Tanana. Tanacross is the only Alaska Athabaskan language to exhibit high tone as a reflex of Proto-Athabaskan constriction.
Vowels
There are six phonemic vowels:| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | i | u | |
| Mid | e | ə | o |
| Low | a |
The vowel
Vowel
In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...
s i, e, a, and u may be distinguished for length, indicated in the practical orthography
Orthography
The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...
by doubling the vowel. The reduced vowel ä is indicated via the letter
Vowels may be marked for high (á), rising (ǎ), falling (â) or extra-high (á́) tone
Tone (linguistics)
Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information, and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called...
. Low tone is unmarked.
Consonants
The consonantConsonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and ,...
s of the Tanacross practical orthography are shown below. This practical orthography follows standard Athabaskan conventions, in particular, stops
Stop consonant
In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &...
and affricates
Affricate consonant
Affricates are consonants that begin as stops but release as a fricative rather than directly into the following vowel.- Samples :...
are grouped together phonologically. Also, voiceless unaspirated
Aspiration (phonetics)
In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. To feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of one's mouth, and say pin ...
stops/afficates consonants are indicated using, for the most part, the IPA
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...
symbols for voiced
Voice (phonetics)
Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer to two separate concepts. Voicing can refer to the articulatory process in which the vocal cords vibrate...
consonants, while voiceless aspirated consonants are indicated using the IPA symbols for voiceless consonants. Note that in coda
Syllable coda
In phonology, a syllable coda comprises the consonant sounds of a syllable that follow the nucleus, which is usually a vowel. The combination of a nucleus and a coda is called a rime. Some syllables consist only of a nucleus with no coda...
position the unaspirated/aspirated distinction reverts to a voiceless/voiced distinction, providing further motivation for the choice of symbols in the practical orthography.
| Labial | Alveolar | Dental | Lateral | Palatal | Velar | Glottal |
|||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stops/ Affricates |
unspirated | d [t] | dz [d͡z] | ddh [t͡θ] | dl [t͡ɬ] | j [t͡ʃ] | g [k] | ' [ʔ] |
|
| aspirated | t [tʰ] | ts [t͡sʰ] | tth [t͡θʰ] | tl [t͡ɬʰ] | ch [t͡ʃʰ] | k [kʰ] | |||
| ejective | t' [tʼ] | ts' [t͡sʼ] | tth' [t͡θʼ] | tl' [t͡ɬʼ] | ch' [t͡ʃʼ] | ||||
| Fricatives | voiced | z [z] | dh [ð] | l [l] | gh [ɣ] | ||||
| semi-voiced | s [s͡z] | th [t͡ð] | ł [ɬ͡ɮ] | sh [ʃ͡ʒ] | x [x͡ɣ] | |
|||
| voiceless | s [s] | th [θ] | ł [ɬ] | sh [ʃ] | x [x] | h [h] | |||
| Sonorants | voiced | m [m] | n [n] | y [j] | |||||
| voiceless | nh [n̥] | yh [j̊] | |||||||
Semi-voiced Fricatives
One of the distinguishing features of Tanacross is the presence of so-called semi-voiced fricativesFricative consonant
Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or...
, a unique type of segment which appear to begin voiceless and transition to fully voiced. Semi-voiced fricatives occur in stem-initial position in lieu of fully voiced fricatives. Even though they are essentially allophonic
Allophone
In phonology, an allophone is one of a set of multiple possible spoken sounds used to pronounce a single phoneme. For example, and are allophones for the phoneme in the English language...
variants of the voiced fricatives, semi-voiced fricatives are indicated in the practical orthography
Orthography
The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...
via an underscore beneath the corresponding voiceless segment.
| łii | 'dog' |
| shłǐig' | 'my dog' Media:my dog TCB.ogg |
Relationships to other languages
Tanacross is a member of the Athabaskan family of languagesAthabaskan languages
Athabaskan or Athabascan is a large group of indigenous peoples of North America, located in two main Southern and Northern groups in western North America, and of their language family...
, a well-established genetic grouping whose members occupy three discontinuous areas of North America: the Northern group
Northern Athabaskan languages
Northern Athabaskan is a geographic sub-grouping of the Athabaskan language family spoken in the northern part of North America, particularly in Alaska and the Yukon...
in northwestern Canada and Alaska, the Pacific Coast
Pacific Coast Athabaskan languages
Pacific Coast Athabaskan is a geographical and possibly genealogical grouping of the Athabaskan language family.-California Athabaskan:Pacific Coast Athabaskan is a geographical and possibly genealogical grouping of the Athabaskan language family....
in northern California, Oregon, and southern Washington, and the Apachean group
Southern Athabaskan languages
Southern Athabaskan is a subfamily of Athabaskan languages spoken primarily in the North American Southwest with two outliers in Oklahoma and Texas...
in the desert southwest of the continental United States. The seven Apachean languages include Navajo
Navajo language
Navajo or Navaho is an Athabaskan language spoken in the southwestern United States. It is geographically and linguistically one of the Southern Athabaskan languages .Navajo has more speakers than any other Native American language north of the...
, the largest North American language in terms of number of speakers. Apachean is a very tightly related and well-defined branch. The Pacific Coast group is much less closely related than Apachean and is perhaps more of a geographic subgroup containing perhaps six languages. Of these only Tolowa
Tolowa language
The Tolowa language is a member of the Pacific Coast subgroup of the Athabaskan language family. It is spoken by Tolowa Indians in southern Oregon and northern California. There are only a handful of remaining fully fluent native speakers...
and Hupa
Hupa language
-External links :* * overview at the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages*...
are still spoken today, and these only by a handful of speakers. Of the roughly 24 Northern Athabaskan languages, eleven are spoken in Alaska
Alaska
Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...
, three of which straddle the border with Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
.
Given the available data, it is difficult to discern linguistic subgroups within Northern Athabaskan. This is certainly true for the languages of the Tanana River
Tanana River
The Tanana River is a tributary of the Yukon River in the U.S. state of Alaska. According to linguist and anthropologist William Bright, the name is from the Koyukon tene no, tenene, literally "trail river"....
drainages, which form a continuum extending from Lower Tanana in the west (downriver) to Upper Tanana in the east (upriver). Tanacross itself was not defined as a distinct language until the late 1960s (Krauss 1973a). The dialectology
Dialectology
Dialectology is the scientific study of linguistic dialect, a sub-field of sociolinguistics. It studies variations in language based primarily on geographic distribution and their associated features...
of this area has not been completely unraveled, but it is clear that Tanacross of course shares many features with neighboring languages and dialects, especially the Mentasta dialect of Ahtna, the (now extinct) Salcha dialect of Lower Tanana, the Tetlin dialect of Upper Tanana, and the Han language.
However, Tanacross is distinguished most dramatically from neighboring languages by the development of Proto-Athabaskan (PA) constricted vowels into high tone. In contrast, Lower Tanana
Lower Tanana language
Lower Tanana is an endangered Athabaskan language spoken in Interior Alaska in the lower Tanana River villages of Minto and Nenana. Of about 380 Tanana people in the two villages, about 30 still speak the language...
, Hän
Hän language
The Hän language is a Native American endangered language spoken in only two places: Eagle, Alaska and Dawson City, Yukon. There are only a few fluent speakers left , all of them elderly....
and Upper Tanana
Upper Tanana language
Upper Tanana is an endangered Athabaskan language spoken in eastern Interior Alaska, mainly in the villages of Northway, Tetlin, and Tok, and adjacent areas of Canada's Yukon Territory...
developed low tone, while Ahtna
Ahtna language
Ahtna or Ahtena is the Na-Dené language of the Ahtna ethnic group of the Copper River area of Alaska. The language is also known as Copper River or Mednovskiy...
either did not develop or lost tone. The Tanacross tone system remains active in the phonology
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
and morphology
Morphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
of the language. Tanacross shares close linguistic, geographical and social ties with Upper Tanana to the east. In fact, the close social ties which have bound Tanacross with other groups in the upper Tanana drainage area argue for the definition of a Tanana Uplands language and culture area. This area would include all groups which have regularly participated in potlatch
Potlatch
A potlatch is a gift-giving festival and primary economic system practiced by indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of Canada and United States. This includes Heiltsuk Nation, Haida, Nuxalk, Tlingit, Makah, Tsimshian, Nuu-chah-nulth, Kwakwaka'wakw, and Coast Salish cultures...
ceremonies with Tanacross, including the Upper Tanana of Tetlin
Tetlin, Alaska
Tetlin is a census-designated place in Southeast Fairbanks Census Area, Alaska, United States. At the 2000 census the population was 117.-Geography:Tetlin is located at ....
, Northway
Northway, Alaska
Northway is a census-designated place in Southeast Fairbanks Census Area, Alaska, United States. The population was 95 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Northway is located at ....
and Beaver Creek
Beaver Creek, Yukon
- External links :* *...
; the Han
Han (North American people)
The Han are a Northern Athabascan people who speak the Hän language. Only a handful of fluent speakers remain. Their traditional land centered around a heavily forested area around the Yukon River straddling what is now the Alaska-Yukon Territory border...
of the vicinity of Eagle, Alaska
Eagle, Alaska
Eagle is a city located along the United States-Canada border in the Southeast Fairbanks Census Area, Alaska, United States. It includes Eagle Historic District, a U.S. National Historic Landmark. The population was 129 at the 2000 census...
and Dawson City, Yukon
Yukon
Yukon is the westernmost and smallest of Canada's three federal territories. It was named after the Yukon River. The word Yukon means "Great River" in Gwich’in....
; and the Mentasta Ahtna
Ahtna
The Ahtna are one of the tribes of Athabaskan people in Alaska. The tribe's homeland is located in the Copper River area of southern Alaska, and the name Ahtna derives from the local name for the Copper River...
of the Mentasta area. Mentasta is the most divergent dialect of Ahtna and shares many linguistic features with Tanacross and Upper Tanana. Due to extensive multilingualism
Multilingualism
Multilingualism is the act of using, or promoting the use of, multiple languages, either by an individual speaker or by a community of speakers. Multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. Multilingualism is becoming a social phenomenon governed by the needs of...
within the Tanana Uplands area, any study of Tanacross must account for the larger socio-linguistic
Sociolinguistics
Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and the effects of language use on society...
framework within which Tanacross is embedded.
Previous research
In addition to the strictly linguistic resources to be discussed below, Isaac (1988) and Simeone (1995) provide important cultural background on the Tanacross community. The former is an oral historyOral history
Oral history is the collection and study of historical information about individuals, families, important events, or everyday life using audiotapes, videotapes, or transcriptions of planned interviews...
told by Chief Andrew Isaac, the last traditional chief of Tanacross. Though much of the text has been translated into English, the translation maintains much of the speech style of the original Tanacross language. The text contains many references to Tanacross flora and fauna, as well as cultural items. Simeone’s book is an ethnographic
Ethnography
Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...
sketch written by an Episcopal lay worker who spent much of the 1970s living in Tanacross village
Tanacross, Alaska
Tanacross is a census-designated place in Southeast Fairbanks Census Area, Alaska, United States. At the 2000 census the population was 140...
. Ethnographies of the eastern Alaska Athabaskan region, though not specific to Tanacross, can be found in McKennan (1959) and Andrews (1975). De Laguna & McClellan’s (1960) field notes also contain extensive ethnographic information.
The earliest written record by far of the Tanacross language is the “Copper River Kolchan” vocabulary recorded in Wrangell (1839). This list was probably collected at Nuchek in Prince William Sound
Prince William Sound
Prince William Sound is a sound off the Gulf of Alaska on the south coast of the U.S. state of Alaska. It is located on the east side of the Kenai Peninsula. Its largest port is Valdez, at the southern terminus of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System...
, but its character is unmistakably Tanacross. Another short (three typescript pages) word list was collected by J.T. Geoghegan (Geoghegan & Geoghegan 1904). David Shinen compiled a somewhat longer Tanacross word list from Mary Charlie and Oscar Isaac in Tanacross village, and a portion of this list was later published under the heading “Nabesna” in Hoijer (1963). More substantive documentation of Tanacross began with exploratory fieldwork by Krauss, who first called it “transitional Tanana”. In the early 1970s Nancy McRoy compiled some textual materials with speaker Mary Charlie and a short wordlist containing about 400 items, mostly nouns, as well as some basic literacy materials. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Jeff Leer compiled further notes on grammatical paradigms
Grammatical category
A grammatical category is a semantic distinction which is reflected in a morphological paradigm. Grammatical categories can have one or more exponents. For instance, the feature [number] has the exponents [singular] and [plural] in English and many other languages...
and phonological features
Distinctive feature
In linguistics, a distinctive feature is the most basic unit of phonological structure that may be analyzed in phonological theory.Distinctive features are grouped into categories according to the natural classes of segments they describe: major class features, laryngeal features, manner features,...
, including the three-way fricative voicing contrast. Marilyn Paul (1978) presents some notes compiled from a class taught by Leer at ANLC. Ron Scollon transcribed and translated a collection of texts from speaker Gaither Paul using a revised orthography
Orthography
The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...
which indicates tone
Tone (linguistics)
Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information, and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called...
. Kari has compiled a preliminary stem list based on information collected from several speakers in the 1980s, but tone is not marked. Alice Brean has compiled lexical and paradigmatic information. Minoura has compiled a short word list and information on tone. In spite of the various sources of lexical documentation, Krauss (p.c.) estimates than only twenty percent of the extant body of lexical
Lexicon
In linguistics, the lexicon of a language is its vocabulary, including its words and expressions. A lexicon is also a synonym of the word thesaurus. More formally, it is a language's inventory of lexemes. Coined in English 1603, the word "lexicon" derives from the Greek "λεξικόν" , neut...
information has been documented by linguists.
During the early 1990s John Ritter of the Yukon Native Language Center (YNLC) began a comprehensive study of Tanacross phonology in the early 1990s and developed a practical orthography. Tanacross speakers Irene Solomon Arnold and Jerry Isaac have participated in literacy workshops in Tok
Tok, Alaska
Tok is a census-designated place in Southeast Fairbanks Census Area, Alaska, United States. The population was 1,393 at the 2000 census.-Geography:...
, Whitehorse
Whitehorse, Yukon
Whitehorse is Yukon's capital and largest city . It was incorporated in 1950 and is located at kilometre 1476 on the Alaska Highway in southern Yukon. Whitehorse's downtown and Riverdale areas occupy both shores of the Yukon River, which originates in British Columbia and meets the Bering Sea in...
and Dawson City, resulting in the production of literacy materials with accompanying cassette tapes. Solomon & Ritter (1997) provides crucial data for the description of tone
Tone (linguistics)
Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information, and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called...
phenomena. Additional sound recordings and field notes are available at YNLC. Since 2000 Irene Solomon has worked as a language specialist at the Alaska Native Language Center
Alaska Native Language Center
The Alaska Native Language Center, established in 1972 in Fairbanks, Alaska, is a research center focusing on the research and documentation of the Alaska's Native languages. It publishes grammars, dictionaries, folklore collections and research materials, as well as hosting an extensive archive of...
and has collaborated on a number of projects with linguist Gary Holton, including a phrase book, a learners' dictionary, and a multimedia description of the sound system.