The Zero Morpheme

Salmon names

2010-07-15T10:00:00.006-10:00

In Alaska there are five extant species of anadromous Pacific salmon, all of the Oncorhynchus (Suckley 1861) genus. The genus name is from Greek ὄγκος ónkos “bend, hook” and ῥύγχος rhýnkhos “snout, beak”, referring to the hooked upper jaw or “kype” of breeding males. The scientific names of the five species are O. tshawytscha, O. nerka, O. kisutch, O. keta, and O. gorbuscha (all Walbaum 1792). There are some interesting linguistic facts about their names which I’ve been inspired to post about here.

First, in Tlingit they’re called, in order: tʼá /tʼá/, g̱aat /qaːt/, lʼook /ɬʼuːk/ (cognate with Proto-Athabaskan *ɬuːqʼə ‘fish’, e.g. Denaʼina ɬiqʼa, Tsuutʼina ɬúkʼá, Navajo ɬóːʔ), téelʼ /tʰíːɬʼ/, and cháasʼ /tʃʰáːsʼ/. The generic term for ‘fish’ which by default refers to any kind of salmon is x̱áat /χáːt/.

The scientific names all come from Russian, and were originally given by Johann Julius Walbaum during his time in the Russian Far East. The name O. tshawytscha is from Russian чавы́ча /tɕaˈvɨtɕa/ which is itself from Itelʼmen čevičev. O. nerka is in Russian не́рка /ˈnʲerka/, but in Siberian dialects ня́рка /ˈnʲarka/, and which appears to be from Proto-Samoyedic *nʸʌrkə, compare Nganasan nʸorə. O. kisutch is Russian ки́жуч /ˈkʲiʐutɕ/ but in Siberian dialects ки́зуч /ˈkʲizutɕ/, coming from Itelʼmen kizuez; the dialectal form is the source of the scientific name. O. keta is particularly interesting: in Russian it is ке́та /ˈkʲeta/ but this is again not native; rather, the source is probably Evenki keːta ‘O. keta’ or perhaps Even qæta ‘dead salmon after spawning’ (unrelatedly, Tlingit also has xein /xeːn/ ‘spawned-out salmon’ < Pre-Tlingit *xayn, cognate with Eyak xaːnih; also cf. PA *xʸaːn ‘old age’, cognate with Tlingit shaan /ʃaːn/ ‘old, elderly’ < Pre-Tlingit *šaʻn) both of which are themselves probably from Chukchi-Koryak, e.g. Chukchi qetaqet ‘O. keta’. The Russian for O. gorbuscha is simply горбу́ша /gorˈbuʂa/ derived from горб /gorb/ ‘hump’ and describing the pronounced hump that develops on the backs of males during spawning.

The English names are a bit more confusing. All five species occur along the Northwest Coast (NWC) of North America down as far south as the Columbia River and some as far south as San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento River (e.g. O. keta). They also all occur on the Alaskan coast as far north as the Bering Sea, and some as far as the Arctic Ocean (e.g. O. gorbuscha and O. keta to the Lena and Mackenzie Rivers). Because English speaking colonists met with the salmon at different times and different locations, a variety of names have proliferated for them. I will try to sort them out a bit here, but the majority of my experience is in Alaska and so my knowledge about name distribution patterns is only tentative for the southern NWC. Fortunately it is Alaska that most people know little about, and I’m sure others can work out the geographic distribution down where the populations are greater and there are more people inclined to investigate.

In Southcentral Alaska, and typically throughout most of mainland Alaska, the five species are most often called: O. tshawytscha ‘king’, O. nerka ‘red’, O. kisutch ‘silver’, O. keta ‘dog’, and O. gorbuscha ‘pink’. These are all relatively transparent names. ‘King’ is obviously because it is the biggest and most prized, ‘red’ is from both the prominent red color of the skin during spawning as well as the darker orange-red color of the flesh, ‘silver’ is from the bright color of the skin, ‘dog’ comes from the pronounced teeth on males which are reminiscent of the canine teeth of dogs, and ‘pink’ is from the pale pink or pink-orange color of the flesh. This group of names can be loosely called the “color names” for the fish, and use of the full set is characteristic of southcentral Alaskans as well as many (most?) people of interior and southwestern Alaska. I can’t really comment on use in the Arctic since I have little experience up there, but I expect that white people would use the same names as found in e.g. Anchorage and Fairbanks.

In Southeast Alaska O. nerka is almost always ‘sockeye’ instead, which derives from a reanalysis of the loan /ˈsʌkai̯/ (Goode 1887 Amer. Fishes: “‘Suk-kegh’, ‘Saw-quai’, or ‘Suck-eye’”) that comes from Halkomelem sθə́kəy̓. This term is found along the coast down to Oregon. Although the term ‘kokanee’ is current in the southern NWC for landlocked specimens, I have not heard it used in Alaska but then again I have not done much fishing in the interior. The term ‘sockeye’ is not uncommon elsewhere in Alaska, but sport fishermen in southcentral Alaska seem to use ‘red salmon’ more often. The species name is never used in English, except perhaps among biologists who are strange people anyway.

Also in Southeast Alaska O. kisutch is referred to as ‘coho’, a term with an uncertain etymology. The OED2 gives a citation from the British Colonist (Victoria) in 1859: “the genus known by the Indian name of coocouse”, and from the Mainland Guardian (New Westminster) in 1869: “The second of salmon in class is the Cohose”, so presumably there is some Salishan or possibly Wakashan, Chimakuan, or Chinookan language from whence this name came. As with ‘sockeye’, the term ‘coho’ is prevalent from Southeast Alaska down the coast to Oregon. This fish also serves as a major crest of the Tlingit Lʼuknax̱.ádi /ɬʼuknaχʔáti/ clan, often called the ‘Coho People’ or ‘Coho Clan’ in English. They are named after a stream south of Klawock which is called Lʼuknáx̱ /ɬʼuknáχ/, itself named after the fish. The Tlingit name of Deep Bay is Lʼugunáx̱ /ɬʼukunáχ/ which is probably the same name. Use of ‘coho’ is in my experience characteristically southeastern, contrasting with the rest of Alaska where ‘silver’ is much more common.

O. keta is often known as ‘chum’ which comes from Chinook Jargon tsəm or čəm meaning ‘mark, spot’. It is more commonly known also as ‘dog salmon’ in Southeast Alaska, but this name is also common in the rest of Alaska as well. I don’t know if ‘dog salmon’ is common along the southern NWC or not. The ‘Dog Salmon Clan’ of the Tlingit is named after this fish, called in Tlingit Lʼeeneidí /ɬʼiːneːtí/ or Lʼeineidí /ɬʼeːneːtí/, derived from a stream called Téelʼ Héeni /tʰíːɬʼ híːni/ ‘dog salmon stream’ thus Teelʼheeneidí /tʰiːɬʼhiːneːtí/ ‘dog salmon stream people’. The salmon marketing industry has the inane name ‘Silverbrite™©®’ used to market O. keta as a cheaper alternative to O. kisutch; I have never heard the name used seriously, only derisively in reference to marketing. It obviously conflicts with the name ‘silver’ for O. kisutch, and hence would never be adopted where ‘silver’ is used. Presumably ‘chum’ and ‘dog’ are just not pleasant enough for the delicate ears of North Americans outside of its range. Rumour has it that some people refer to this fish as ‘keta’ after the scientific name, but I’ve never heard of this before and I suspect that it is again restricted to those crazy biologists.

O. gorbuscha is often known as ‘humpy’ which is widespread in Alaska, with no particular geographic emphasis, although ‘pink’ is the common alternative in southcentral Alaska (but cf. Humpy’s in Anchorage, an excellent bar/pub downtown). This name is essentially the same as in Russian, though it is probably not a calque into English but rather an independent invention from the very obvious dorsal hump of spawning males. It is not generally called ‘humpback’ since this conflicts with the humpback whale, Megaptera novaeangliae (Borowski 1781), which is more often just called ‘humpback’ in casual speech rather than ‘humpback whale’. I’ve never heard the species name used in English, although of course it is natural in Russian.

The name ‘Chinook salmon’ for O. tshawytscha is largely unused in Alaska aside from immigrants from the southern NWC, and for biologists who often use English names from outside Alaska due to their use in the scientific literature. Some Alaskans scoff at the name, in fact, considering it a mark of the cheechako or newcomer. It does see occasional use in Southeast Alaska, but again this is probably due to immigrants from further south. I do not recall hearing it from any Tlingit elders speaking in English, although younger Tlingits from Down South may use it due to exposure in Washington and Oregon. The name does seem to be relatively common the further south one travels, though of course I haven’t done any dialectal research to confirm this. Other terms according to Wikipedia that I have never heard in Alaska are ‘blackmouth’, ‘black’, ‘chub’, ‘hookbill’, ‘quinnat’, ‘spring’, ‘tyee’ (< Chinook Jargon táyi ‘chief, leader’), and ‘winter’. Essentially ‘king’ is by far the norm.

In the words of Forrest DeWitt, “that’s all I’ve got to say for now”. There’s plenty of linguistic fieldwork and bookwork to be done on salmon names in English and other languages, especially concerning the distribution of various terms in the Pacific Northwest both on the coast and in the interior. Both natural and political borders play significant roles, as well as the complex economies surrounding commercial, sport, and subsistence salmon fisheries, and I hope an English dialectologist will look into this area in the near future.

[Information on Russian terms and their etymologies is from Sasha Vovin, with help from the Этимологический словарь русских диалектов Сибири (Etimologicheskij slovarʼ russkix dialektov Sibiri) by A.E. Anikin (1997). Proto-Athabaskan and Eyak data are from various sources, including a manuscript by Jeff Leer (2008). English data and etymologies mostly from the Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edn.. Biological information is from the Alaska Department of Fish & Game Wildlife Notebook Series as well as from Wikipedia.]

A quote on fieldwork

2009-10-15T20:38:00.003-10:00

I quote myself, from a recent discussion on fieldwork.

“Fieldwork is not science, it is a craft and an art. The analysis of language can be scientific, but the gathering of language data is no more scientific than botanists tramping through jungles, or geologists clambering along mountainsides.”

Linguists, like people in other ~~social~~ human sciences, sometimes fetishize Science. So they try so hard to be scientific, and to ensure that all their work is scientific. But some things shouldn’t be scientificized, particularly fieldwork. Some of the things a linguist does during fieldwork are certainly scientific, like the development of hypotheses and testing them via elicitations, and putting together a theory from the results. But there are many things in fieldwork that are more a craft, based on educated guesses, heuristics, and inexplicable hunches. A geologist looks at a ridge and just has a hunch that it is out of place for the area and deserves some digging and picking. A botanist looks across a valley and has a funny feeling that the trees on the other side look a little bit unusual. Those sorts of things have nothing to do with Science, they are semiconscious operations of minds which have been honed to catch subtle patterns in the universe, patterns that point to where hypotheses and theories could be developed. Even the best physicist or chemist starts out with gut feelings that lead towards the real discoveries. It is dishonest to deny these sorts of things, it’s just the way that people work.

I think that a great failure of the American Structuralist school in linguistics was to fetishize science, especially in the form of “discovery procedures”. A browse of Zellig Harris’s Methods in Structural Linguistics (1951) shows how the process of investigating a language is reduced to a pile of rules. But even Harris admitted that linguists didn’t really work that way:

In practice, linguists take unnumbered short cuts and intuitive or heuristic guesses, and keep many problems about a particular language before them at the same time...

Indeed, if linguists didn’t take those shortcuts or guesses, then it’s very likely that we would all find that languages only varied according to the possibilities inherent in the discovery procedures. Thus the only thing we would discover would be the discovery procedures themselves. That would be boring, as well as uninformative. So why should we go back to that sort of thing again? Why should we have long lists of tests to submit to our informants, laying the language out on the table with probes and scalpels at hand? Instead, like any good field geologist or biologist, tie those shoelaces and start tramping around in the language, looking for things that look odd or out of place. Listen carefully to the rumblings in your gut, because it doesn’t always mean that you’re hungry.

(I apologise for the stew of metaphors.)

Making artificial borders more permeable

2009-06-22T11:33:00.006-10:00

The Jay Treaty (USA & Britain, London, 1794), also known as the “Treaty of Amity, Commerce and Navigation of 1794”, declared and affirmed the right of Native Americans in both the USA and Canada to cross the border between the two nations. Today any Canadian-born Native American with 50% aboriginal blood can live and work in the USA without any immigration restrictions.

The USA has never gotten around to implementing the part about duty-free transport of “proper goods” across the USA—Canada border. For its part, Canada is even less well behaved, with a case that should determine the right of First Nations people to freely cross into Canada stalled in the Supreme Court.

Aside from hoping that the above issues in aboriginal border crossing are resolved soon, I’ve been pondering proposing something to my US Senator and Representatives when I move back to Alaska. (Right now they needn’t listen to me since I’m technically a Hawaiian citizen.) I’d like to see that all aboriginal nations whose traditional territories straddle the Canada—USA border have the following rights:

reasonably unimpeded, expedited access across the border to traditional territories
- this might mean that Tlingits going from New York to Ontario couldn’t expect to be quickly waved through, but they could from Alaska to British Columbia, for example
- essentials of border security would still apply, but regular border-crossers would have some rapid crossing assurance, à la the NEXUS program, but influenced by tribal membership

exemption from duties and tariffs on gifts and customary trade goods (e.g. traditional foodstuffs, indigenous animal products, cultural artifacts and arts)
- this would encourage cultural revitalization, helping revive traditional trade routes
- this would also formalize de facto trade, relieving many people of significant border anxiety
- determining exactly what constitutes customary trade goods would have to be left up to border officials, or beyond that the courts, although some things would be easy enough to give as official examples
- the list would have to be equal in both directions, so if one nation determines something to be a “customary trade good” then the other nation is bound by treaty obligation to accept the definition as well
  - meaning that Canada couldn’t weasel out of allowing aboriginal transport of (small amounts of) firearms, since they were customary trade goods in the past and the USA wouldn’t have much problem with them
- quantities would need to be negotiable, perhaps defined legally defined with a weasel word like “reasonable”, because some goods are traded in bulk (e.g. foods, furs, blankets, clothing, plant products, religious and cultural paraphernalia) but some aren’t or couldn’t be (like tobacco, live plants, live animals, precious metals and minerals)
- some gifts and goods like firearms and ammunition would need to meet existing regulatory standards on the importing side of the border
- it would be reasonable to require sworn statements as to the purpose of importation, and that the trade is with aboriginals and not for wider commerce
- goods would still need to be subject to inspection

permission for regulated cross-border trade in certain legally obtained but restricted goods (e.g. marine mammal products, eagle feathers, migratory waterfowl)
- this is properly part of the previous point, but there are other treaties involved that would interfere and the issues should be made explicit to avoid lengthy court battles

reciprocal aboriginal status in both countries (e.g. for educational institutions, medical services, etc.)
- I am unaware if this is partially the case in the USA for Canadian-born aboriginals
- it is most definitely not the case for USA-born aboriginals in Canada

given tribal membership on one side, a tribal government on the other side has the option of accepting the individual as a citizen
- this would enhance the reciprocity of aboriginal status by clarifying what tribes individuals are enrolled in on both sides
- tribes would have the duty of determining which individuals were enrolled but not resident in their countries, since otherwise enrollment figures would quickly inflate
- cross-border marriages and adoptions would be much simpler given this situation, indeed they might occur more often

expedited review of citizenship applications
- due to cross-border marriages, work, and other cultural connections, there is no doubt that individuals would apply for citizenship in their non-birth country
- individuals shouldn’t have to prove “worthiness” to live with their cousins on the other side
- worries about “welfare floods” could be discounted easily: fix the problem on the other side!

I don’t think that such things are too much to ask. After all, the USA-Canada border is essentially arbitrary in most places, and does not respect the groups who are now divided. Perhaps with some effort the two countries could draw up a new treaty which relieves both nations of existing obligations and clarifies the situation on both sides, making it as equal as possible for citizens of both countries.

The USA can continue to be generous and allow any Canadian First Nations into the USA, but I’m not really considering this. I’d like to see my suggestions applied just to the indigenous nations who are known to have had traditional territories on both sides of the border at the time that the border was enacted. This should be relatively easy to figure out by consulting existing anthropological and linguistic literature, which is pretty extensive for most North American peoples. For example, Iñupiat people didn’t exist in Canada at when the border between Alaska and the Yukon was settled. In contrast, the Gwichʼin certainly did exist on both sides, as they do today. Same for the Slave versus the Mohawk. Having a list of such groups would be a prerequisite for drafting a solid treaty.

In the future, perhaps we might see boats again going up the Taku and Stikine laden with fish, grease, and eggs, and returning with meat, furs, skins, quills, and baskets. Well, more likely that people would drive laden pickups on the roads from Haines and Skagway.

Terminology for indigenous Alaskans

2009-06-21T10:18:00.007-10:00

There’s a lot of confusion on the Intertubes about how indigenous people in Alaska should be referred to. I’ll do my small part to clarify this. I write this in several capacities: as a linguist, as a lifelong Alaskan (though temporarily away from my homeland), and as an Alaska Native.

First of all, there’s the cover term “Alaska Native”. This term refers to any person who is a member of one of the indigenous peoples of Alaska. There are a number of legal definitions, for example that defined in ANCSA. The US Census defines it as “a person having origins in any of the original peoples [of Alaska] and who mantains tribal affiliation or community attachment”. Legally, people who are Alaska Native either have one-quarter or more Alaska Native blood, or are enrolled in a federally recognized tribe in Alaska, with the latter taking precedence. The term is sometimes shortened to “Native”, which also shows up in phrases like “Native rights”, “Native sovereignty”, “Native lands”, “Native conveyance”, etc. Note that capitalization is important. The reversed “Native Alaskans” is dispreferred, particularly because it has no legal meaning. The term “Alaskan Native” is sometimes seen, probably because of nasal assimilation in speech, but again this lacks a legal definition. Google unhelpfully merges searches for “Alaskan Native” with “Alaska Native”, but the latter makes up 4.5 million of the 6 million results for the former.

The next highest level of division among Alaska Natives is not legally defined as far as I am aware, but is instead conventional. This is the distinction between “Indian” and “Eskimo”. The term “Indian” includes all Athabaskan groups in addition to the rainforest peoples east of Copper River: Eyak, Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian. The term Eskimo is somewhat more imprecise, because it has both linguistic and cultural definitions which are not identical. Peoples who are definitely included in the Eskimo category are the Iñupiat, Yupʼik, Siberian Yupik (Yuit), Nunivak Cupʼig, and Chevak Cupʼik. The Sugpiaq (Chugachmiut, Prince William Sound & Kenai Peninsula) and Alutiiq (Koniagmiut, Kodiak Archipelago & Alaska Peninsula) of coastal Southcentral Alaska are sometimes included among the Eskimo because their language is closely related to Central Alaskan Yupʼik, however culturally they are more distinct because of their rainforest environment. (The Sugpiaq/Alutiiq are sometimes described with a cover term “Pacific Yupik”, but neither group seems to prefer this label.) The division between Indian and Eskimo leaves out one group, the Aleut, who fit into neither category. To be inclusive, one might say “Eskimo, Aleut, and Indian”.

It must be clarified that in Alaska the term “Eskimo” is not derogatory. This is in contrast to the usual sense in Canada, where Inuit people are often offended by the term. The Canadian attitude has begun to take hold in the more educated populace of the United States, who also refer to Alaskan Eskimo people as “Inuit”. This is a mistake however, because the term “Inuit” in fact includes only the Iñupiat in Alaska, and excludes the Yupʼik and their bretheren. Using the term “Inuit” is thus irritating, and sometimes even offensive, to non-Iñupiat Eskimos in Alaska. Indeed, even the Iñupiat may be irritated by the term “Inuit” because their geographic, cultural, and political distance from the Canadian peoples is great enough that many would rather not be lumped together with them. Thus in Alaska “Eskimo” is a neutral term, and one which is well accepted by the people it describes. In contrast, “Inuit” is misplaced and should generally be avoided.

Below the level of Indian/Eskimo/Aleut, there is another level of cover terms before specific tribes are named. This level is not consistent between the various groups. The Aleut for example consitute one monolithic people, although subdivisions can be found according to region, village, and to include those resident in Russia (the Commander Islands Aleut). Probably the two most common divisions in popular use are the Athabaskan and Yupik, the latter of which is somewhat controversial.

Athabaskans in Alaska constitute a small portion of the Northern Athabaskan peoples whose traditional territories extend as far west as Manitoba and the Northwest Territories where the Chipewyan (Dëne Sųłiné) still dwell, and as far south as the Fraser and Thompson Rivers in British Columbia where the Chilcotin (Tŝilhqotʼin) live and the Nicola once dwelled. In Alaska the term Athabaskan refers to thirteen different tribes who live in the Interior, and all of whom have close linguistic and cultural connections. This term is spelled in a number of different ways, an issue that I wrote about previously.

The Athabaskan group is rather easy, but the Yupik group is harder to define. In one sense the term covers a linguistic group, anyone who speaks a Yupik language. This is at odds with both cultural and geographic definitions, however. Usually the term applies to the Central Alaskan Yupʼik, as well as to the Cupʼig, Cupʼik, and sometimes the Siberian Yupik. Linguistically the Sugpiaq/Alutiiq are included, but culturally and geographically they are very distinct. Also, some Cupʼik and Cupʼig people are vocal about their desire to be distinct from the Yupʼik, and extend this to the term Yupik as well. In general the term is usually taken to mean something like “Eskimo who aren’t Iñupiaq”, always excluding the Aleut and sometimes excluding the Sugpiaq/Alutiiq.

There is no simple term in use that refers to the Indians of Southeast Alaska, which comprises the Eyak, Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian. A clumsy phrase “Southeast Alaska Natives” is sometimes used, as are “Southeast People” and rarely “Southeast Indians”. None of these are in widespread use, perhaps because the Tlingit are the dominant population and reference is often made directly to them. The term “Southeasterner” applies to non-Natives as well, and so is not a Native-specific term. One often hears “T&H” used in reference to the governmental entity officially called the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, or CCTHITA. The Tsimshian are not part of this tribal merger because they have the distinction of possessing the sole reservation in Alaska that encompasses Annette Island. Although culturally close to the Tlingit, the Eyak are often excluded from “Southeast Alaska Natives”. Their position at the mouth of the Copper River puts them within the ANCSA region controlled by Chugach Alaska Corp., and so today they are somewhat unfairly lumped together with their historic enemies, the Chugachmiut (Sugpiaq).

Other terminology, mostly pertaining to specific tribes and groups, is fairly well documented. I’m not going to go into those details here, especially since I’d be in unfamiliar territory when it comes to Eskimo subsubgroups. My knowledge of Eskimo culture is largely due to random conversations with people at ANMC, and so doesn’t go very deep. (My Eskimo friends are mostly city folk or townies...)

Chʼa Aadéi Yéi Unatéeg̱aa

2009-06-03T16:14:00.006-10:00

While the rain comes down in buckets here in Honolulu as if I were actually back in Wrangell, I thought I’d post this little bit of opinion that I offered to Roby Littlefield Koolyéik’s mailing list. It’s from a question by Duane Aucoin Gastántʼ about the famous song called «Chʼa aadéi yéi unatéeg̱aa», which was offered by the Lukaax̱.ádi clan for use by all Tlingit people.

Attached is the official word from Nora Dauenhauer, Kheixwnéi, of the Lukaaxh.ádi. To some extent, hers is the final, definitive statement on the matter. As she says, people must keep in mind that it is not a “national anthem”, but is instead a passionate eulogy as well as a paean to the land of our people.

I don’t think people should have to stand up for it (or take off hats, or whatever), but if people *want* to do so I don't see why it’s a problem. I personally don’t, but I probably would doff my hat if I was wearing one.

I think the most important thing in singing it publically is to provide an explanation to the audience about the song's history and meaning. This is traditionally done with all songs, but it’s especially important when using the song of another people, whether
they are a different clan or a different nation. In explaining it succinctly to non-Tlingit, a good way to describe it might be as a song that laments the deaths of our elders and knowledge, and praises the beauty of our land.

Understanding the meaning of the song is critical for knowing when to sing it, and knowing that it is not for fun or to be taken lightly. (There are plenty of other fun songs out there.) «Chʼa aadéi yéi unatéeghaa» is what is called yadáli at shí, a “heavy” or “weighty” song, meaning that it is great at.óow that must be treated with
respect to the same extent as a clan’s crest hats, robes, or totem poles.

Another thing is that singers should try their hardest to sing the song properly and pronounce the words correctly. Again this applies to all songs, but such a yadáli at shí as «Chʼa aadéi yéi unatéeghaa» deserves this moreso than most songs. I know that pronouncing Tlingit is hard, and few of us nonnative speakers have the unparalleled gift of being able to speak Tlingit fluently, but nonetheless people must try their utmost to do so when singing, otherwise it's trivializing the songs and the work of the people who composed them.

Yéi áwé axh déixh (násʼk?) sínts,
Dzéiwsh
Deisheetaan, Kakháakʼw Hít

ATHAPBASCKAN-L

2009-04-20T16:43:00.003-10:00

Back in October I started a new mailing list devoted to the Atha[pb]as[ck]an language family and its relatives. It is graciously hosted by the LINGUIST List. There used to be a list called ATHLANG-L but it has been dead for a few years, and I wanted to fill the gap. I sent out an FYI to the LINGUIST List but have only seen about 20 subscribers since. I recently spammed a bunch of folks I know who work on languages in the family, and so the subscription numbers are rising slightly, but I figured I’d advertise it here as well.

The name is a pun on the four spellings of /ˌæ.θəˈbæs.kən/. I put the first pair of letters in reverse alphabetic order, and the second pair in forward alphabetic order. That way nobody can claim my favoritism over any particular spelling. (I have already admitted that I prefer “Athabaskan”, but I’m trying to be fair here.)

So if you’re interested in Atha[pb]as[ck]an languages, Na-Dené languages, Dene-Yeniseic languages, or things related, feel free to subscribe. The list is very low traffic, but I’d like to see more discussion and announcements from people other than myself...

Subscription site

LSA Institute 2009

2009-03-22T10:10:00.002-10:00

I’m not bragging, but I am overjoyed to be the recipient of a fellowship to attend the LSA 2009 Linguistic Institute at Berkeley. I’ve chosen these classes for the six weeks:

LSA 314: Semantics with Chris Barker

LSA 103: Athabaskan linguistic structures with Keren Rice

LSA 113: Field phonetics and phonetic typology with Ian Maddieson

LSA 115: Language documentation and language communities with Siri G. Tuttle

LSA 212: Language contact and language change with Sarah Thomason

LSA 219 Morphological innovation and change with Adam Albright

LSA 236: Wakashan linguistic structures with Emmon Bach and Patricia A. Shaw

I really wanted to take Leanne Hinton’s language revitalization class, Frank Seifart’s class on nominal classification, and Nichols, Ringe, and Warnow’s class on computational methods in historical linguistics, but the classes overlap so there’s just no way.

Pollapese

2009-02-07T16:54:00.002-10:00

In field methods class we’re working with Paulina Yourupi on Pollapese, the language of Pollap Island in Chuuk State, Federated States of Micronesia. According to Ethnologue Pollapese isn’t a distinct language but is instead a dialect of Puluwatese. I did some hunting around and found Sam Elbert’s grammar and dictionary of Puluwatese, and put together a Blust’s Swadesh list for it to compare with what we’re doing with Paulina on her language. Paulina thinks that Pollapese is distinct from Puluwatese, and she says the intelligibility is not all that great. I get the impression it’s something like Swedish and Nynorsk Norwegian, or maybe Galician and Spanish. The differences between the two Swadesh lists are fairly numerous, so I’m inclined to agree with her on that basis.

Since it’s only the beginning of the semester we’ve only done phonetics, and our writeups are due next week. Pollapese has a pretty ordinary consonant system, although it does have labio-velarized bilabial stops (something most Micronesian languages have), /pʷ/ and /mʷ/. These two have some interesting effects on the vowels, and word finally they’re more like [pᶭ] and [mᶭ] where only velarization is preserved, e.g. /uːmʷ/ → [ʔuːmᶭ] “oven”. The really interesting thing is that it has initial geminates, which are almost impossible for me to hear. I figured that speakers would differentiate them via visual cues, since that’s what I’ve been doing for them. When watching a speaker you can see the articulatory muscles shift below the jaw, and the length of time between this movement and the release can reliably lead to differentiating them. But Paulina doesn’t rely on visual cues, because I had my back turned to her and tried two forms, one with initial geminate and one without, and she knew the difference purely by sound. Ken Rehg suspects there’s a difference in the release that is audible, but we need some spectrograms to really tell.

The vowels in Pollapese are pretty difficult. It’s got the usual cardinal vowels, but also a couple of uncommon ones. There’s a high central rounded vowel /ʉ/, but no unrounded one (Puluwatese is supposed to be the reverse). There’s a close-mid central rounded vowel /ɵ/, which is apparently comparable to Puluwatese’s /ə/ (or more likely /ɘ/). Figuring out /ɵ/ was challenging, since the central position makes it seem to wiggle all over the chart, and the rounding makes me want to hear [œ] or [ø] instead. Especially frustrating for me is the three vowels /ɛ/, /æ/, and /a/, which seem to have overlapping ranges so that it’s really hard for a nonnative speaker to even tell them apart. Long vowels diphthongize readily, making it confusing for me given that there are also two vowel sequences that aren’t diphthongs.

Being a Micronesian language I’m sure the morphology is going to be pretty cool. We’ve already figured out direct and indirect possession, which requires noun classifiers for the indirect forms. Pronouns are pretty simple, with just 1{SG, PL.INC, PL.EXC}, 2{SG, PL}, and 3{SG, PL}. I actually expected duals, but there aren’t any. Reduplication is pretty apparent in a lot of the words we’ve gathered, and it’s not exactly the usual form but is instead the rather complicated Micronesian reduplication.

Pronominal argument hypothesis

2009-02-01T10:37:00.006-10:00

One of my current projects is applying generative syntax to Tlingit, something which Seth Cable has been at for a while now. He's been treating Tlingit much like any other language, where NPs are arguments of Vs. But Tlingit is not really that simple (surprise!), and it seems to be amenable to an analysis according the Pronominal Argument Hypothesis. This idea was first advanced by Eloise Jelinek back in 1984 in an article in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory titled "Empty categories, case, and configurationality", and it has been argued continuously since then.

What she and Ken Hale termed "non-configurational" languages are those which have a number of features that set them apart from the more typical "configurational" languages. In particular, non-configurational languages have free phrase order (inaccurately called "free word order"), where the various phrases in a sentence can come in any order rather than simple SOV, SVO, VSO, or the like. Supporting this free phrase order is the extensive use of what appear to be agreement affixes on the verb, indexing at least the S and O arguments if not others like instrumentals, locatives, etc. There are a couple of other things but I'm going to ignore them for the moment.

The Pronominal Argument Hypothesis (PAH) says that instead of having independent NPs which are the arguments of the verb, the agreement affixes in the verb are actually the real arguments. These are thus not agreement affixes, but actual pronouns. Furthermore, the sentence can consist of just a verb and no other words, and there are no invisible constituents like pro which take the place of arguments.

The PAH has profound implications for languages like Tlingit, and for theoretical linguistics as well. What it means for Tlingit is that the verb is no longer a thing formed by morphological rules and processes, but is instead constructed by syntax. That is, in Tlingit the verb morphology is the syntax, aside from the other stuff that floats around the core of a sentence.

I'm only in the early phases of exploring how the PAH can be applied to Tlingit, so I don't have anything interesting to report yet. But I'll put up some examples in the near future, after I've finished with my literature survey.

Bibliography

Cable, Seth. "Covert A-scrambling in Tlingit". In Lyon, John (ed.) Papers for the 43rd International Conference on Salish and Neighboring Languages. UBC Working Papers in Linguistics. Vancouver: University of British Columbia.

Carnie, Andrew; Harley, Heidi; & Willie, MaryAnn. 2003. Formal approaches to function in grammar: In honor of Eloise Jelinek. Vol. 62 in Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ISBN 1-58811-348-5.

Jelinek, Eloise. 1984. "Empty categories, case, and configurationality". Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 2.1:39-76.

Jelinek, Eloise; & Demers, Richard. 1994. "Predicates and pronominal arguments in Straits Salish". Language 70.4:697-736.

LeSourd, Philip. "Problems for the pronominal argument hypothesis in Maliseet-Passamaquoddy". Language 82.3:486-514.

Haa Lingít Yoo Xh'atángi

2008-06-29T18:01:00.003-10:00

Lance Xh'unei A. Twitchell has started an interesting new site for collaborative exploration and discussion of the Tlingit language. It’s rather simply entitled Haa Lingít Yoo Xh'atángi, which translates crudely to “our Tlingit thus speech”, and is the conventional phrase describing the Tlingit language in Tlingit. This is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, but he’s just gone and done it. It’s one of those web BBS things, running on PunBB which is a minimalist reinterpretation of the usual phpBB-style web forum.

I’ve already started spamming up the place with a bunch of mindless blather about Tlingit linguistics. The neat idea Lance has is to bring all the academics and nerds like me together with the teachers and learners who don’t have the fancy linguistic education to be able to read Jeff Leer’s byzantine prose. Hopefully as more people sign up the place will see more commentary from others besides me and Lance, and it will grow into a useful online community helping to support Tlingit language documentation and revitalization. Until then it’s mostly me throwing bits to the webcrawler gods.

Athabaskan, Athapascan, and everything in between

2008-06-29T17:33:00.006-10:00

One of the more annoying things about working in the Na-Dene language family is that nobody can agree on how to spell the name pronounced in English as /æθəˈbæskən/. There are four ways which can be described with this convenient regular expression: Atha[bp]as[ck]an. I was wondering what the popularity of the various spellings was, and of course it came to me to simply ask Google.

The results (29 July 2008):

about 210,000 for athapascan

about 206,000 for athabaskan

about 150,000 for athabascan

about 77,700 for athapaskan

So it would seem that, at least on teh World Wide Interweb Supertubeway, the most popular spelling of the name is “Athapascan”. This is at odds with my personal choice, which is the second most popular “Athabaskan”, and what I tend to see according to my fallible perception as the most common spelling in linguistics articles.

Notice something interesting about the results: no one spelling is clearly obscure. Certainly “Athapaskan” is less common, but it’s not strongly marginalized in the way that “Klinkit” might be for describing the Tlingit people and language.

The main problem with this variety of spellings is that it impedes searching through databases for information about Athabaskan stuff. If I want to hunt for “Athabaskan verb” in the Library of Congress catalog I have to construct this messy query:

Athabaskan OR Athabascan OR Athapaskan OR Athapascan AND verb

You can imagine that the irritation increases when you’re looking for something complicated like “classificatory verbs OR noun classification OR classifier”. And since search engines don’t usually let you specify levels of nesting, all you can do is hope that it knows what you mean. Your only other option is to repeat the search four different times with all the same keywords except for Atha[bp]as[ck]an.

The original spelling, due to Albert Gallatin, was “Athabascan”. Per Wikipedia,

The word Athabaskan is an anglicized version of the Woods Cree name for Lake Athabasca (aðapaskāw, “[where] there are plants one after another”) in Canada.

In classic Wikipedia fashion, the article goes on to quote Gallatin and references a document which doesn’t appear in its bibliography. It’s probably from Synopsis of the Indian tribes within the United States, Cambridge: University Press, 1836. The title page is online as part of a map collection.

Tlingit classifier

2008-05-15T18:41:00.005-10:00

While pondering the verb “study” and how it could be translated into Tlingit, I realized something neat about the Tlingit classifier in loanwords. There’s a book titled Aan Aduspelled X’úx’ which is a guide to basic Tlingit literacy for native speakers. Notice that aduspelled there. It could be analyzed as a-du-0-spelled which is |3ABS-3PL.ERG-CL[−D,0,−I]-spell|, with a zero classifier. But it could also be analyzed as a-du-s-pelled which is |3abs-3pl.erg-CL[−D,s,−I]-spell|, which has an S classifier.

If this analysis was workable, then maybe “study” could be borrowed similarly. In fact, “study” would be a better potential borrowing because it more closely fits Tlingit phonemics. So perhaps yéi kḵwastádi “I will study”, broken down as yéi-ga-u-ḡa-x̱a-s-tádi |THUS-GA-IRR-GHA-1SG.ERG-CL[−D,s,−I]-study|. I’ll have to run it by a native speaker to see if they like it.

It could be however that I’m abusing the S classifier, and that things like aduspelled have unproductive paradigms. Something more for the fieldwork questions pile.

Orthographic development

2008-03-07T14:24:00.002-10:00

I’m writing a paper on the history of written and transcribed Tlingit which I hope to present at this year’s LSA summer conference. It’s been in the works for some time, and I’ve had a lot of fun digging through old texts and ordering weird things through interlibrary loan, feeling like a historian.

One of the fun things about Tlingit is that it’s currently written in three different orthographies, and there are still publications in two other orthographies as well. Hence my desire to develop a chrestomathy of all the various written forms of the language.

Unfortunately now I’m at the stage in the paper where I need to say substantive things about orthography design, and how certain decisions impact readability and learnability. The research on this is pretty hard to find, and very little of it has actual data, mostly being opinion and case studies.

Budgerigar

2008-02-23T16:32:00.006-10:00

Veronica got a bird from a friend leaving the island last week, and it’s a cute little sky-blue male budgerigar, also known as a parakeet to North Americans. He hasn’t received a name yet, both of us still persisting in calling him “birdie” or the like, although I occasionally call him ts’íts’k’w in Tlingit. That’s from ts’ítsk’w, which segments out as ts’íts-k’w “bird-DIM”. I add an additional ejective to the final affricate there for euphony, and because I have a hard time not spreading ejectivity gratuitously.

Since Nick Thieberger is now resident in our department at UHM, the Australian name struck me as worthy of a little research. Nick is from Melbourne, and has worked with a number of Australian languages as well as his current research on South Efate in Vanuatu. He recommended an interesting little book, Australian Aboriginal words in English: their origin and meaning by R.M.W. Dixon, W.S. Ramson, and Mandy Thomas. It’s a neat little book, meant to professionally counter the proliferation of inaccurate etymologies of the Australian lexicon. Here’s the entry on “budgerigar” (p. 89).

budgerigar /ˈbʌdʒəriga/

Also betcherrygah, betshiregah, and budgerygah.

[Possibly mispronunciation of Kamilaroi, eastern New South Wales gijirrigaa.]

The small green and yellow parrot Melopsittacus undulatus, occuring in drier mainland areas, often in large flocks. The budgerigar has become extremely popular throughout the world as a cage-bird. It is also called the love-bird, shell parrot, warbling grass parakeet and zebra parrot. The shortened form budgie is very common. [1840]

The “mispronunciation” struck me as highly curious. Why would English speakers, who have a perfectly good voiced velar stop in their phoneme inventories, make such a peculiar substitution of [b] for [g]? I figured it would be worth doing a little more looking. I then stumbled upon this thought provoking entry in the back of the very same book (p. 205).

budgeree /ˈbʌdʒəri/ /ˈbʊdʒəri/

Also with much variety, as boodgery, boojeri, boojery, and budgeri. Australian pidgin.

[Dharuk, Sydney region, adjective bujiri ‘good, right’.]

Good, pretty, fine. [1790]

It doesn’t take much consideration to see that a blend of the two terms gijirigaa and bujiri is easily possible here, what with sharing two syllables. My suspicion is that the folk etymology “good eats” arose after the blend formed, and people familiar with the term “budgeree” applied its meaning. The reason for the blend arising in the first place remains obscure.

Sedaadakh'éedaa

2006-10-26T09:52:00.000-10:00

[In response to a poem by Yéilk'.]

Haa kooxéedaa litséen.
Ach awé, Lingít kooxéedaa.
Haa jín litseen,
Lingít jín ayá.
Khu.aa haa toowú tsú litséen.
Ach awé, Lingít toowú.

I use a Tlingit laptop,
it’s called “Kayaaní” –
Kayaaní yóo xhayasáakw.
Patterns like the veins on leaves,
the lines on skin
where beads will be sewn.
Complex patterns on paper
drawn with our pencils
make beautiful art when
we work them alive.
When I got this laptop
it wasn’t any different from someone else’s.
But now I use it and it’s very different,
now it’s Tlingit.
I made it that way
like a Tlingit pencil
because I speak Tlingit to it.
I write Tlingit on it,
and I yell at it in Tlingit
when I don’t like it.

I live in a strange land here.
There’s no winter here,
no spring here,
and the geese don’t tell us when fall arrives.
But I’m not alone
here in eternal summer,
there are many who come to see me.
When the salmon have finished their journey,
when the berries are falling off the bushes,
that’s when they come to see me.

The people here call my friends “nā kōlea”,
konéiya yóo duwasáakw.
Gwshé Lingít xh'éinaxh
sedaadakh'éedaa yóo duwasáakw.
In English they are called “plovers”.
They remind me of us Tlingit in many ways –
they dance in the grass,
they defend their land,
they eat everything they can,
and they share with every friend.

The people here, Kanáka khwáan,
Yookhkha khwáan,
dark cormorant people,
these kanaka hawai‘i,
they have funny things to say about them.
Sedaadakh'éedaa come every winter,
they sit around and get fat,
then they fly back to Alaska
and raise their children.
People who come here and only take
but never give back,
and then leave,
these people are called “nā kōlea”.
“Being ka kōlea”
means you take and then leave.
Where have we heard that before?

When the white men came
they did a strange thing –
they shot at my friends.
Why? Nobody knows.
They don’t taste good,
they don’t have pretty feathers,
and they aren’t even as big as a crow.
But white men shot at them anyway,
and the Hawaiians remember this.
“Shooting at kōlea”
means you’re doing something crazy.
Have we heard that before?

But they are my friends,
these birds who visit me.
I sing to them
and watch them dance to my songs.
I made them my cousins
when we first met,
I paid them with food.
Now they’ve come again
and I ask them “How is home?”
They always say the same thing –
“Cold!”
That’s all you can expect
from someone who runs away from winter.
But they bring with them
the scent of wet leaves,
the feeling of cold sea breezes,
and the crackle of frosty grass underfoot.

Soon enough I’ll be full,
ready to go back
and raise children with my fat.
I’ll be just another kōlea,
and I’ll sing songs to remember this place
when I build my nest.
I hope I can give something back,
even if I never return.
But at least I won’t shoot them,
even if they don’t like our winters.
Déi awé,
that’s where I’m going to end this.

I hate microfiche.

2006-10-23T12:50:00.000-10:00

I would like to take a moment to declare and expound upon my hatred for microﬁche. Microﬁche and the associated microﬁlm have been an extraordinarily popular means for a few decades now to store large numbers of documents in a small space. Naturally this appeals to librarians who have invested an inordinate amount of money in storing ﬁche of documents like government reports and unpublished dissertations.

As a researcher I despise microﬁche. Fiche can only be read by magnifying readers which cost oodles of money for the expensive optics involved. No sane library would let a person take ﬁche off of the premises because they are expensive and hard to replace. Furthermore, it’s unlikely that a patron will have a ﬁche reader handy at home. The only way to make ﬁche documents easily readable is to photocopy them with a ﬁche printer. Unsurprisingly, libraries charge ridiculous amounts of money per page for these copies. (At Hamilton Library it’s 10¢ per page, 3¢ more than an ordinary copy.) Of course libraries have good reason to do so, since the toner and readers cost a lot and there is a limited market for them.

The most irritating thing however is that computing technology has advanced to the point where it’s very easy to convert microﬁche to digital form. A halfway decent scanner capable of 2400 dpi or better can produce images of 8.5×11 inch pages at 300 dpi which is perfectly readable onscreen in a PDF. The process is not easily automated however, unless you can afford the überexpensive “microﬁche scanner” which is basically a ﬂatbed scanner with a very small sheet feeder and some software that knows how to crop pages in the scan.

Right now I have several >200 page ﬁches of various dissertations that I need to use regularly. I can’t afford to go into the library every day just to read them, and 200 pages at 10¢ per page is nothing like cheap, particularly when it means sitting at the reader for four or ﬁve hours, and the cost doesn’t include the inevitable mistakes and duplicates. $30 or $40 just for making copies is pretty painful, particularly when you know that you’ll spend a stupid amount of time making them.

I’m thinking of asking if I can borrow the ﬂatbed scanner from the Linguistics Dept. computer lab. Then I can take it to the library, hook it up to my laptop, and do the scans right there. Maybe 10 min per ﬁche scan, most of it spent doing other things while the scanner runs. At seven or eight ﬁche, this is only a couple hours of time. Much less than the 20 hours it would take for individual copies, and much much cheaper. I can just carry the scans around on my computer, print out whatever pages I want, and not worry about needing to go back for replacement copies. The real question is whether the library will let me do this. And if so, why the heck don’t they get a scanner themselves?

Indigenous Anthropology

2006-09-15T16:24:00.000-10:00

I had an interesting encounter this summer while in Sitka doing “field research”, and I just had an inspiration about it as well as an enlightening conversation with one of my professors.

Roby Littlefield, bless her, was taking me around town to meet a few of the native Tlingit speakers living in Sitka. She took me to see Daasdeeyaa, naa tlaa of the L'úknaxh.ádi in Sitka, and introduced me to her in Tlingit. Of course I was shy and didn’t say much, just muttered a little bit in Tlingit and disclaimed some of Roby’s praise. Then Daasdeeyaa asked me a few questions about my family and clan, what I was doing in school, and what I wanted to do in studying Tlingit. No surprises there. But she went on to ask me something really jaw-dropping, to wit whether I’d be able to compensate her monetarily when working with her on the Tlingit language.

I tried very hard to not be astonished, but I’m afraid it slipped out anyway. That’s not a surprising thing to be asked if one is an anthropologist or linguist talking to Native Americans. Most communities are used to being investigated and are quite familiar with the routine practice of compensating informants and consultants for their time during research studies. It’s a normal thing to ask of an outsider. But I’m not an outsider! She was inquisitive about my Tlingit background, and seemed quite satisfied once I recited the appropriate amount of genealogy. She seemed to have accepted me as Tlingit much as any of the other elders I met during that trip, with an introduction from Roby and some minor display of cultural background sufficing to prove that I’m not just some random pretending to be something. Being asked for compensation for working on the language, our language, just seemed inexcusably rude to me. I felt like an object, or a cipher. This bothered me for the rest of the trip, but I let it pass and since then sort of forgot about it.

Yesterday, however, I was reading a book on language documentation which had an essay covering ethical problems for documenters of endangered languages. Naturally compensation was mentioned among many other subjects. That brought the summer situation back to mind, and I brooded about it for a while. This morning after finishing my Hawaiian language homework I was reading that book again and it struck me – I’m in school to learn solutions for these sorts of things. So I went to see Michael Forman, my professor in linguistic anthropology, and told him the tale.

I’m intensely gratified that he was willing to discuss the issue with me. He told me right off that his initial assumption was that she was testing me. He felt that she was aware of my having feet in different worlds, and that asking me something which was perfectly acceptable in one but palpably rude in the other was a way of probing where my sympathies ultimately lied. He felt that my astonished response was probably just what she was looking for, or at least something like what she was hoping I would do. He pointed out that if I had reacted like an ordinary field researcher, saying something like “Well yes, there’s a good possibility of payment depending on my grant schedule and we can take up this matter when I have solid funding”, she would have seen me as less Tlingit and more Anthropologist. However my response was more Tlingit and less Anthropologist.

We went on to discuss some connected cultural issues, such as the opposition of clans and the intermoiety payment system. He agreed that it might be possible that she could expect return payment for labor in the context of clan opposition, but that in this case the labor involved is fairly minimal and very important for so many other reasons that it’s unlikely she was seriously considering this. He went on to discuss how the very problem that Daasdeeyaa addressed in her probe is something which I will have to deal with in the future, that of being at once both a linguist/anthropologist trained in the American tradition and a Tlingit man faced with the continuation of the language and culture.

So although initially I hadn’t seriously considered it, now the notion of indigenous anthropology is something I’m planning to look into deeply. I’m not sure where to start, but given that there’s a fairly well educated Hawaiian community here I’m bound to meet a few fellow people floating around campus. As well, it seems that the anthro department offers a course titled “Indigenous Anthropology” which is probably something I should take in the near future.

As to dealing with Daasdeeyaa, I have some time to think it over. She’s a very important woman in the community, and as a knowledgeable speaker she is vital to my future. There are many different things I could do at this point, and I want to make sure that I’ve given thought to as many possible paths as I can before I make a decision. Indeed, I think I’ll consult with a few other elders before I do anything, just to ensure that I’m considering it clearly. However, my gut feeling tells me that I should not wander around wearing my linguistic hat, but instead keep my metaphorical spruce-root hat firmly tied around my chin.

Scholarship versus clarity

2006-07-28T13:26:00.000-10:00

I haven’t written in a while, but it’s because I spend all my time writing other things rather than blogging. This is too bad, since I could really be a prodigious blogger if I tried. Anyway, today’s topic is linguistics (surprise surprise), in particular linguistic writing.

The primary source of information on Tlingit grammar is Jeff Leer’s 1991 magnum opus The Schetic Categories of the Tlingit Verb, his PhD dissertation on the tense-mood-aspect (TMA) system. Since there is so little documentation of Tlingit grammar, Leer was forced to write a great deal about the language outside of his thesis, and as such it forms a fairly useful reference for us Tlingit scholars. This means that we spend quite a bit of time poring over it, like it or not. Unfortunately, “like it” is far less common than “not”.

Leer is an exemplar of the secret tragedy of the discipline, a linguist who can’t write. I’m not judging this solely on his dissertation, even his papers as recent as 2000 are tough to dissect and digest. Leer is unfortunately not alone in the field as there are a remarkable number of extremely bad writers working on studies of language. Take Chomsky. (Please!) His books Government and Binding and The Minimalist Program are really execrable pieces of writing. His logic may be clear, but he clouds it in such a dense academic style that it’s almost impenetrable even to the initiated.

Why are so many linguists such horrible writers? I’ve had experience reading mathematics and computation books which were fantastically well written despite their density, so I know that technical content is not a sufficient explanation. I’ve seen some wonderful writing in linguistics as well, for example Marianne Mithun’s The Languages of Native North America. This book is partly a catalog of interesting linguistic features found in native North American languages, and partly a catalog of language families extant on the continent. That sounds like a pretty dull topic, and in a lot of ways it really is even to someone like me who cares deeply about the subject. Nonetheless, her writing is clear, precise, and lucid, and even page-turning in places.

My suspicion is that most linguists are verbally skillful, but speech competence does not correlate perfectly with writing competence. Since most linguists are good speakers in their native tongues, they find it easy to communicate ideas with one another in person. Since they feel skilled in this form of communication they neglect other forms of communication, perversely the essential skill of writing in particular. It’s only natural for a linguist to not bother practicing nonlinguistic communication systems, but it’s a shameful travesty for one to lack skills in writing.

On Tagmemics

2006-02-12T10:00:00.000-10:00

The first thorough linguistic analysis on Tlingit was done by Franz Boas in 1917, titled Grammatical Notes on the Language of the Tlingit Indians and published by the University of Pennsylvania. He got a few things right, but he got a lot more wrong, to be expected from such an early work on such a peculiar language. The next attempt at analyzing the whole language – as opposed to cursory investigations of phonology or the like – didn’t arrive for another fifty years. This was the fundamental works of Constance Naish and Gillian Story in their master’s dissertations A Syntactic Study of Tlingit and A Morphological Study of Tlingit presented in 1966 at the School of Oriental and African Languages (!) of the University of London.

Naish and Story were sent to document Tlingit by SIL International, then called the “Summer Institute of Linguistics”. That’s a fairly innocuous-seeming name, hiding the fact that they are the linguistic arm of the Wycliffe Bible Translators, a group which works to bring “civilization” and Christianity to the heathen masses around the world.

Many linguists and anthropologists today have mixed feelings about SIL. On the one hand they have expended an enormous amount of money and energy on the documentation of rare, marginalized, and endangered languages. On the other hand their mission is unabashedly geared towards Christian protestant evangelical missionism. They have been accused of being involved in various nefarious activities as outlined in the Wikipedia article, and of repeatedly going against the consensus opinions of the larger community of linguistic sciences. On the gripping hand they have generally behaved very respectfully towards the languages and cultures of the people they work with, so it’s hard to point out specific instances for castigation.

One thing that isn’t widely mentioned outside of linguistic circles however is their use of a particularly curious theoretical framework for most if not all of their research and data gathering. It’s called “tagmemics”, invented by Kenneth Pike and described in his ambitiously named 1967 exegesis Language in Relation to a Unified Theory of the Structure of Human Behavior. Kenneth Pike was a founding member of SIL, and as such tagmemics was the accepted theoretical doctrine among SIL linguists. Virtually everything to come out of SIL from the late sixties onward is firmly couched in its framework, and this represents an enormous amount of fieldwork on a wide variety of otherwise undocumented languages.

Tagmemics was never particularly popular outside of SIL and the institutions where its adherents taught. It has been gracefully fading from view since Pike’s expiry and its consequent loss of its leading figure. As such it is becoming a lost art among linguists, known only to those who are forced to encounter it in the dusty stacks of obscure language grammars. The most unfortunate part of this situation is that understanding the theory is absolutely essential to decoding the reams of data described in it, and the entire system uses a myriad of unorthodox terms and unfamiliar assumptions.

When I first mentioned tagmemics after coming to the University of Hawai'i Mānoa I met with concerned sighs from professors and grunts of disgust from grad students. One particular memory which sticks in my mind is that of Valerie crying “Oh no, not that!” and then attempting to console me with her classic Gallic charm. Since the Linguistics Department at UHM specializes in working on endangered and poorly documented languages throughout the Pacific and Southeast Asia, it's not a mere footnote in history to practitioners here. However, nobody here wants to approach the subject with me any further than wishing me good luck and suggesting I do library research on it.

So I’ve checked out a short stack of books on tagmemics, the handful of introductory materials that have somehow found their way onto the P shelves at Hamilton Library. As I work my way through them I’ll try to distill my notes into something useful for the Wikipedia stub. I’ve already compiled a hefty list of abbreviations and symbols along with their equally cryptic descriptions, and I’m debating on attaching it to the article as an appendix. Maybe I can come to understand what people dislike about the system, and I will get plenty of practical experience about why it’s a bad idea to write up your data in any particular theoretical framework.

And great woe is unto me, for I recently discovered that Naish and Story were among the authors of the lab manuals and instructional books for the early tagmemics curriculum at SIL. Not only did they know tagmemics, they knew it well enough to participate in its theoretical construction. No wonder those dissertations are so hard to read.

Ab initio

2006-02-12T09:26:00.000-10:00

This is a first post.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_post

Nothing good can come of it.