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65-494: A narrower connection specifically between North American Na-Dené and Siberian Yeniseian (the Dené–Yeniseian languages hypothesis) was proposed by Edward Vajda in 2008, and has met with some acceptance within the community of professional linguists. The validity of the rest of the family, however, is viewed as doubtful or rejected by nearly all historical linguists . Classifications similar to Dené–Caucasian were put forward in

130-645: A clade with Sino-Tibetan, which he called Sino-Yeniseian . The Sino-Caucasian hypothesis has been expanded by others to " Dene–Caucasian " to include the Na-Dene languages of North America, Burushaski , Basque and, occasionally, Etruscan . A narrower binary Dene–Yeniseian family has recently been well received. The validity of the rest of the family, however, is viewed as doubtful or rejected by nearly all historical linguists . An updated tree by Georgiy Starostin now groups Na-Dene with Sino-Tibetan and Yeniseian with Burushaski ( Karasuk hypothesis). A link between

195-631: A Proto-Dene-Yeniseian homeland located in eastern Siberia around the Amur and Aldan Rivers . These people would have been hunter-gatherers , as are the modern Yeniseians, but unlike nearly all other Siberian groups (except for some Paleosiberian peoples located around the Pacific Rim of far eastern Siberia, who appear genetically unrelated to the Yeniseians). Eventually all descendants in Eurasia were eliminated by

260-517: A borrowing parameter and allowed synonyms. A combination of the various improvements is given in Sankoff's "Fully Parameterised Lexicostatistics". In 1972, Sankoff in a biological context developed a model of genetic divergence of populations. Embleton (1981) derives a simplified version of that in a linguistic context. She carries out a number of simulations using this which are shown to give good results. Improvements in statistical methodology related to

325-437: A common origin) in the word lists is then measured. The larger the percentage of cognates, the more recently the two languages being compared are presumed to have separated. Below is an example of a basic word list composed of basic Turkish words and their English translations. Determining word lists rely on morpheme decay or change in vocabulary. Morpheme decay must stay at a constant rate for glottochronology to be applied to

390-503: A completely different branch of science, phylogenetics ; the study of changes in DNA over time sparked a recent renewed interest. The new methods are more robust than the earlier ones because they calibrate points on the tree with known historical events and smooth the rates of change across them. As such, they no longer require the assumption of a constant rate of change ( Gray & Atkinson 2003 ). Another attempt to introduce such modifications

455-616: A complex agglutinative prefixing verb structure, which differs from most of the other languages in Asia and—to a lesser extent—North America. The first peer-reviewed publication to propose the existence of a distinct Dene–Yeniseian family was written by the macrofamily supporter Merritt Ruhlen (1998) in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , United States. However, Vajda (2010a :34) states, without specifying which ones, that 26 of

520-576: A formal method of linguistic analysis becomes valid with the help of several important modifications. Thus, inhomogeneities in the replacement rate were dealt with by Van der Merwe (1966) by splitting the word list into classes each with their own rate, while Dyen, James and Cole (1967) allowed each meaning to have its own rate. Simultaneous estimation of divergence time and replacement rate was studied by Kruskal, Dyen and Black. Brainard (1970) allowed for chance cognation, and drift effects were introduced by Gleason (1959). Sankoff (1973) suggested introducing

585-499: A genealogical relationship between Na-Dene and Yeniseian". The Ket people themselves have received the Dene–Yeniseian hypothesis well, being aware of similar features they observe on documentaries on television. Dene–Yeniseian is generally classified as follows: Yeniseian Tlingit Eyak Athabaskan Using computational phylogenetic methods, Sicoli & Holton (2014) proposed that Dene–Yeniseian did not split into

650-480: A language. This leads to a critique of the glottochronologic formula because some linguists argue that the morpheme decay rate is not guaranteed to stay the same throughout history. American Linguist Robert Lees obtained a value for the "glottochronological constant" ( r ) of words by considering the known changes in 13 pairs of languages using the 200 word list. He obtained a value of 0.805 ± 0.0176 with 90% confidence. For his 100-word list Swadesh obtained

715-600: A link between Sino-Tibetan, Na-Dene, and Yeniseian to be plausible but did not support the hypothesis that Sino-Tibetan and Na-Dene were related to the Caucasian languages (Sino–Caucasian and Dene–Caucasian). A 2023 analysis by David Bradley using the standard techniques of comparative linguistics supports a distant genetic link between the Sino-Tibetan, Na-Dene, and Yeniseian language families. Bradley argues that any similarities Sino-Tibetan shares with other language families of

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780-500: A list of 200 items, but the refined 100-word list in Swadesh (1955) is much more common among modern day linguists). The core vocabulary was designed to encompass concepts common to every human language such as personal pronouns, body parts, heavenly bodies and living beings, verbs of basic actions, numerals, basic adjectives, kin terms, and natural occurrences and events. Through a basic word list, one eliminates concepts that are specific to

845-581: A particular culture or time period. It has been found through differentiating word lists that the ideal is really impossible and that the meaning set may need to be tailored to the languages being compared. Word lists are not homogenous throughout studies and they are often changed and designed to suit both languages being studied. Linguists find that it is difficult to find a word list where all words used are culturally unbiased. Many alternative word lists have been compiled by other linguists and often use fewer meaning slots. The percentage of cognates (words with

910-466: A possible relation between Yeniseian and Sino–Tibetan, citing several possible cognates . Gao Jingyi (2014) identified twelve Sinitic and Yeniseian shared etymologies that belonged to the basic vocabulary, and argued that these Sino-Yeniseian etymologies could not be loans from either language into the other. The " Sino-Caucasian " hypothesis of Sergei Starostin posits that the Yeniseian languages form

975-431: A range of topics ( archaeology , prehistory , ethnogeography , genetics , kinship , and folklore ) by experts in these fields. The evidence offered by Vajda includes over 110 proposed cognate morphemes and about ten homologous prefix and suffix positions of the verbs. Vajda compared the existing reconstructions of Proto-Yeniseian and Proto-Na-Dene, augmented the reconstructions based on the apparent relationship between

1040-826: A result, he agreed with the consensus belief that lexical evidence of a genetic relationship becomes virtually undetectable after about 8,000 to 10,000 years of linguistic separation, but suggested that certain sorts of complex morphology may remain stable beyond this time period. Further evidence for Dene–Yeniseian is in Vajda (2013a) . Vajda presents comparanda for an ancient Dene-Yeniseian possessive connector prefix (possibly *ŋ) that appears in idiosyncratic ways in Dene (or Athabaskan), Eyak, Tlingit, and Yeniseian nouns, postpositions, directionals, and demonstratives. Vajda also suggests one new lexical cognate: PA directional *ñəs-d "ahead", "out on open water" and Yeniseian root *es "open space". In terms of

1105-469: A robust tree that does not depend on the initial choice of the "tree prior", i.e. the model for the tree generation. In addition, Wilson (2023) has argued that a cluster of related technology words in proto-Athabaskan and Yeniseian languages suggests a linguistic continuum between the two continents that extended well into the Common Era , clouding any conclusive evidence for the back-migration model. Below

1170-408: A singular common ancestor. His methods also purported to provide information on when ancient languages may have existed. Despite multiple studies and literature containing the information of glottochronology, it is not widely used today and is surrounded with controversy. Glottochronology tracks language separation from thousands of years ago but many linguists are skeptical of the concept because it

1235-449: A study he did with Johanna Nichols investigating the history of complex prefixing verb structures in various families possessing morphology of this sort. His conclusion was that, contrary to prevailing belief, such structures are often preserved intact with little change over several thousands of years, and as a result may actually be stronger evidence of a genetic connection than the lexical relationships that are traditionally sought. As

1300-409: A value of 0.86, the higher value reflecting the elimination of semantically unstable words. The constant is related to the retention rate of words by the following formula: L is the rate of replacement, ln represents the natural logarithm and r is the glottochronological constant. The basic formula of glottochronology in its shortest form is this: t = a given period of time from one stage of

1365-546: Is a proposed language family consisting of the Yeniseian languages of central Siberia and the Na-Dene languages of northwestern North America. Reception among experts has been somewhat favorable; thus, Dene–Yeniseian has been called "the first demonstration of a genealogical link between Old World and New World language families that meets the standards of traditional comparative - historical linguistics ". The main cause of skepticism among other linguists, geneticists and researchers from related fields can be attributed to

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1430-459: Is a table of Ket and Navajo words. As noted by Tailleur and Werner, some of the earliest proposals of genetic relations of Yeniseian, by M.A. Castrén (1856), James Byrne (1892), and G.J. Ramstedt (1907), suggested that Yeniseian was a northern relative of the Sino–Tibetan languages. These ideas were followed much later by Kai Donner and Karl Bouda. A 2008 study found further evidence for

1495-417: Is deemed only as "plausible" by linguistic scholars at large. Researchers in historical linguistics have long sought to link the various known language families around the world into macrofamilies . The putative relationship between Na-Dene and Yeniseian families was first proposed by Alfredo Trombetti in 1923. Much of the early evidence adduced has been typological ; in particular, both families have

1560-425: Is more of a 'probability' rather than a 'certainty.' On the other hand, some linguists may say that glottochronology is gaining traction because of its relatedness to archaeological dates. Glottochronology is not as accurate as archaeological data, but some linguists still believe that it can provide a solid estimate. Over time many different extensions of the Swadesh method evolved; however, Swadesh's original method

1625-402: Is most suggestive, but most compelling evidence for actual relationship comes from those sound correspondences which can be accounted for by independently motivated regular sound changes". Campbell (2024: 365) doubts the validity of Dene–Yeniseian, saying that "neither the lexical evidence with putative sound correspondences nor the morphological evidence adduced has proven sufficient to support

1690-705: Is old, and its history is reviewed in Hymes (1973) and Wells (1973). In some sense, glottochronology is a reconstruction of history and can often be closely related to archaeology. Many linguistic studies find the success of glottochronology to be found alongside archaeological data. Glottochronology itself dates back to the mid-20th century. An introduction to the subject is given in Embleton (1986) and in McMahon and McMahon (2005). Glottochronology has been controversial ever since, partly because of issues of accuracy but also because of

1755-525: Is so well known that 'glottochronology' is usually associated with him. The original method of glottochronology presumed that the core vocabulary of a language is replaced at a constant (or constant average) rate across all languages and cultures and so can be used to measure the passage of time. The process makes use of a list of lexical terms and morphemes which are similar to multiple languages. Lists were compiled by Morris Swadesh and assumed to be resistant against borrowing (originally designed in 1952 as

1820-455: Is the critical review of the volume of collected papers by Lyle Campbell and a response by Vajda published in late 2011 that imply that the proposal is not settled at the present time. Other reviews and notices of the volume appeared in 2011 and 2012 by Keren Rice , Jared Diamond , and Michael Dunn. Sicoli and Holton 2014, applying Bayesian analysis to typological data from Dene and Yeniseian languages, constructed phylogenies that suggest that

1885-408: Is the part of lexicostatistics which involves comparative linguistics and deals with the chronological relationship between languages. The idea was developed by Morris Swadesh in the 1950s in his article on Salish internal relationships. He developed the idea under two assumptions: there indeed exists a relatively stable basic vocabulary (referred to as Swadesh lists ) in all languages of

1950-567: The Vasconic languages (including Basque, its extinct relative or ancestor Aquitanian , and possibly Iberian ), and in 1997 he proposed the inclusion of Burushaski . The same year, in his article for Mother Tongue , Bengtson concluded that Sumerian might have been a remnant of a distinct subgroup of the Dené–Caucasian languages. In 1998, Vitaly V. Shevoroshkin rejected the Amerind affinity of

2015-567: The Yeniseian languages are the closest known relatives of Burushaski , based on a small number of similarities in grammar and lexicon. The Karasuk theory as proposed by van Driem does not address other language families that are hypothesized to belong to Dené–Caucasian, so whether the Karasuk hypothesis is compatible or not with the Macro-Caucasian hypothesis remains to be investigated. Den%C3%A9%E2%80%93Yeniseian languages Dene–Yeniseian

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2080-583: The "splitters" caricatured as rigid enforcers of orthodoxy willing to "shout down" researchers who disagree with their belief that long-range connections are impossible to establish. At a symposium in Alaska in 2008, Edward Vajda of Western Washington University summarized ten years of research, based on verbal morphology and reconstructions of the proto-languages , indicating that the Yeniseian and Na-Dene families might be related. The summation of Vajda's research

2145-531: The 20th century by Alfredo Trombetti , Edward Sapir , Robert Bleichsteiner , Karl Bouda , E. J. Furnée , René Lafon , Robert Shafer, Olivier Guy Tailleur , Morris Swadesh , Vladimir N. Toporov , and other scholars. Morris Swadesh included all of the members of Dené–Caucasian in a family that he called "Basque-Dennean" (when writing in English, 2006/1971: 223) or " vascodene " (when writing in Spanish, 1959: 114). It

2210-415: The 34 sets of words offered by Ruhlen are coincidental look-alikes, whereas 8 of Ruhlen's word sets follow Vajda's rules of sound correspondences. Michael Fortescue independently suggested the possible existence of a Dene–Yeniseian family in his 1998 book Language Relations Across Bering Strait . He writes, "I have attempted throughout to find a middle way between the cavalier optimism of ' lumpers ' and

2275-512: The Almosan ( Algonquian-Wakashan ) languages, suggesting instead that they had a relationship with Dené–Caucasian. Several years later, he offered a number of lexical and phonological correspondences between the North Caucasian, Salishan , and Wakashan languages , concluding that Salishan and Wakashan may represent a distinct branch of North Caucasian and that their separation from it must postdate

2340-564: The Basque-Dennean hypothesis to Edward Sapir . In the 1980s, Sergei Starostin , using strict linguistic methods (proposing regular phonological correspondences , reconstructions , glottochronology , etc.), became the first to put the idea that the Caucasian, Yeniseian and Sino-Tibetan languages are related on firmer ground. In 1991, Sergei L. Nikolaev added the Na-Dené languages to Starostin's classification. In 1996, John D. Bengtson added

2405-524: The Dene-Yeniseian Workshop at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. There were nine papers, the first new papers on Dene–Yeniseian since the 2010 volume was published. As of July 2012, there are no plans to publish the papers, but video from the workshop is available. Vajda's presentations at the 2012 workshop augmented his proposal with additional linguistic and non-linguistic evidence. He discussed

2470-467: The Dene-Yeniseian connection "more likely represents a radiation out of Beringia with a back migration into Central Asia than a migration from Central Asia or Western Asia to North America ". In 2012, George Starostin questioned the validity of the macrofamily, citing the fact that "Vajda’s 'regular correspondences' are not... properly 'regular' in the classic comparative-historical sense of

2535-499: The East Asia area such as Hmong-Mien , Altaic (which is actually a sprachbund ), Austroasiatic , Kra–Dai , and Austronesian came through contact; but as there has been no recent contact between the Sino-Tibetan, Na-Dene, and Yeniseian language families then any similarities these groups share must be residual. Glottochronology#Modifications Glottochronology (from Attic Greek γλῶττα tongue, language and χρόνος time )

2600-513: The Na–Dene languages and Sino-Tibetan languages, known as Sino-Dene had also been proposed by Edward Sapir . Around 1920 Sapir became convinced that Na-Dene was more closely related to Sino-Tibetan than to other American families. Edward Vadja's Dene–Yeniseian proposal renewed interest among linguists such as Geoffrey Caveney (2014) to look into support for the Sino–Dene hypothesis. Caveney considered

2665-554: The dissolution of the Northeast Caucasian unity (Avar-Andi-Tsezian), which took place around the 2nd or 3rd millennium BC. The Dené–Caucasian family tree and approximate divergence dates (estimated by modified glottochronology ) proposed by S. A. Starostin and his colleagues from the Tower of Babel project: John D. Bengtson groups Basque, Caucasian and Burushaski together in a Macro-Caucasian (earlier Vasco-Caucasian ) family (see

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2730-409: The followers of Sergei Starostin and those of Joseph Greenberg ), (2) Dravidian , which is classed as Nostratic by Starostin's school, and (3) Austronesian (which according to Starostin is indeed related to Dené–Caucasian, but only at the next stage up, which he termed Dené–Daic, and only via Austric (see Starostin's Borean macrofamily ). Swadesh's colleague Mary Haas attributes the origin of

2795-464: The language to another (measured in millennia), c = proportion of wordlist items retained at the end of that period and L = rate of replacement for that word list. One can also therefore formulate: By testing historically verifiable cases in which t is known by nonlinguistic data (such as the approximate distance from Classical Latin to modern Romance languages), Swadesh arrived at the empirical value of approximately 0.14 for L , which means that

2860-665: The male and female lines, respectively, except for mutations. His most compelling DNA evidence is the Q1 Y-chromosomal haplogroup subclade, which he notes arose c. 15,000 years ago and is found in nearly all Native Americans and nearly all of the Yeniseian Ket people (90%), but almost nowhere else in Eurasia except for the Selkup people (65%), who have intermarried with the Ket people for centuries. Using this and other evidence, he proposes

2925-470: The modern Na-Dene people were not similarly threatened. In fact, reindeer herding spread throughout Siberia rather recently and there were many other hunter-gatherer peoples in Siberia in modern times. In his 2012 reply to George Starostin , Vajda clarifies that Dene-Yeniseian "as it currently stands is a hypothesis of language relatedness but not yet a proper hypothesis of language taxonomy". He leaves "open

2990-431: The one by Starostin discussed below. Since its original inception, glottochronology has been rejected by many linguists, mostly Indo-Europeanists of the school of the traditional comparative method . Criticisms have been answered in particular around three points of discussion: Somewhere in between the original concept of Swadesh and the rejection of glottochronology in its entirety lies the idea that glottochronology as

3055-403: The other hand, it shows that glottochronology can really be used only as a serious scientific tool on language families whose historical phonology has been meticulously elaborated (at least to the point of being able to distinguish between cognates and loanwords clearly). The McDonald Institute hosted a conference on the issue of time-depth estimation in 2000. The published papers give an idea of

3120-456: The pessimism of orthodox 'splitters' on the matters of deep genetic relationship between the continents". As alluded to by Fortescue's comment, scientific investigations of long-range language family relationships have been complicated by an ideological dispute between the so-called "lumpers" and "splitters" , with "lumpers" caricatured as bumbling amateurs willing to group together disparate, unrelated families based on chance resemblances and

3185-545: The possibility that either Yeniseian or ND (or both) might have a closer relative elsewhere in Eurasia". At the time of publication, Vajda's proposals had been favorably reviewed by several specialists of Na-Dene and Yeniseian languages—although at times with caution—including Michael Krauss , Jeff Leer , James Kari , and Heinrich Werner , as well as a number of other respected linguists, such as Bernard Comrie , Johanna Nichols , Victor Golla , Michael Fortescue , Eric Hamp , and Bill Poser . One significant exception

3250-459: The question of whether its basis is sound (for example, Bergsland 1958; Bergsland and Vogt 1962; Fodor 1961; Chrétien 1962; Guy 1980). The concerns have been addressed by Dobson et al. (1972), Dyen (1973) and Kruskal, Dyen and Black (1973). The assumption of a single-word replacement rate can distort the divergence-time estimate when borrowed words are included (Thomason and Kaufman 1988). The presentations vary from "Why linguists don't do dates" to

3315-616: The rate of replacement constitutes around 14 words from the 100-wordlist per millennium. This is represented in the table below. Glottochronology was found to work in the case of Indo-European, accounting for 87% of the variance. It is also postulated to work for Afro-Asiatic (Fleming 1973), Chinese (Munro 1978) and Amerind (Stark 1973; Baumhoff and Olmsted 1963). For Amerind, correlations have been obtained with radiocarbon dating and blood groups as well as archaeology. The approach of Gray and Atkinson, as they state, has nothing to do with "glottochronology". The concept of language change

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3380-504: The section on Macro-Caucasian below). According to him, it is as yet premature to propose other nodes or subgroupings, but he notes that Sumerian seems to share the same number of isoglosses with the (geographically) western branches as with the eastern ones: John Bengtson (2008) proposes that, within Dené–Caucasian, the Caucasian languages form a branch together with Basque and Burushaski, based on many shared word roots as well as shared grammar such as: George van Driem has proposed that

3445-507: The sections within Vajda's 2010 paper, this 2013 article can be read as an addition to his §2 (which ends on p. 63). In a subsequent article, Vajda (2013b) , Vajda discusses features in Ket that arose due to prolonged areal contact with suffixal agglutinating languages. In his 2012 presentation, Vajda also addressed non-linguistic evidence, including analyses of Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA haplogroups , which are passed unchanged down

3510-496: The significance of such a link being conclusively proven as there have been numerous attempts of establishing definite linguistic relationships between languages natively spoken throughout Eurasia to those of the indigenous peoples of the Americas and most have been widely rejected due to their being mostly based on superficial if not erroneous phonological , lexicological and morphological similarities. Consequently, Dene-Yeniseian

3575-511: The spread of reindeer -breeding pastoralist peoples (e.g. the speakers of the so-called Altaic languages ) except for the modern Yeniseians, who were able to survive in swampy refuges far to the west along the Yenisei River because it is too mosquito-infested for reindeer to survive easily. Contrarily, the caribou (the North American reindeer population) were never domesticated, and thus

3640-431: The square root represents the reverse trend, the acceleration of replacement as items in the original wordlist "age" and become more prone to shifting their meaning. This formula is obviously more complicated than Swadesh's original one, but, it yields, as shown by Starostin, more credible results than the former and more or less agrees with all the cases of language separation that can be confirmed by historical knowledge. On

3705-499: The two primary branches Na-Dene and Yeniseian, but rather into four primary branches. Yeniseian is upheld as a single branch, whereas Na-Dene is assumed to be paraphyletic, being divided into several primary branches instead. Based on their classification, they suggest that Yeniseian represents a back-migration from Beringia back to Asia. However, this phylogenetic study was criticized as methodologically flawed by Yanovich (2020), since it did not employ sufficient input data to generate

3770-462: The two, and suggested sound changes linking the two into a putative Proto-Dene-Yeniseian language. He suggested that Yeniseian tone differences originated in the presence or absence of glottalized consonants in the syllable coda , as still present in the Na-Dene languages. Vajda and others also note that no compelling evidence has been found linking Haida with either Na-Dene or Yeniseian. As for

3835-587: The way towards research on grammaticalization paths in Yeniseian and Na-Dené". Instead of forming a separate family, Starostin believes that both Yeniseian and Na-Dene are part of a much larger grouping called Dene-Caucasian . Starostin states that the two families are related in a large sense, but there is no special relationship between them that would suffice to create a separate family between these two language families. In 2015, Paul Kiparsky endorsed Dene–Yeniseian, saying that "the morphological parallelism and phonological similarities among corresponding affixes

3900-501: The wider Dene–Caucasian hypothesis (see below), while Vajda did not find the kinds of morphological correspondences with these other families that he did with Yeniseian and Na-Dene, he did not rule out the possibility that such evidence exists, and urges that more work be done. In 2011 Vajda published a short annotated bibliography on Dene–Yeniseian languages. On March 24, 2012, the Alaska Native Language Center hosted

3965-428: The word". He also notes that Vajda's "treatment of the verbal morphology" involves "a tiny handful of intriguing isomorphisms... surrounded by an impenetrable sea of assumptions and highly controversial internal reconstructions that create an illusion of systemic reconstruction where there really is none". Nonetheless, Starostin concedes that Vajda's work "is, by all means, a step forward", and that it "may eventually point

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4030-539: The world; and, any replacements happen in a way analogous to radioactive decay in a constant percentage per time elapsed. Using mathematics and statistics, Swadesh developed an equation to determine when languages separated and give an approximate time of when the separation occurred. His methods aimed to aid linguistic anthropologists by giving them a definitive way to determine a separation date between two languages. The formula provides an approximate number of centuries since two languages were supposed to have separated from

4095-488: Was named for Basque and Navajo , the languages at its geographic extremes. According to Swadesh (1959: 114), it included "Basque, the Caucasian languages, Ural-Altaic, Dravidian, Tibeto-Burman, Chinese, Austronesian, Japanese, Chukchi (Siberia), Eskimo-Aleut, Wakash, and Na-Dene", and possibly "Sumerian". Swadesh's Basque-Dennean thus differed from Dené–Caucasian in including (1) Uralic, Altaic, Japanese, Chukotian, and Eskimo-Aleut (languages which are classed as Eurasiatic by

4160-474: Was performed by the Russian linguist Sergei Starostin , who had proposed the following: The resulting formula, taking into account both the time dependence and the individual stability quotients, looks as follows: In that formula, − Lc reflects the gradual slowing down of the replacement process because of different individual rates since the least stable elements are the first and the quickest to be replaced, and

4225-677: Was published in June 2010 in The Dene–Yeniseian Connection in the Anthropological Papers of the University of Alaska . This 369-page volume, edited by James Kari and Ben Potter, contains papers from the February 26–29, 2008, symposium plus several contributed papers. Accompanying Vajda's lead paper are primary data on Na-Dene historical phonology by Jeff Leer , along with critiques by several linguistic specialists and articles on

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