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50-479: "Nechako" is an anglicization of netʃa koh , its name in the indigenous Carrier language which means "big river". The Nechako Plateau has four official subranges: The Fawnie, Nechako and Telegraph Ranges are low ranges of hills, but the Quanchus Range is a very mountainous near-island within the arms of the Nechako Reservoir (formerly a chain of lakes). Much of this area of the plateau is in Tweedsmuir North Provincial Park and Protected Area . The Nechako Plateau

100-462: A basic motion verb, such as "walk" has derivatives meaning "walk into water", "walk into a hole", "walk ashore", "walk around" and "walk erroneously" (that is, "get lost walking"). The basic paradigm of a verb consists of three persons in three numbers, with the tenses and modes Imperfective, Perfective, Future, and Optative, in both affirmative and negative forms. Notice how the stem of the verb changes with tense/aspect/mode and negation, e.g. /ke/ in

150-692: A contrast between apico-alveolar and lamino-dental series of fricatives and affricates. For other speakers, the lamino-dental series have merged with the apico-alveolar series. The contrast had become so obscure that when, in 1995, after many years of effort, the Carrier Bible Fellowship finally published he Stuart Lake dialect translation of the New Testament, they omitted marking of the lamino-dental series. Carrier has six surface-phonemic vowels: Front and back vowels are tense in open syllables and lax in closed syllables. The reduced vowel /ə/

200-409: A handful of nouns with irregular plurals: /ʔat/ "wife" is also found with the more regular plural /ʔatke/ . /tʼet/ is sometimes found with the double plural /tʼedəkune/ . /-dəs/ "parent, ancestor" is also found with the undoubled plural /-dəske/ . The exceptions to the statement that only nouns denoting human beings and dogs have distinct plurals are all nouns derived from verbs. The form of

250-584: A location in the Interior of British Columbia , Canada is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Dakelh language The Dakelh ( ᑕᗸᒡ ) or Carrier language is a Northern Athabaskan language . It is named after the Dakelh people, a First Nations people of the Central Interior of British Columbia , Canada, for whom Carrier has been a common English name derived from French explorers naming of

300-401: A noun phrase or pronoun . Verb-internal negation has low scope , meaning that, with certain exceptions, the scope of negation is restricted to the verb itself. Thus, a sentence like: is acceptable since the object marker ( underlyingly just /ʔ/ , with epenthetic /ə/ changed to [e] because it immediately precedes /ʔ/ in the disjunct zone) is part of the verb, but is bizarre because

350-579: A number or quantifier; otherwise, it remains ambiguous. With very limited exceptions, only nouns denoting human beings and dogs have distinct plural forms. The most common way of forming the plural is by adding the suffix /-ne/ . Thus, we have /dəne/ "man", /dənene/ "men", /dakelh/ "Dakelh person", /dakelhne/ "Dakelh people". Nouns derived from verbs by adding the suffix /-ən/ form their plurals by replacing /-ən/ with /-ne/ . Thus we have /hodəɬʔeh-ən/ "teacher", /hodəɬʔeh-ne/ "teachers". A smaller but nonetheless considerable number of nouns take

400-453: A plural meaning. Indeed, there is a strong tendency to avoid overt marking of the plural if plurality is indicated in other ways, in particular, by an immediately following possessed noun. For example, the full form of "Dakelh language" is /dakeɬne bəɣəni/ , literally "the words of the Dakelh people". Here /dakeɬne/ consists of /dakeɬ/ "Dakelh person with the plural suffix /-ne/ , and /bəɣəni/

450-413: A possessive prefix or as part of a compound, such as /kekˈetɬˈu/ ('sock'). To refer to an inalienably possessed noun without specifying its owner, the indefinite possessive prefix /ʔ/ is used. The approximate equivalent of "a foot" is therefore /ʔəke/ . To describe alienable possession of an inalienably possessed noun, the regular possessive forms are used with the indefinite form as a base rather than

500-399: A singular or dual object, another that takes a strictly plural object. Since the word "prey" is derived from "kill", there are a singular-dual form /beˈdə z əlɡɣe-i/ , based on the stem /-ɡhe/ "kill one or two" and a plural form /beˈdəɣan-i/ , based on the stem /ɣan/ "kill three or more". The other case in which the underlying verb induces a number distinction in the derived noun is when

550-459: A strong articulation, [f͈] and [v͈] , to better distinguish them from weaker /ɸ/ and /β/ . In some dialects of Irish and Scottish Gaelic , there is a contrast between [l, lʲ, n, nʲ] and [ɫˑ, ʎˑ, nˠˑ, ɲˑ] . Again, the former set have sometimes been described as lax and the latter set as tense. It is not clear what phonetic characteristics other than greater duration would then be associated with tenseness. Some researchers have argued that

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600-451: A three-way contrast among stops and affricates; the three series are often transcribed as [p t tɕ k] - [pʰ tʰ tɕʰ kʰ] - [p͈ t͈ t͈ɕ k͈] . The contrast between the [p] series and the [p͈] series is sometimes said to be a function of tenseness: the former are lax and the latter tense. In this case the definition of "tense" would have to include greater glottal tension; see Korean phonology . In Ewe , /f/ and /v/ are articulated with

650-448: Is a distinction between first person dual and first person plural possessors: In such dialects, while the 1d and 1p are distinct, the 1d is the same as the 2dp. There are five additional third person possessive forms: The areal form is used when the possessor is saliently areal, spatial, or an extent of time. The reflexive is used when the subject of the clause and the possessor are the same, whether singular or plural. The disjoint form

700-416: Is almost always found on inalienably possessed nouns. These are nouns that may not occur as words in their own right. In Dakelh, the great majority of such nouns are either body parts or kinship terms. For example, although we can abstract the stem /ke/ from forms for "foot" such as /ske/ ('my foot'), /neke/ ('our feet'), and /uke/ ('his foot'), /ke/ by itself is not a word. It must either occur with

750-421: Is in fact very similar to the prototypical pitch-accent language, Japanese . In Dakeł, a word may or may not have a tonic syllable. If it does not, the pitch rises gradually across the phonological word. If it does have a tonic syllable, then that syllable has a high pitch, the following syllable falls to a low pitch, and subsequent syllables until the end of the prosodic unit are also low pitched. Any syllable in

800-702: Is no phonetic correlation to the tense–lax opposition. In many Germanic languages , such as RP English , and Standard German tense vowels are longer in duration than lax vowels, but in Scots , Scottish English , General American English , and Icelandic , there is no such correlation. The standard variety of Yiddish has only lax vowels, and no tense vowels. Germanic languages prefer tense vowels in open syllables (so-called free vowels ) and lax vowels in closed syllables (so-called checked vowels ). Occasionally, tenseness has been used to distinguish pairs of contrasting consonants in languages. Korean , for example, has

850-417: Is not consistently head-final: in head-external relative clauses, the relative clause follows the head noun. Carrier has both head-internal and head-external relative clauses. The subject usually precedes the object if one is present. Carrier is an 'everything-drop' language. A verb can form a grammatical sentence by itself. It is not in general necessary for the subject or object to be expressed overtly by

900-501: Is quite variable in its realization: it approaches [i] immediately preceding /j/ and approaches [a] when either or both adjacent consonants are laryngeal . Unlike in some related languages, there is no distinctive nasalization; that is, Carrier does not contrast oral and nasal vowels . The great majority of instances of /ə/ are predictable from the phonotactics, introduced in order to create an acceptable syllable structure. The remaining instances are all found in certain forms of

950-819: Is subphonemic and was never used by Carrier people themselves, though many learned to read the Prayerbook in it. (citation) Dakelh nouns are inflected for possession, including the person and number of the possessor. Possession is marked by prefixation as well, in some cases, as changes in the noun stem. Number is marked only on nouns denoting human beings and dogs, and these distinguish only singular and plural. Some dialects of Dakelh have no number distinctions in nouns at all. A noun has six basic personal possessive forms: Reading row-wise, these mean "my stick", "our stick", "your (1 person) stick", "your (two or more people) stick", "his/her/its stick", and "their stick". However, in some dialects, such as that of Stony Creek, there

1000-615: Is the Carrier Linguistic Committee writing system, a Roman-based system developed in the 1960s by missionaries and a group of Carrier people with whom they worked. The CLC writing system was designed to be typed on a standard English typewriter. It uses numerous digraphs and trigraphs to write the many Carrier consonants not found in English, e.g. ⟨gh⟩ for [ɣ] and ⟨lh⟩ for [ɬ] , with an apostrophe to mark glottalization, e.g. ⟨ts'⟩ for

1050-464: Is the lax vowels that are more advanced, or a single language may be inconsistent between front and back or high and mid vowels (Ladefoged and Maddieson 1996, 302–4). The traditional definition, that tense vowels are produced with more "muscular tension" than lax vowels, has not been confirmed by phonetic experiments. Another hypothesis is that lax vowels are more centralized than tense vowels. There are also linguists (Lass 1976, 1-39) who believe that there

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1100-465: Is the third person plural possessed form of /xəni/ "words". The plurality of the possessor is indicated by the use of the third person duo-plural possessive prefix /bə/ instead of the third person singular /u/ . The form /dakeɬ bəɣəni/ , in which /dakeɬ/ is not overtly plural-marked, is much preferred. Most postpositions are inflected for their object in a manner closely resembling the marking of possession on nouns. The inflected forms are used when

1150-497: Is typical. More specifically, tenseness is the pronunciation of a vowel with less centralization (i.e. either more fronting or more backing), longer duration , and narrower mouth width (with the tongue being perhaps more raised ) compared with another vowel. The opposite quality to tenseness is known as laxness or laxing : the pronunciation of a vowel with relatively more centralization, shorter duration, and more widening (perhaps even lowering). Contrasts between two vowels on

1200-421: Is used when both subject and possessor are third person singular and are not the same. The plural disjoint form is used when the subject is third person plural, the possessor is third person singular, and the possessor is not one of the individuals in the subject group. The reciprocal form, meaning "each other's", was used into the early twentieth century but has since fallen out of use. The twelfth possessive form

1250-560: The Northwest Company explorers led by Alexander Mackenzie , first passed through the territory of the Carriers' Sekani neighbours. The received view of the origin of the Sekani name is that it refers to the distinctive Carrier mortuary practice in which a widow carried her husband's ashes on her back during the period of mourning. An alternative hypothesis is that it refers to the fact that

1300-512: The absolutive argument (the subject of an intransitive verb or the object of a transitive verb) is round, stick-like, or areal/spatial, respectively. Some verbs can take any or none of these prefixes. Others can take only a subset or none at all. For example, the verb "to be white" has the forms: In general terms, Carrier is a head-final language: the verb comes at the end of the clause , adpositions are postpositions rather than prepositions, and complementizers follow their clause. However, it

1350-402: The 1930s. Today few in the community use or read it. A good deal of scholarly material, together with the first edition of the 'Little Catechism' and the third edition of a 'Prayerbook', is written in the writing system used by the missionary priest Adrien-Gabriel Morice in his scholarly work. This writing system was a somewhat idiosyncratic version of the phonetic transcription of the time. It

1400-547: The Dakeł, unlike the Sekani, participated in trade with the coast, which required packing loads of goods over the Grease Trails . All dialects of Carrier have essentially the same consonant system, which is shown in this chart. There are three series of stops and affricates: aspirated, unaspirated (written voiced in the practical orthography), and ejective. As of the late 20th century, some conservative older speakers of Carrier had

1450-629: The Imperfective Affirmative but /koh/ in the Imperfective Negative and /ki/ in the Perfective Affirmative. In addition to the stem, the forms below contain the prefix /n/ "around, in a loop". Dakelh has multiple systems of noun classification , several of which are realized on the verb. One of these, the system of absolutive or gender classifiers, consists of the prefixes /n/ , /d/ , and /xʷ/ , which indicate that

1500-497: The bare stem. Thus, to say "my foot" if the foot is not your own foot but is, for example, a rabbit's foot, you would say [seʔəke] . (The fact that the vowel is [e] rather than [ə] is the result of a phonological rule that changes /ə/ to [e] immediately preceding /ʔ/ in noun prefixes and in the disjunct zone of the verb.) Most Dakelh nouns do not have distinct singular and plural forms. How many items are under discussion may be inferred from context or may be specified by using

1550-461: The basis of tenseness, and even phonemic contrasts , are common in many languages, including English . For example, in most English dialects, beet and bit are contrasted by the vowel sound being tense in the first word but not the second; i.e., / iː / (as in beet ) is the tense counterpart to the lax / ɪ / (as in bit ); the same is true of / uː / (as in kook ) versus / ʊ / (as in cook ). Unlike most distinctive features ,

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1600-440: The coda with the exception of a few instances of /ts/ . Palatals are also absent from the coda. Word-internally consonant clusters occur only at the juncture between two syllables. Tautosyllablic clusters are found only word-initially, where any of the onset consonants may be preceded by /s/ or /ɬ/ . Nasals at all points of articulation are syllabic word-initially preceding a consonant. The writing system in general use today

1650-584: The consonant is laminal denti-alveolar rather than apical alveolar. An acute accent is sometimes used to mark high tone, but tone is not routinely written in Dakeł. The southern dialect uses a modified version of the alphabet. Carrier was formerly written in a writing system inspired by the Cree Syllabics known variously as the Carrier syllabics or Déné Syllabics. This writing system was widely used for several decades from its inception in 1885 but began to fade in

1700-619: The contrast in German , traditionally described as voice ( [p t k] vs. [b d ɡ] ), is in fact better analyzed as tenseness since the latter set is voiceless in Southern German. German linguists call the distinction fortis and lenis rather than tense and lax. Tenseness is especially used to explain stop consonants of the Alemannic German dialects because they have two series of them that are identically voiceless and unaspirated. However, it

1750-416: The ejective alveolar affricate. Letters generally have their English rather than European values. For example, ⟨u⟩ represents /ə/ while ⟨oo⟩ represents /u/ . The only diacritic it uses in its standard form is the underscore, which is written under the sibilants ( ⟨s̲⟩ , ⟨z̲⟩ , ⟨t̲s̲⟩ , and ⟨d̲z̲⟩ ) to indicate that

1800-535: The feature [tense] can be interpreted only relatively, often with a perception of greater tension or pressure in the mouth, which, in a language like English, contrasts between two corresponding vowel types: a tense vowel and a lax vowel . An example in Vietnamese is the letters ă and â representing lax vowels, and the letters a and ơ representing the corresponding tense vowels. Some languages like Spanish are often considered as having only tense vowels, but since

1850-424: The high pitch of jəsꜜ "wolf" is lost: In general, Carrier syllables are maximally CVC. All consonants, other than the extremely rare /ŋ/ , are found in syllable-initial position. The possible coda consonants, on the other hand, are restricted. All sonorants except for the extremely rare palatal nasal may occur in the coda, but of the obstruents only the pulmonic unaspirated series occur. Affricates are not found in

1900-486: The object /dekʼa/ "tobacco" is a separate noun phrase. The bizarreness results from the fact that the negative morphology of the verb does not have scope over the NP object. In order to bring the object within the scope of negation, it must follow the negative particle /ʔaw : Lax vowel In phonology , tenseness or tensing is, most broadly, the pronunciation of a sound with greater muscular effort or constriction than

1950-457: The object is not a full noun phrase. Here is the paradigm of /ba/ "for": The postposition /be/ "by means of" is unusual in being uninflectable. At the other extreme, the postposition /ɬ/ "together with" is always inflected, even when its object is an overt noun phrase. Whereas the reciprocal possessive form of nouns is obsolete, the reciprocal object of postpositions remains in common use. The form /ɬba/ , for example, may be used in roughly

2000-665: The outlet of the Nechako Reservoir at Kenny Dam and ends at Cheslatta Falls , an 18m drop which is the last leg of the Cheslatta River . The area is populated with white spruce , subalpine fir , and (at higher elevations) Engelmann spruce trees. The plateau is protected from the Pacific weather systems by the Coast Mountains and Hazelton Mountains , resulting in dry, warm summers and dry, cold winters. This article about

2050-504: The people. Dakelh people speak two related languages. One, Babine-Witsuwit'en , is sometimes referred to as Northern Carrier . The other includes what are sometimes referred to as Central Carrier and Southern Carrier . The name 'Carrier' is a translation of the Sekani name 'aɣele' "people who carry things around on their backs", due to the fact that the first Europeans to learn of the Carrier,

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2100-416: The plural suffix /-ke/ , e.g. /ɬi/ "dog", /ɬike/ "dogs". This is the usual way of making the plural of kinship terms, e.g. /nelu/ "our mother", /neluke/ "our mothers". The plural suffix /-ne/ is occasionally heard on kinship terms, but the suffix /-ke/ is more widely used and generally considered to be more correct. The plural of "dog" is invariably /ɬike/ , never /ɬine/ . In addition, there are

2150-484: The quality of tenseness is not a phonemic feature in this language, it cannot be applied to describe its vowels in any meaningful way. The term has also occasionally been used to describe contrasts in consonants . In general, tense vowels are more close (and correspondingly have lower first formants ) than their lax counterparts. Tense vowels are sometimes claimed to be articulated with a more advanced tongue root than lax vowels, but this varies, and in some languages, it

2200-501: The same contexts as the English phrase "for each other". The Dakelh verb is extremely complex. A single verb may have hundreds of thousands of forms. Verbs are marked for the person and number of the subject, object, and indirect object, tense, mood, numerous aspectual categories, and negation . The subjects of verbs, and in some dialects objects and indirect objects, distinguish singular, dual, and plural numbers. Verbs are also marked for numerous "derivational" categories. For example,

2250-587: The underlying verb may vary with number in such a way as to create distinct number forms for the derived noun. Where the deverbal noun is derived by means of the agentive suffix / -ən/ the verb is almost invariably in the third person singular form, which is to say, not marked for number. Plurality in these forms is normally marked only by the use of the duo-plural agentive suffix /-ne/ in place of singular /-ən/ . Zero-derived agentive nouns may show plurality by means of subject markers. For example, "shaman" may be either /dəjən-ən/ , with an overt agentive suffix, but

2300-423: The verb contains a prefix such as distributive /n/ . For example, /nati/ "cross-road" has the duo-plural /nanəti/ . Similarly, /ˈədzatbeti/ "rabbit trail" has the duo-plural /ˈədzatbenəti/ . Such examples arise because the "noun" /ti/ "road, trail" is really a verb and takes the distributive prefix. Even if a noun possesses a plural form, it is not necessary for it to take on the plural form in order to have

2350-409: The verb where the morphology requires some vowel to be present. In most if not all dialects there are surface-phonemic distinctions of vowel length . However, all of the long vowels that create such distinctions are morphophonemically derived. There is no need to represent vowel length in lexical representations. Carrier has a very simple tone system of the type often described as pitch accent —it

2400-399: The word may carry the accent; if it is the final syllable, then the first syllable of the following word is low pitched, even if it would otherwise be tonic. Representing this phonemic drop in pitch with the downstep symbol ꜜ , there is a contrast between the surface tone following an unaccented word xoh "goose" compared with the accented word yesꜜ "wolf": However, after a tonic syllable,

2450-456: The zero-marked /dəjən/ is more common. There are two plural forms: /dəjən-ne/ , with the duo-plural agentive suffix, and /hədəjən/ , in which the zero-marked form is based on the plural form of the verb. There are two other cases in which the underlying verb may lead to a number distinction in the derived nouns. One is when the verb is restricted in the number of its absolutive argument. For example, there are two verbs "to kill", one that takes

2500-574: Was created by lava flowing over older volcanic and sedimentary rock . Large ice sheets then carved the bedrock into rolling hills. The Nechako Canyon , also called the Grand Canyon of the Nechako, is now in a provincial protected area due to its striking landscape, formed by the course of the Nechako River carving into the plateau's lava and lined with pinnacles and overhanging cliff. It begins at

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