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40-578: Taiya Inlet received its name in 1868. Taiya was derived from the Tlingit term tayee , which means beneath or underneath . It was also called Dayday Inlet and Dejah Inlet but the latter two names fell out of favor. Taiya Inlet was an important waterway during the Klondike Gold Rush offering passage to the deep-water port of Skagway and, by smaller boat (due to sediment from the Taiya River ),

80-416: A circumflex , and long low vowels are marked with a grave accent. Short low vowels are unmarked. Coastal Tlingit <áa> and <aa> are Inland <â> and <à> respectively. Coastal <éi> and <ei> are Inland <ê> and <è>, Coastal <ée> and <ee> are Inland <î> and <ì>, and Coastal <óo> and <oo> are Inland <û> and <ù>. Word onset

120-605: A crucial missing link for historical linguistics, being equally closely related to neighboring Ahtna and to distant Navajo. With good Eyak data it became possible to establish the existence of the Athabaskan–Eyak–Tlingit language family, though phonological evidence for links to Haida remained elusive. Further, the system of vowel modifications present in Eyak inspired Krauss' theory of Athabaskan tonogenesis, whereby tone develops from vowel constriction. Michael Krauss' lecture at

160-612: A language that became extinct in January 2008. However, he worked on all of the 20 Native languages of Alaska, 18 of which belong to the Na-Dené and Eskimo–Aleut language families. Throughout his career, and most notably with his 1991 address to the Linguistic Society of America , Krauss focused awareness of the global problem of endangered languages . He worked to encourage the documentation and revitalization of endangered languages across

200-541: A location in the Haines Borough, Alaska is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This article about a location in the Municipality of Skagway Borough, Alaska is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Tlingit language The Tlingit language ( English: / ˈ k l ɪ ŋ k ɪ t / KLING -kit ; Lingít Tlingit pronunciation: [ɬɪ̀nkɪ́tʰ] )

240-488: A modern work postdating Naish and Story's work in the 1960s. Michael E. Krauss Michael E. Krauss (August 15, 1934 – August 11, 2019) was an American linguist , professor emeritus , founder and long-time head of the Alaska Native Language Center . The Alaska Native Language Archive is named after him. Krauss is known first and foremost as an Athabaskanist and Eyak language specialist,

280-610: A series of IJAL articles by Krauss in the mid to late 1960s, but it was some time before the existence of an additional Proto-Athabaskan affricate series became widely known. Krauss' largest contribution to language documentation was his work on Eyak , which began in 1961. Eyak was then already the most endangered of the Alaskan languages, and Krauss' work might be considered salvage linguistics today. While some Eyak data had been previously available, they were overlooked by previous scholars, including Edward Sapir . However, Eyak proved to be

320-463: Is murmured , essentially a rapid opening of the glottis once articulation is begun.) The tone values in two-tone dialects can be predicted in some cases from the three-tone values but not the reverse. Earlier, it was hypothesized that the three-tone dialects were older and that the two-tone dialects evolved from them. However, Jeff Leer 's discovery of the Tongass dialect in the late 1970s has shown that

360-668: Is always consonantal in Tlingit and so words never begin with a vowel. Where a vowel would theoretically have occurred, such as by prefixing or compounding, the vowel is always followed by either [ʔ] or [j] . The former is universal in single words, and both are found in word-medial position in compounds. The orthography does not reflect the [ʔ] in word-initial position, but either . or y may be seen in medial position. For example: khu- INDH . OBJ - ÿu- PERF - ÿa- ( 0 , - D , +I)- t'áa hot khu- ÿu- ÿa- t'áa INDH .OBJ- PERF- {(0, -D, +I)}- hot "the weather

400-442: Is because of the influence of English, which makes a similar distinction. For speakers who make the voiced/unvoiced distinction, the distribution is symmetrical with the unaspirated/aspirated distinction among other speakers. Maddieson , Smith, and Bessel (2001) note that all word final non-ejective stops are phonemically unaspirated. That contrasts with the orthography that typically represents them as aspirated stops: t [tʰ] for

440-434: Is common to later hear such speakers producing those forms themselves. It is uncertain whether this assimilation is autochthonous or if it arose from contact with English, but the former is more likely from a purely articulatory perspective. Young speakers and second-language learners are increasingly making a voiced/unvoiced distinction between consonants, rather than the traditional unaspirated/aspirated distinction. That

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480-404: Is divided into roughly five major dialects, all of which are essentially mutually intelligible: The various dialects of Tlingit can be classified roughly into two-tone and three-tone systems. Tongass Tlingit, however, has no tone but a four-way register contrast between short, long, glottalized, and "fading" vowels. (In the last type, the onset of the vowel is articulated normally but the release

520-405: Is hot" Unknown glossing abbreviation(s) ( help ); But when the perfective prefix ÿu- is word-initial, the glottal stop appears to ensure that the word begins with a consonant. ∅- 3 . NEU . OBJ - ÿu- PERF - ÿa- ( 0 , - D , +I)- t'áa hot ∅- ÿu- ÿa- t'áa 3. NEU .OBJ- PERF- {(0, -D, +I)}- hot "it is hot" Unknown glossing abbreviation(s) ( help ); Until

560-410: Is possible but has not been verified that aspirated and unaspirated stops are collapsed into a single phoneme word-finally. Maddieson and colleagues also confirm that the ejective fricatives in Tlingit are in fact true ejectives, despite the widely-held assumption that ejective fricatives are not actually phonetically ejective but are as a sequence of fricative and glottal stop. In Tlingit, at least,

600-653: Is spoken by the Tlingit people of Southeast Alaska and Western Canada and is a branch of the Na-Dene language family . Extensive effort is being put into revitalization programs in Southeast Alaska to revive and preserve the Tlingit language and culture. Missionaries of the Russian Orthodox Church were the first to develop a written version of Tlingit by using the Cyrillic script to record and translate it when

640-602: Is symmetric with an aspirated consonant Cʰ , and a glottalized vowel Vʔ is symmetric with an ejective (glottalized) consonant Cʼ . That implies that the two systems have no familial relationship. Leer (1978) speculated that the maintenance of the pretonal system in Tongass Tlingit was caused by the proximity of its speakers around the Cape Fox area near the mouth of the Portland Canal to speakers of Coastal Tsimshian, just to

680-537: The (Lower) Tanana language . This turned out to be quite fortuitous for scholars of Athabaskan comparative linguistics, as Lower Tanana nicely demonstrated a split in the Proto-Athabaskan *ts- series which was not evidenced in Hoijer's data. Although Krauss immediately communicated this new information to Hoijer, it was not incorporated into Hoijer's major Athabaskan monograph, printed in 1963. The Minto data did appear in

720-527: The Coast Tsimshian dialect . However, Krauss and Leer (1981, p. 165) point out that the fading vowels in Coastal Tsimshian are the surface realization of underlying sequences of vowel and glottalized sonorant, VʔC . That is in contradistinction to the glottal modifications in Tongass Tlingit, which Leer argues are symmetric with the modifications of the consonantal system. Thus, a fading vowel V̤

760-638: The Russian Empire had contact with Alaska and the coast of North America down to Sonoma County, California . After the Alaska Purchase , English-speaking missionaries from the United States developed a written version of the language with the Latin alphabet . The history of Tlingit is poorly known, mostly because there is no written record until the first contact with Europeans around the 1790s. Documentation

800-769: The Taku River and into northern British Columbia and the Yukon around Atlin Lake ( Áa Tleen "Big Lake") and Teslin Lake ( Desleen < Tas Tleen "Big Thread") lake districts, as well as a concentration around Bennett Lake at the end of the Chilkoot Trail ( Jilkhoot ). Otherwise, Tlingit is not found in Canada . Tlingit legend tells that groups of Tlingit once inhabited the Stikine , Nass , and Skeena river valleys during their migrations from

840-506: The Haida linguist John Enrico presented new arguments and reopened the debate. Victor Golla writes in his 2011 California Native Languages , "John Enrico, the contemporary linguist with the deepest knowledge of Haida, continues to believe that a real, if distant, genetic relationship connects Haida to Na-Dene[.]" The Tlingit language is distributed from near the mouth of the Copper River down

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880-492: The Linguistic Society of America conference in January 1991 is often cited as a turning point which refocused the field of linguistics on documentation and inspired a systematic global effort to document the world's linguistic diversity. In his lecture, titled "The world's languages in crisis," Dr. Krauss famously warned: "Obviously we must do some serious rethinking of our priorities, lest linguistics go down in history as

920-596: The Northern dialect, the dominant spoken dialect of Tlingit and the standard for written Tlingit, every vowel may take either high or low tone ; in the orthography high tone is indicated by an acute accent ( áa ) and low tone is unmarked ( aa ). The Southern and Transitional dialects have a mid tone which is unmarked and additional low tone which is marked by a grave accent ( àa ). The Inland Tlingit orthography does not use vowel digraphs. Instead, short high vowels are marked with an acute accent, long high vowels are marked with

960-468: The Tongass vowel system is adequate to predict the tonal features of both the two-tone and three-tone dialects, but none of the tonal dialects could be used to predict vocalic feature distribution in Tongass Tlingit. Thus, Tongass Tlingit is the most conservative of the various dialects of Tlingit, preserving contrasts which have been lost in the other dialects. The fading and glottalized vowels in Tongass Tlingit have also been compared with similar systems in

1000-548: The University of Alaska. But Krauss was clearly aware of and interested in the indigenous languages of Alaska prior to his arrival. In fact, while en route to Alaska he visited Harry Hoijer , the leading scholar of Athabaskan languages at the time. Arriving in Alaska he became immediately aware of the dire situation of the indigenous languages of Alaska and quickly turned his attention to documenting those languages, focusing initially on

1040-745: The University of Paris (1956); and Ph.D. in Linguistics and Celtic from Harvard University (1959). His dissertation was titled "Studies in Irish Gaelic Phonology & Orthography." Krauss conducted fieldwork with Irish in Western Ireland (1956–1958). Krauss conducted fieldwork with Nordic languages in Iceland and in the Faroe Islands (1958–1960). After completing a dissertation on Gaelic languages Krauss arrived in Alaska in 1960 to teach French at

1080-481: The articulation of ejective fricatives includes complete closure of the glottis before frication begins, and the larynx is raised in the same manner as with ejective stops. Characteristically, the ejective fricatives in Tlingit feature a much smaller aperture for frication than is found in ordinary fricatives. That articulation provides increased resistance to counter the continual loss of dynamic airstream pressure. Also, ejective fricatives appear to include tightening of

1120-460: The distances that separate them, both geographic and linguistic. Tlingit is currently classified as a distinct and separate branch of Na-Dene, an indigenous language family of North America . Edward Sapir (1915) argued for its inclusion in the Na-Dené family, a claim that was subsequently debated by Franz Boas (1917), P.E. Goddard (1920), and many other prominent linguists of the time. Studies in

1160-649: The interior. There is a small group of speakers (some 85) in Washington as well. Golla (2007) reported a decreasing population of 500 speakers in Alaska. The First Peoples' Cultural Council (2014) reported 2 speakers in Canada out of an ethnic population of 400. As of 2013, Tlingit courses are available at the University of Alaska Southeast . In April 2014, Alaska HB 216 recognized Tlingit as an official language of Alaska, lending support to language revitalization . Tlingit

1200-676: The late 1960s, Tlingit was written exclusively in phonetic transcription in the works of linguists and anthropologists except for a little-known Cyrillic alphabet used for publications by the Russian Orthodox Church . A number of amateur anthropologists doing extensive work on the Tlingit had no training in linguistics and so left numerous samples in vague and inconsistent transcriptions, the most famous being George T. Emmons . However, such noted anthropologists as Franz Boas , John R. Swanton , and Frederica de Laguna have transcribed Tlingit in various related systems that feature accuracy and consistency but sacrifice readability. Two problems ensue from

1240-506: The late 20th century by (Heinz-)Jürgen Pinnow (1962, 1968, 1970, int. al.) and Michael E. Krauss (1964, 1965, 1969, int. al.) showed a strong connection to Eyak and hence to the Athabaskan languages . Sapir initially proposed a connection between Tlingit and Haida , but the debate over Na-Dene gradually excluded Haida from the discussion. Haida is now considered an isolate , with some borrowing from its long proximity with Tlingit. In 2004,

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1280-421: The more accurate d [t] . There is a wide variation in ordinary speech, ranging from unreleased [t̚] to a very delayed aspiration [tːʰ] . However, the underlying phoneme is certainly unaspirated /t/ since it is consistently produced when the word is suffixed. The orthography usually but not always reflects that: hít "house" is written (du) hídi "(his) house" when marked with the possessive suffix -ÿí . It

1320-489: The multiplicity of transcription systems used for Tlingit. One is that there are many of them, thus requiring any reader to learn each individual system depending on what sources are used. The other is that most transcriptions made before Boas's study of Tlingit have numerous mistakes in them, particularly because of misinterpretations of the short vowels and ejective consonants. Accuracy of transcription can be increased by checking against similar words in other systems, or against

1360-532: The now- ghost town of Dyea . These two boom towns were gateways to the respective White Pass and Chilkoot trails. Currently Taiya Inlet is used for marine transportation (such as the Alaska Marine Highway ) and recreation such as fishing. The Taiya Inlet Watershed Council is also dedicating to its preservation. 59°22′24″N 135°22′10″W  /  59.37333°N 135.36944°W  / 59.37333; -135.36944 This article about

1400-580: The open coast of the Gulf of Alaska and throughout almost all of the islands of the Alexander Archipelago in Southeast Alaska . It is characterized by four or five distinct dialects, but they are mostly mutually intelligible. Almost all of the area where the Tlingit language is endemic is contained within the modern borders of Alaska . The exception is an area known as "Inland Tlingit" that extends up

1440-481: The pharyngeal muscles, which reduces the diameter of the air column and so further increases pressure. That pharyngeal constriction is not true pharyngealization, however, since the diameter is still greater than what is found in pharyngealized consonants in other languages. Tlingit has eight vowels , four vowels further distinguished formally by length . However, the length distinction is often in terms of tenseness rather than length, particularly in rapid speech. For

1480-514: The south. Tlingit has a complex phonological system compared to Indo-European languages such as English or Spanish . It has an almost complete series of ejective consonants accompanying its stop, fricative, and affricate consonants. The only missing consonant in the Tlingit ejective series is [ʃʼ] . The language is also notable for having several laterals but no voiced [l] and for having no labials in most dialects, except for [m] and [p] in recent English loanwords . The consonants in

1520-581: The table are given in the IPA, with the popular orthography equivalents in brackets. Marginal or historical phonemes are given in parentheses. Nasal consonants assimilating with /n/ and the velar and uvular plosives is common among Tlingit-speakers of all dialects. For example, the sequence ng ( /nk/ ) is often heard as [ŋk] and ngh ( /nq/ ) as [ɴq] . Native speakers in a teaching position may admonish learners when they produce these assimilated forms, deriding them as "not Tlingit" or "too English", but it

1560-541: The world. Krauss joined the faculty of the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 1960 and served as director of the Alaska Native Language Center from its inception in 1972 until his retirement in June 2000. He remained active in efforts to document Alaska's Native languages and encouraged awareness of the global problem of endangered languages. Krauss received a B.A. from the University of Chicago (1953); M.A. from Columbia University , (1955); Certificat d'Etudes supérieures from

1600-557: Was sparse and irregular until the early 20th century. The language appears to have spread northward from the Ketchikan – Saxman area towards the Chilkat region since certain conservative features are reduced gradually from south to north. The shared features between the Eyak language , found around the Copper River delta, and Tongass Tlingit , near the Portland Canal , are all the more striking for

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