Navajo Diné bizaad
Spoken in:	USA
Region:	Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado
Total speakers:	178,000
Language family:	Na-Dené  Athabaskan   Southern Athabaskan    Navajo
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	nv
ISO 639-2:	nav
ISO/FDIS 639-3:	nav
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-​based pronunciation key.

Reading Adahooniłigii — The Navajo Language Monthly

Navajo or Navaho (native name: Diné bizaad) is an Athabaskan language (of Na-Dené stock) spoken in the southwest United States by the Navajo people (Diné). It is geographically and linguistically one of the Southern Athabaskan languages (the majority of Athabaskan languages are spoken in northwest Canada and Alaska). Official language(s) English Capital Phoenix Largest city Phoenix Area  Ranked 6th  - Total 113,998 sq mi (295,254 km²)  - Width 310 miles (500 km)  - Length 400 miles (645 km)  - % water 0. ... Capital Santa Fe Largest city Albuquerque Area  Ranked 5th  - Total 121,665 sq mi (315,194 km²)  - Width 342 miles (550 km)  - Length 370 miles (595 km)  - % water 0. ... Official language(s) English Capital Salt Lake City Largest city Salt Lake City Area  Ranked 13th  - Total 84,876 sq mi (219,887 km²)  - Width 270 miles (435 km)  - Length 350 miles (565 km)  - % water 3. ... Official language(s) English Capital Denver Largest city Denver Area  Ranked 8th  - Total 104,185 sq mi (269,837 km²)  - Width 280 miles (451 km)  - Length 380 miles (612 km)  - % water 0. ... Current distribution of Human Language Families Most languages are known to belong to language families. ... Pre-contact distribution of Na-Dené languages (in red) Na-Dené (also Na-Dene, Nadene, Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit) is a Native American language family which includes the Athabaskan languages, Eyak, and Tlingit. ... Athabaskan or Athabascan (also Athapascan or Athapaskan) is the name of a large group of distantly related Native American peoples, also known as the Athabasca Indians or Athapaskes, and of their language family. ... Southern Athabaskan (also Apachean) refers to members of the Athabaskan language family (including Navajo) spoken in the Northern American Southwest. ... ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family. ... ISO 639-2:1998 Codes for the representation of names of languages — Part 2: Alpha-3 code Twenty-two of the languages have two three-letter codes: a code for bibliographic use (ISO 639-2/B) a code for terminological use (ISO 639-2/T). ... ISO 639-3 is in process of development as an international standard for language codes. ... Image File history File links Navaho_USC2000_PHS.svg‎ The language spread of Navaho in the United States according to U. S. Census 2000 and other resources interpreted by research of U. S. ENGLISH Foundation, percentage of home speakers. ... The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a system of phonetic notation devised by linguists to accurately and uniquely represent each of the wide variety of sounds (phones or phonemes) used in spoken human language. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone = sound/voice) is the study of sounds (voice). ... Because of technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ... This is a concise version of the International Phonetic Alphabet for English sounds. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (1136x828, 212 KB) Reading Adahooniigii — The Navajo Language Monthly Photographer: John Collier, Jr. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (1136x828, 212 KB) Reading Adahooniigii — The Navajo Language Monthly Photographer: John Collier, Jr. ... An exonym is a name for a place that is not used within that place by the local inhabitants, or a name for a people that is not used by that people. ... Athabaskan or Athabascan (also Athapascan or Athapaskan) is the name of a large group of distantly related Native American peoples, also known as the Athabasca Indians or Athapaskes, and of their language family. ... Pre-contact distribution of Na-Dené languages (in red) Na-Dené (also Na-Dene, Nadene, Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit) is a Native American language family which includes the Athabaskan languages, Eyak, and Tlingit. ... The Navajo Nation (Navajo: Naabeehó Dineé) is a sovereign Native American tribe traditionally known as Diné. The Navajo Indian Reservation covers about 27,000 square miles (70,000 square kilometres) of land, occupying all of northeastern Arizona, and extending into Utah and New Mexico, and is the largest land area... Southern Athabaskan (also Apachean) refers to members of the Athabaskan language family (including Navajo) spoken in the Northern American Southwest. ... Official language(s) English Capital Juneau Largest city Anchorage Area  Ranked 1st  - Total 663,267 sq mi (1,717,854 km²)  - Width 808 miles (1,300 km)  - Length 1,479 miles (2,380 km)  - % water 13. ...

Navajo claims more speakers than any other Native American or First Nation language north of the US-Mexico border, with more than 100,000 native speakers, and this number is actually increasing with time. During World War II, a code based on Navajo was used by code talkers to send secure military messages over radio. An Aani (Atsina) named Assiniboin Boy. ... First Nations is the current title used by Canada to describe the various societies of the indigenous peoples, called Native Americans in the U.S. They have also been known as Indians, Native Canadians, Aboriginal Americans, Amer-Indians, or Aboriginals, and are officially called Indians in the Indian Act, which... The international border between Mexico and the United States runs a total of 3,141 km (1,951 miles) from San Diego, California, and Tijuana, Baja California, in the west to Matamoros, Tamaulipas, and Brownsville, Texas, in the east. ... Combatants Major Allied powers: United Kingdom Soviet Union United States Republic of China and others Major Axis powers: Nazi Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Harry Truman Chiang Kai-Shek Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tojo Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ...

Sounds

Vowels

There are four vowels in Navajo: a, e, i and o. Each of these may occur as

• short, as in a and e,
• long, as in aa and ee,
• nasalized, as in ą and ęę,

or with one of four tones:

• high, as in áá and éé,
• low, as in aa and ee,
• rising, as in aá and eé or
• falling, as in áa and ée.

Various combinations of these features are possible, as in ́ą́ą (long, nasalized, high tone).

Consonants

The consonants of Navajo in the standard orthography are listed below, followed by their pronunciation in IPA notation in brackets: The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a system of phonetic notation devised by linguists to accurately and uniquely represent each of the wide variety of sounds (phones or phonemes) used in spoken human language. ...

Unlike its voiceless counterpart ł, the voiced l is an approximant (like in English). This pairing is common among languages, presumably because a true voiceless l is harder to perceive. However, some other Athabaskan languages, notably Hän, have a pair of voiced and voiceless lateral fricatives. The consonant h is in two places in the table because it is pronounced [x] when stem initial and [h] when prefixal or stem/word final; these two sounds are thus allophones of the same phoneme. In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. ... Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli (the sockets) of the superior teeth. ... Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate (the middle part of the roof of the mouth). ... Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate (the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum). ... Glottal consonants are consonants articulated with the glottis. ... A central or medial consonant is a consonant sound that is produced when air flows across the center of the mouth over the tongue. ... Laterals are L-like consonants pronounced with an occlusion made somewhere along the axis of the tongue, while air from the lungs escapes at one side or both sides of the tongue. ... Labials are consonants articulated either with both lips (bilabial articulation) or with the lower lip and the upper teeth (labiodental articulation). ... A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. ... In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies the release of some obstruents. ... Ejective consonants are a class of consonants which may contrast with aspirated or tenuis consonants in a language. ... Affricate consonants begin as stops (most often an alveolar, such as or ), but release as a fricative such as or (or, in a couple of languages, into a fricative trill) rather than directly into the following vowel. ... Fricatives (or spirants) are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. ... In phonetics, a voiceless consonant is a consonant that does not have voicing. ... A voiced consonant is a sound made as the vocal cords vibrate, as opposed to a voiceless consonant, where the vocal cords are relaxed. ... A nasal consonant is produced when the velum—that fleshy part of the palate near the back—is lowered, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. ... Approximants are speech sounds that could be regarded as intermediate between vowels and typical consonants. ... Chief Isaac of the Han people The Hän language is a Native American endangered language spoken in only two places: Eagle, Alaska and Dawson City, Yukon. ... In phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar phones that belong to the same phoneme. ... In human language, a phoneme is a set of phones (speech sounds or sign elements) that are cognitively equivalent. ...

Like many northwestern American languages, Navajo is relatively poor in labial consonants.

Syllable

Phonological processes

Consonant harmony. A language is said to possess consonant harmony when it has a phonological rule requiring some types of consonants in a word to belong to the same class. ...

Grammar

Typologically, Navajo is an agglutinating, polysynthetic head-marking language, but many of its affixes combine into barely recognizable contractions more like fusional languages. The canonical word order of Navajo is SOV. Athabaskan words are modified primarily by prefixes, which is unusual for an SOV language (suffixes are expected). The word typology literally means the study of types. ... It has been suggested that Agglutination be merged into this article or section. ... Polysynthetic languages are highly synthetic languages, i. ... A head-marking language is one where the grammatical marks showing relations between different constituents of a phrase tend to be placed on the heads (or nuclei) of the phrase in question, rather than the modifiers or dependents. ... Look up affix in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... A fusional language (also called inflecting language) is a type of synthetic language, distinguished from agglutinative languages by its tendency to squish together many morphemes in a way which can be difficult to segment. ... In linguistic typology, Subject Object Verb (SOV) is the type of languages in which the subject, object, and verb of a sentence appear (usually) in that order. ... In linguistics, a prefix is a type of affix that precedes the morphemes to which it can attach. ...

Navajo is a "verb-heavy" language — it has a great preponderance of verbs but relatively few nouns. In addition to verbs and nouns, Navajo has other elements such as pronouns, clitics of various functions, demonstratives, numerals, postpositions, adverbs, and conjunctions, among others. Harry Hoijer grouped all of the above into a word-class which he called particles (i.e., Navajo would then have verbs, nouns, and particles). There is nothing that corresponds to what are called adjectives in English — this adjectival function being provided by verbs. In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun phrase. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... == WHAT ABOUT THE MATH ONE??? HUH? == // Demonstratives are deictic words (they depend on an external frame of reference) that indicate which entities a speaker refers to, and distinguishes those entities from others. ... A numeral is a symbol or group of symbols that represents a number. ... A postposition is a type of adposition, a grammatical particle that expresses some sort of relationship between a noun phrase (its object) and another part of the sentence; an adpositional phrase functions as an adjective or adverb. ... --67. ... Harry Hoijer (1904-1976) was a linguist and anthropologist who worked on primarily Athabaskan languages and culture. ...

Nouns

Many concepts expressed using nouns in other languages appear as verbs in Navajo. The majority of true nouns are not inflected for number, and there is no case marking. Noun phrases are often not needed to form grammatical sentences due to the informational content of the verb.

Verbs

The key element in Navajo is the verb and is notoriously complex. Some noun meanings are provided by verbs, as in Hoozdo 'Phoenix, Arizona' (lit., 'the place is hot') and ch'é'étiin 'doorway' (lit., 'something has a path horizontally out'). Many complex nouns are derived from nominalized verbs as well, as in ná'oolkiłí 'clock' (lit., 'one that is moved slowly in a circle') and chidí naa'na'í bee'eldǫǫhtsoh bikáá' dah naaznilígíí 'army tank' (lit., 'a car that they sit up on top of that crawls around with a big thing with which an explosion is made'). This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... Nickname: Valley of the Sun Location in Maricopa County and the state of Arizona Coordinates: Country United States State Arizona Counties Maricopa Incorporated February 25, 1881 Mayor Phil Gordon (D) Area    - City 1,230. ... Official language(s) English Capital Phoenix Largest city Phoenix Area  Ranked 6th  - Total 113,998 sq mi (295,254 km²)  - Width 310 miles (500 km)  - Length 400 miles (645 km)  - % water 0. ...

Verbs are composed of an abstract stem to which inflectional and/or derivational prefixes are added. Every verb must have at least one prefix. The prefixes are affixed to the verb in a specified order. This article is in need of attention. ... In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification or marking of a word (or more precisely lexeme) to reflect grammatical (that is, relational) information, such as gender, tense, number or person. ... In linguistics, derivation is the process of creating new lexemes from other lexemes, for example, by adding a derivational affix. ...

The Navajo verb can be sectioned into different components. The verb stem is composed of an abstract root and an often fused suffix. The stem together with a classifier prefix (and sometimes other thematic prefixes) make up the verb theme. The theme is then combined with derivational prefixes which in turn make up the verb base. Finally, inflectional prefixes (which Young & Morgan call "paradigmatic prefixes") are affixed to the base—producing a complete Navajo verb. The root is the primary lexical unit of a word, which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents. ...

Verb Template

The prefixes that occur on a Navajo verb are added in specified order according to prefix type. This type of morphology is called a position class template (or slot-and-filler template). Below is a table of a recent proposal of the Navajo verb template (Young & Morgan 1987). (Edward Sapir and Harry Hoijer were the first to propose an analysis of this type.) A given verb will not have a prefix for every position...in fact, most Navajo verbs are not as complex as the template would seem to suggest. Edward Sapir. ...

The Navajo verb has 3 main parts:

These parts may be subdivided into 11 positions, with some of the positions having even further subdivisions:

Although prefixes are generally found in a specific position, some prefixes change order by the process of metathesis. For example, prefix 'a- (3i object pronoun) usually occurs before di-, as in Metathesis is a sound change that alters the order of phonemes in a word. ...

adisbąąs 'I'm starting to drive some kind of wheeled vehicle along' [ < 'a- + di- + sh- + ł + -bąąs].

However, when 'a- occurs with the prefixes di- and ni-, the 'a- metathesizes with di-, leading to an order of di- + 'a- + ni-, as in

di'nisbąąs 'I'm in the act of driving some vehicle (into something) & getting stuck' [ < di-'a-ni-sh-ł-bąąs < 'a- + di- + ni- + sh- + ł + -bąąs]

instead of the expected adinisbąąs ('a-di-ni-sh-ł-bąąs) (note also that 'a- is reduced to '-).

Inflection

Classificatory Verbs

Navajo has verb stems that classify a particular object by its shape or other physical characteristics in addition to describing the movement or state of the object. These are known in Athabaskan linguistics as classificatory verb stems. These are usually identified by an acronym label. There are eleven primary classificatory "handling" verbs stems, which are listed below (given in the perfective mode): Acronyms, initialisms, and alphabetisms are abbreviations, such as NATO, laser, ABC, and N.A.S.A written as the initial letter or letters of words, and pronounced on the basis of this abbreviated written form. ...

To compare with English, Navajo has no single verb that corresponds to the English word give. In order to say the equivalent of Give me some hay!, the Navajo verb níłjool (NCM) must be used, while for Give me a cigarette! the verb nítįįh (SSO) must be used. The English verb give is expressed by eleven different verbs in Navajo, depending on the characteristics of the given object.

In addition to defining the physical properties of the object, primary classificatory verb stems also can distinguish between the manner of movement of the object. The stems may then be grouped into three different categories:

1. handling
2. propelling
3. free flight

Handling includes actions such as carrying, lowering, and taking. Propelling includes tossing, dropping, and throwing. Free flight includes falling, and flying through space.

Using an example for the SRO category, Navajo has

1. -'ą́ to handle (a round object),
2. -ne' to throw (a round object), and
3. -l-ts'id (a round object) moves independently.

yi-/bi- Alternation (animacy)

Like most Athabaskan languages, Southern Athabaskan languages show various levels of animacy in its grammar, with certain nouns taking specific verb forms according to their rank in this animacy hierarchy. For instance, Navajo nouns can be ranked by animacy on a continuum from most animate (a human being) to least animate (an abstraction) (Young & Morgan 1987: 65–66): Animacy is a grammatical category, usually of nouns, which influences the form a verb takes when it is associated with that noun. ...

Human → Infant/Big Animal → Medium-sized Animal → Small Animal → Natural Force → Abstraction

Generally, the most animate noun in a sentence must occur first while the noun with lesser animacy occurs second. If both nouns are equal in animacy, then either noun may occur in the first position.

This phenomenon was first noted by Ken Hale (1973). Hale lecturing about the Warlpiri language. ...

Text Example

Here is the first paragraph of a very short story in Young & Morgan (1987: 205a–205b).

Diné bizaad:

Ashiiké t'óó diigis léi' tółikaní ła' ádiilnííł dóó nihaa nahidoonih níigo yee hodeez'ą́ jiní. Áko t'áá ał'ąą ch'il na'atł'o'ii k'iidiilá dóó hááhgóóshį́į́ yinaalnishgo t'áá áłah ch'il na'atł'o'ii néineest'ą́ jiní. Áádóó tółikaní áyiilaago t'áá bíhígíí t'áá ał'ąą tł'ízíkágí yii' haidééłbįįd jiní. "Háadida díí tółikaní yígíí doo ła' aha'diidził da," níigo aha'deet'ą́ jiní'. Áádóó baa nahidoonih biniiyé kintahgóó dah yidiiłjid jiní'....

Free English translation:

Some crazy boys decided to make some wine to sell, so they each planted grapevines and, working hard on them, they raised them to maturity. Then, having made wine, they each filled a goatskin with it. They agreed that at no time would they give each other a drink of it, and they then set out for town lugging the goatskins on their backs....

Interlinear text:

Current use

The Navajo language is still widely spoken by Navajos of all ages, with over half of the Navajo population speaking the Navajo language at home. Many parents still pass on the Navajo language to their children as a first language. The Navajo people are one of the very few Native American tribes that still use the native language of their tribe in everyday usage. However, the language is still moderately endangered, especially in urban areas outside of reservations, as more and more younger Navajos start to shift to the English language. Even on the reservation, Census data indicate that between 1980 and 1990 the proportion of Navajos aged 5-17 who spoke only English rose from 12% to 28%. In 2000 it appears that the figure reached 43%. The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...

See also

• Southern Athabaskan languages

Southern Athabaskan (also Apachean) refers to members of the Athabaskan language family (including Navajo) spoken in the Northern American Southwest. ...

External links

Navajo language edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

• Navajo-English Database
• Some English - Diné Dictionary ( pronunciations)
• Analytical Lexicon of Navajo
• How Different can Languages be?: The grammatical mosaic of Navajo
• Contrasts between Navajo consonants (sound files from Peter Ladefoged)
• An Example of the Navajo Language (including audio)
• page of Navajo language links
• Dine Bizaad: The Navajo Language
• Navajo Language & Bilingual Links (from San Juan school district)
• Navajo Language Academy
• Tuning in to Navajo: The Role of Radio in Native Language Maintenance
• An Initial Exploration of the Navajo Nation's Language and Culture Initiative
• Bá'ólta'í Adoodleełgi Bína'niltingo Bił Haz'ą́ (Center for Diné Teacher Education)
• Navajo fonts
• THE NAVAJO LANGUAGE
• Why No Writing on the Rez: An Inquiry into the History of Navajo Language Literacy
• Navajo language (Encyclopedia of North American Indians)
• Bibliography of Materials on the Navajo Language
• Navajo vocabulary word list
• Navajo Nation website
• Inventory of the Robert W. Young Papers, 1860-1992 (bulk 1823-1980)

Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1058x1058, 477 KB) aa Wikipedia logo, version 1058px square, no text Wikipedia logo by Nohat (concept by Paullusmagnus); compare Wikipedia File links The following pages link to this file: Arabic language Talk:Anarcho-capitalism Talk:Algorithm Talk:Anno Domini Talk:The... Wikipedia is a multilingual, Web-based free content encyclopedia project. ... Peter Nielsen Ladefoged (September 17, 1925 – January 24, 2006) was a British-American linguist phonetician who traveled the world to document the distinct sounds of endangered languages and pioneered ways to collect and study data. ...

Bibliography

Pedagogical

• Blair, Robert W.; Simmons, Leon; & Witherspoon, Gary. (1969). Navaho Basic Course. BYU Printing Services.
• Goossen, Irvy W. (1967). Navajo made easier: A course in conversational Navajo. Flagstaff, AZ: Northland Press.
• Goossen, Irvy W. (1995). Diné bizaad: Speak, read, write Navajo. Flagstaff, AZ: Salina Bookshelf. ISBN 0-9644-1891-6
• Goossen, Irvy W. (1997). Diné bizaad: Sprechen, Lesen und Schreiben Sie Navajo. Loder, P. B. (transl.). Flagstaff, AZ: Salina Bookshelf.
• Haile, Berard. (1941–1948). Learning Navaho, (Vols. 1–4). St. Michaels, AZ: St. Michael's Mission.
• Platero, Paul R. (1986). Diné bizaad bee naadzo: A conversational Navajo text for secondary schools, colleges and adults. Farmington, NM: Navajo Preparatory School.
• Platero, Paul R.; Legah, Lorene; & Platero, Linda S. (1985). Diné bizaad bee na'adzo: A Navajo language literacy and grammar text. Farmington, NM: Navajo Language Institute.
• Tapahonso, Luci, & Schick, Eleanor. (1995). Navajo ABC: A Diné alphabet book. New York: Macmillan Books for Young Readers. ISBN 0-6898-0316-8
• Witherspoon, Gary. (1985). Diné Bizaad Bóhoo'aah for secondary schools, colleges, and adults. Farmington, NM: Navajo Language Institute.
• Witherspoon, Gary. (1986). Diné Bizaad Bóhoo'aah I: A conversational Navajo text for secondary schools, colleges and adults. Farmington, NM: Navajo Language Institute.
• Wilson, Alan. (1969). Breakthrough Navajo: An introductory course. Gallup, NM: The University of New Mexico, Gallup Branch.
• Wilson, Alan. (1970). Laughter, the Navajo way. Gallup, NM: The University of New Mexico at Gallup.
• Wilson, Alan. (1978). Speak Navajo: An intermediate text in communication. Gallup, NM: University of New Mexico, Gallup Branch.
• Wilson, Garth A. (1995). Conversational Navajo workbook: An introductory course for non-native speakers. Blanding, UT: Conversational Navajo Publications. ISBN 0-9387-1754-5.

Linguistics & other reference

• Akmajian, Adrian; & Anderson, Stephen. (1970). On the use of the fourth person in Navajo, or Navajo made harder. International Journal of American Linguistics, 36 (1), 1–8.
• Creamer, Mary Helen. (1974). Ranking in Navajo nouns. Navajo Language Review, 1, 29–38.
• Faltz, Leonard M. (1998). The Navajo verb: A grammar for students and scholars. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press. ISBN 0-8263-1901-7 (hb), ISBN 0-8263-1902-5 (pbk)
• Frishberg, Nancy. (1972). Navajo object markers and the great chain of being. In J. Kimball (Ed.), Syntax and semantics (Vol. 1, p. 259–266). New York: Seminar Press.
• Grimes, Barbara F. (Ed.). (2000). Ethnologue: Languages of the world, (14th ed.). Dallas, TX: SIL International. ISBN 1-5567-1106-9. (Online edition: http://www.ethnologue.com/, accessed on Nov. 19th, 2004).
• Hale, Kenneth L. (1973). A note on subject-object inversion in Navajo. In B. B. Kachru, R. B. Lees, Y. Malkiel, A. Pietrangeli, & S. Saporta (Eds.), Issues in linguistics: Papers in honor of Henry and Renée Kahane (p. 300–309). Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
• Hoijer, Harry. (1945). Navaho phonology. University of New Mexico publications in anthropology, (No. 1).
• Hoijer, Harry. (1945). Classificatory verb stems in the Apachean languages. International Journal of American Linguistics, 11 (1), 13–23.
• Hoijer, Harry. (1945). The Apachean verb, part I: Verb structure and pronominal prefixes. International Journal of American Linguistics, 11 (4), 193–203.
• Hoijer, Harry. (1946). The Apachean verb, part II: The prefixes for mode and tense. International Journal of American Linguistics, 12 (1), 1–13.
• Hoijer, Harry. (1946). The Apachean verb, part III: The classifiers. International Journal of American Linguistics, 12 (2), 51–59.
• Hoijer, Harry. (1948). The Apachean verb, part IV: Major form classes. International Journal of American Linguistics, 14 (4), 247–259.
• Hoijer, Harry. (1949). The Apachean verb, part V: The theme and prefix complex. International Journal of American Linguistics, 15 (1), 12–22.
• Hoijer, Harry. (1970). A Navajo lexicon. University of California Publications in Linguistics (No. 78). Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Kari, James. (1975). The disjunct boundary in the Navajo and Tanaina verb prefix complexes. International Journal of American Linguistics, 41, 330–345.
• Kari, James. (1976). Navajo verb prefix phonology. Garland Publishing Co.
• McDonough, Joyce. (2003). The Navajo sound system. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. ISBN 1-4020-1351-5 (hb); ISBN 1-4020-1352-3 (pbk)
• Reichard, Gladys A. (1951). Navaho grammar. Publications of the American Ethnological Society (Vol. 21). New York: J. J. Augustin.
• Sapir, Edward. (1932). Two Navaho puns. Language, 8 (3) , 217-220.
• Sapir, Edward, & Hoijer, Harry. (1942). Navaho texts. William Dwight Whitney series, Linguistic Society of America.
• Sapir, Edward, & Hoijer, Harry. (1967). Phonology and morphology of the Navaho language. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Speas, Margaret. (1990). Phrase structure in natural language. Kluwer Academic Publishers. ISBN 0-7923-0755-0
• Wall, C. Leon, & Morgan, William. (1994). Navajo-English dictionary. New York: Hippocrene Books. ISBN 0-7818-0247-4. (Originally published [1958] by U.S. Dept. of the Interior, Branch of Education, Bureau of Indian Affairs).
• Webster, Anthony. (2004). Coyote Poems: Navajo Poetry, Intertextuality, and Language Choice. American Indian Culture and Research Journal, 28, 69-91.
• Witherspoon, Gary. (1971). Navajo categories of objects at rest. American Anthropologist, 73, 110-127.
• Witherspoon, Gary. (1977). Language and art in the Navajo universe. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0-4720-8966-8; ISBN 0-4720-8965-X
• Yazzie, Sheldon A. (2005). Navajo for Beginners and Elementary Students. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Press.
• Young, Robert W. (2000). The Navajo verb system: An overview. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. ISBN 0-8263-2172-0 (hb); ISBN 0-8263-2176-3 (pbk)
• Young, Robert W., & Morgan, William, Sr. (1987). The Navajo language: A grammar and colloquial dictionary (rev. ed.). Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. ISBN 0-8263-1014-1
• Young, Robert W.; Morgan, William; & Midgette, Sally. (1992). Analytical lexicon of Navajo. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. ISBN 0-8263-1356-6; ISBN 0-8253-1356-6