Southern Athabaskan (also Apachean) refers to members of the Athabaskan language family (including Navajo) spoken in the Northern American Southwest. These languages are spoken by various bands of Apache and Navajo peoples. They are spoken in primarily the southwestern part of the United States (Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, but also in Colorado & Utah), and formerly spoken in Mexico and Texas. This is unusual because most Athabaskan languages are spoken in the northwest of Canada and Alaska. Navajo (Diné bizaad) (occasionally spelled Navaho) is a Southern Athabaskan or Apachean language of the Athabaskan language family, belonging to the Na-Dené phylum. ... This article is about the Native American tribe, for other uses of the word see Apache (disambiguation). ... The term Navajo (occasionally spelled Navaho) or Diné refers to the Navajo Nation and its people, and to the Navajo language. ... 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. ... Canada is a sovereign state in northern North America, the northern-most country in the world, and the second largest in total area. ... State nickname: The Last Frontier, The Land of the Midnight Sun Other U.S. States Capital Juneau Largest city Anchorage Governor Frank Murkowski Official languages English Area 1,717,854 km² (1st)  - Land 1,481,347 km²  - Water 236,507 km² (13. ...

Western Apaches call their language Nnéé biyáti’ or Ndéé biyáti’. Links Western Apache-English Dictionary (White Mountain) White Mountain Apache Tribe (Arizona Intertribal Council) San Carlos Apache Tribe (Arizona Intertribal Council) Tonto Apache Tribe (Arizona Intertribal Council) Yavapai-Apache Nation Official Website Yavapai-Apache Nation (Arizona Intertribal Council) White Mountain Apache Tribe White Mountain Apache photographs map of Fort Apache...

Navajos call their language Diné bizaad.

The most famous speaker of an Apachean language was Geronimo (Goyaałé) who spoke Chiricahua. Geronimo Geronimo, born Goyathlay (One Who Yawns), (June 16, 1829–February 17, 1909) was a prominent Native American leader of the Chiricahua Apache who long warred against the encroachment of settlers of European descent on tribal lands. ... Bands According to Opler (1941) the Chiricahuas consisted of three bands: Chíhéne Red Paint People (a. ...

Genetic Classification

Southern Athabaskan languages can be divided into 2 groups: (I) Plains and (II) Southwestern. Plains Apache is the only member of the Plains Apache group. The Southwestern group can be further divided into two subgroups (A) Western and (B) Eastern. The Western subgroup consists of Western Apache, Navajo, Mescalero, and Chiricahua. The Eastern subgroup consists of Jicarilla and Lipan. The Plains Apache (also Kiowa-Apache) are a Southern Athabaskan group that lived primarily on the plains of North America. ... Links Western Apache-English Dictionary (White Mountain) White Mountain Apache Tribe (Arizona Intertribal Council) San Carlos Apache Tribe (Arizona Intertribal Council) Tonto Apache Tribe (Arizona Intertribal Council) Yavapai-Apache Nation Official Website Yavapai-Apache Nation (Arizona Intertribal Council) White Mountain Apache Tribe White Mountain Apache photographs map of Fort Apache... Navajo (Diné bizaad) (occasionally spelled Navaho) is a Southern Athabaskan or Apachean language of the Athabaskan language family, belonging to the Na-Dené phylum. ... Categories: Stub | Na-Dené languages | Native American tribes | Native American languages | Apachean languages | Apache tribe | Languages of North America | Athabaskan languages ... Bands According to Opler (1941) the Chiricahuas consisted of three bands: Chíhéne Red Paint People (a. ... Jicarilla Apache refers to an Apache people currently living in New Mexico and to the Apachean language they speak. ... Lipan Apache are also known as Nde buffalo hunters, called by anthropologists and historians for many years as Eastern Apache, Apache de los Llanos, Lipan, Ipande, and other names. ...

I. Plains

1. Plains Apache

II. Southwestern The Plains Apache (also Kiowa-Apache) are a Southern Athabaskan group that lived primarily on the plains of North America. ...

• A. Western
  1. Western Apache
  2. Navajo
  3. Mescalero Apache
  4. Chiricahua Apache
• B. Eastern
  1. Jicarilla Apache
  2. Lipan Apache

Mescalero and Chiricahua are considered different languages even though they are mutually intelligible (Ethnologue considers them the same language). Western Apache and Navajo are closer to each other than either is to Mescalero/Chiricahua. Lipan Apache and Plains Apache are nearly extinct (in fact Lipan may already be extinct). Chiricahua is severely endangered. Mescalero, Jicarilla, and Western Apache are considered endangered as well, but fortunately children are still learning the languages. Navajo is one of the most vigorous North American languages (but use among first-graders has declined from 90% to 30% in (1998 N.Y. Times, April 9, p. A20)). Links Western Apache-English Dictionary (White Mountain) White Mountain Apache Tribe (Arizona Intertribal Council) San Carlos Apache Tribe (Arizona Intertribal Council) Tonto Apache Tribe (Arizona Intertribal Council) Yavapai-Apache Nation Official Website Yavapai-Apache Nation (Arizona Intertribal Council) White Mountain Apache Tribe White Mountain Apache photographs map of Fort Apache... Navajo (Diné bizaad) (occasionally spelled Navaho) is a Southern Athabaskan or Apachean language of the Athabaskan language family, belonging to the Na-Dené phylum. ... Categories: Stub | Na-Dené languages | Native American tribes | Native American languages | Apachean languages | Apache tribe | Languages of North America | Athabaskan languages ... Bands According to Opler (1941) the Chiricahuas consisted of three bands: Chíhéne Red Paint People (a. ... Jicarilla Apache refers to an Apache people currently living in New Mexico and to the Apachean language they speak. ... Lipan Apache are also known as Nde buffalo hunters, called by anthropologists and historians for many years as Eastern Apache, Apache de los Llanos, Lipan, Ipande, and other names. ...

Sounds (Phonology)

All Southern Athabaskan languages have a similar phonology. The description below will concentrate mostly on Western Apache. You can expect minor variations of this description in other related languages (e.g., cf. Navajo, Jicarilla, Chiricahua). This article is about the alphabet officially used in linguistics. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word phone = sound/voice) is the study of speech sounds (voice). ... In computing, Unicode is the international standard whose goal is to provide the means to encode the text of every document people want to store in computers. ... Technical Note: Most IPA symbols are not included in Times New Roman, the default font for Latin scripts in Internet Explorer for Windows. ... Phonology (Greek phone = voice/sound and logos = word/speech) is a subfield of grammar (see also linguistics). ... Links Western Apache-English Dictionary (White Mountain) White Mountain Apache Tribe (Arizona Intertribal Council) San Carlos Apache Tribe (Arizona Intertribal Council) Tonto Apache Tribe (Arizona Intertribal Council) Yavapai-Apache Nation Official Website Yavapai-Apache Nation (Arizona Intertribal Council) White Mountain Apache Tribe White Mountain Apache photographs map of Fort Apache... Navajo (Diné bizaad) (occasionally spelled Navaho) is a Southern Athabaskan or Apachean language of the Athabaskan language family, belonging to the Na-Dené phylum. ... Jicarilla Apache refers to an Apache people currently living in New Mexico and to the Apachean language they speak. ... Bands According to Opler (1941) the Chiricahuas consisted of three bands: Chíhéne Red Paint People (a. ...

Consonants

Southern Athabaskan languages generally have a consonant inventory similar to the set of 33 consonants below (based mostly on Western Apache):

orthography (consonants)

The practical orthography corresponds to the pronunciation of the Southern Athabaskan languages fairly well (as opposed to the writing systems of English or Vietnamese). Below is a table pairing up the phonetic notation with the orthographic symbol:

Some spelling conventions:

1. Fricatives [h] and [x] are both written as h. (see also #2 below)
2. The fricative [x] is usually written as h, but after o it is written as hw (may be pronounced as [xʷ]).
3. The fricative [ɣ] is written gh the majority of the time, but before i and e it is written as y (& may be pronounced as [ʝ]), and before o it is written as w (& may be pronounced as [ɣʷ]).
4. All words that begin with a vowel are pronounced with a glottal stop ’ [ʔ]. This glottal stop is never written at the beginning of a word.
5. Some words are pronounced either as d or n or nd, depending on the dialect of the speaker. This is represented in the consonant table above as [ⁿd]. The same is true with b and m in a few words.
6. In many words n can occur in a syllable by itself in which case it is a syllabic [n̩]. This is not indicated in the spelling.

Vowels

Southern Athabaskan languages have four vowels of contrasting tongue dimensions (as written in the "practical" orthography):

These vowels may also be short or long and oral (non-nasal) or nasal. Nasal vowels are indicated by an ogonek (or nasal hook) diacritic ˛ (borrowed from Polish orthography) in Western Apache, Navajo, Chiricahua, and Mescalero, while in Jicarilla the nasal vowels are indicated by underlining the vowel. This results in sixteen different vowels: Ogonek (Polish for “little tail”) is a diacritic hook placed under the lower right corner of a vowel in the Latin alphabet used in Polish, Lithuanian, Navajo, Western Apache, Chiricahua and Tutchone. ...

IPA equivalents for oral vowels:

i = [ ɪ], ii = [ iː], e = [ ɛ], ee = [ ɛː], o = [ o], oo = [ ʊː], a = [ ɐ], aa = [ ɑː].

orthography (vowels)

In Western Apache, there is a practice where orthographic vowels o and oo are written as u in certain contexts. These contexts do not include nasalized vowels, so nasal u never occurs in the orthography. This practice continues into the present (perhaps somewhat inconsistently). Links Western Apache-English Dictionary (White Mountain) White Mountain Apache Tribe (Arizona Intertribal Council) San Carlos Apache Tribe (Arizona Intertribal Council) Tonto Apache Tribe (Arizona Intertribal Council) Yavapai-Apache Nation Official Website Yavapai-Apache Nation (Arizona Intertribal Council) White Mountain Apache Tribe White Mountain Apache photographs map of Fort Apache...

However, in Harry Hoijer and other American linguists' work all o-vowels are written as o. Similarly, Navajo does not use orthographic u, consistently writing this vowel as o.

In Chiricahua and Mescalero, this vowel is written as u in all contexts (including nasalized ų). Bands According to Opler (1941) the Chiricahuas consisted of three bands: Chíhéne Red Paint People (a. ... Categories: Stub | Na-Dené languages | Native American tribes | Native American languages | Apachean languages | Apache tribe | Languages of North America | Athabaskan languages ...

Other practices may be used in other Apachean languages.

Tone

Southern Athabaskan languages are tonal languages. Hoijer and other linguists analyze Southern Athabaskan languages as having 4 tones (using Americanist transcription system): Tone refers to the use of pitch in language to distinguish words. ...

• high (marked with acute accent ´, Example: á)
• low (marked with grave accent `, Example: à)
• rising (marked with háček ˇ, Example: â)
• falling (marked with circumflex ˆ, Example: ǎ)

Rising and falling tones are less common in the language (often occurring over morpheme boundaries) and often occur on long vowels. Vowels can carry tone as well as syllabic n (Example: ń).

The practical orthography has tried to simplify the Americanist transcription system by representing only high tone with an acute accent while leaving low tone unmarked:

• high tone: á
• low tone: a

So now niziz is written instead of the previous nìzìz.

Additionally, rising tone on long vowels is indicated by an unmarked first vowel and an acute accent on the second, and vice versa for falling tone:

• rising: aá (instead of Americanist: â·)
• falling: áa (instead of Americanist: ǎ·)

Nasal vowels carry tone as well, resulting in a two diacritics on vowels with high tone: ą́ (presenting problems for computerization). Recently, de Reuse (forthcoming) has found that Western Apache also has a mid tone, which he indicates with a macron diacritic ¯, as in ō, ǭ. In Chiricahua, a falling tone can occur on a syllabic n: n̂. Bands According to Opler (1941) the Chiricahuas consisted of three bands: Chíhéne Red Paint People (a. ...

Here are some vowel contrasts involving nasalization, tone, and length from Chiricahua Apache: Bands According to Opler (1941) the Chiricahuas consisted of three bands: Chíhéne Red Paint People (a. ...

chąą  'feces'

chaa  'beaver'

shiban  'my buckskin'

shibán  'my bread'

bik’ai’  'his hip'

bík’ai’  'his stepmother'

hah’aał  'you two are going to chew it'

hah’ał  'you two are chewing it'

Comparative phonology

The differences and similarities among the Southern Athabaskan languages can be observed in the following Swadesh stem list:

Grammar

Typological overview

Typologically, Southern Athabaskan languages are partly agglutinating, partly fusional, polysynthetic head-marking languages. The canonical word order is SOV, as can be seen in Navajo example below: The word typology literally means the study of types. ... An agglutinative language is a language in which the words are formed by joining morphemes together. ... A fusional 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. ... 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. ... Subject Object Verb (SOV) is a term used in linguistic typology to state the general order of words in a languages sentences: Sam oranges ate. The SOV type is the most common type found in natural languages. ...

Mósí tsídii yiníł'į́ 'The cat is looking at the bird.'

Subject = mósí 'the cat'

Object = tsídii 'the bird'

Verb = yiníł'į́ 'it is looking at it'

Southern Athabaskan words are modified primarily by prefixes, which is unusual for SOV languages (suffixes are expected). Prefix has meanings in linguistics, mathematics and computer science, and telecommunications. ...

The Southern Athabaskan languages are "verb-heavy" — they have a great ponderance of verbs but relatively few nouns. In addition to verbs and nouns, these languages 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 particle. This categorization provides three grammatical categories (i.e. parts of speech): In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a word that usually takes the place of a noun or noun phrase that was previously mentioned (such as she, it) or that refers to something or someone (I, me, you). Pronouns are often one of the basic parts of speech of the... In linguistics, a clitic is a morpheme that functions syntactically like a word, but does not appear as an independent phonological word; instead it is always attached to a following or preceding word. ... Demonstratives are words that indicate which objects a sentence is referring to. ... 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. ... An adverb is a part of speech that normally serves to modify verbs, adjectives, other adverbs, clauses, and sentences. ... A conjunction is a part of speech that connects two words, phrases, or clauses together. ...

1. verbs
2. nouns
3. particles

There is nothing that corresponds to what are called adjectives in English. Adjectival notions are provided by verbs.

Verbs

The key element in Southern Athabaskan languages is the verb, and it is notoriously complex. Some noun meanings are provided by verbs, as in Navajo A verb is a part of speech that usually denotes action (bring, read), occurrence (to decompose (itself), to glitter), or a state of being (exist, live, soak, stand). Depending on the language, a verb may vary in form according to many factors, possibly including its tense, aspect, mood and voice. ...

• 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 Navajo

• 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').

Verbs are composed of a 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. ... This article is about inflection in linguistics. ... In linguistics, derivation is the process of creating new lexemes from other lexemes, for example, by adding a derivational affix. ...

The Southern Athabaskan verb can be sectioned into different morphological 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 verb. This is represented schematically in the table below: 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 the 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 (pronunciation: suh PEER), (1884-1939) was an American anthropologist-linguist, a leader in American structural linguistics, and one of the creators of what is now called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. ...

The Navajo verb has 3 main parts:

These parts can 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, in Navajo 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 '-). Metathesis is conditioned by phonological environment (Young & Morgan 1987:39). Phonology (Greek phone = voice/sound and logos = word/speech) is a subfield of grammar (see also linguistics). ...

Classificatory Verbs

Southern Athabaskan languages have 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 11 primary classificatory "handling" verbs stems in Navajo (other Southern Athabaskan languages have slightly different stems) which are listed below (given in the perfective mode): Acronyms and initialisms are abbreviations formed from the initial letter or letters of words, such as NATO and XHTML, and are pronounced in a way that is distinct from the full pronunciation of what the letters stand for. ...

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 11 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 can 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.

In addition, Southern Athabaskan languages also have other somewhat similar verb stems that Young & Morgan (1987) call secondary classificatory verbs.

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) 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. ...

humans/lightning → infants/big animals → med-size animals → small animals → insects → natural forces → inanimate objectes → 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 can occur in the first position. So, both example sentences (1) and (2) are correct. The yi- prefix on the verb indicates that the 1st noun is the subject and bi- indicates that the 2nd noun is the subject.

But example sentence (3) sounds wrong to most Navajo speakers because the less animate noun occurs before the more animate noun:

In order express this idea, the more animate noun must occur first, as in sentence (4):

Links

• Simplified Apache Pronunciation (http://www.geocities.com/Athens/8352/lang.htm)
• Chiricahua and Mescalero Texts (http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/apache/)
• Grammatical Sketch of Chiricahua/Mescalero (http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/apache/frames/grammar.html)
• Other Apache Ethnographical Sources (http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/apache/Resources/resources.html)
• Apache texts (http://apache-texts.co.nr)
• Goddard's Jicarilla Texts (translation only) (http://www.sacred-texts.com/nam/pla/jat/)
• Issues in Language Textbook Development: The Case of Western Apache (http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/TIL_11.html)
• White Mountain Apache Language: Issues in Language Shift, Textbook Development, and Native Speaker-University Collaboration (http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/TIL_12.html)
• Apachean Languages on Ethnologue site (http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=92341)
• Phonetic Structures of Western Apache (318 kb PDF: technical work on acoustic phonetics) (http://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/faculty/gordon/apachephonetics.pdf)
• sample of Apache bible translation (http://www.language-museum.com/a/apache.php)
• Wikipedia in Navajo

Bibliography

For the bibliography, see the subarticle Southern Athabaskan languages/Bibliography.