The Upper Kuskokwim language (also called Kolchan or Goltsan or Dinak'i) is an
Athabaskan
Athabaskan ( ; also spelled ''Athabascan'', ''Athapaskan'' or ''Athapascan'', and also known as Dene) is a large branch of the Na-Dene language family of North America, located in western North America in three areal language groups: Northern, ...
language of the
Na-Dené
Na-Dene ( ; also Nadene, Na-Dené, Athabaskan–Eyak–Tlingit, Tlina–Dene) is a family of Native American languages that includes at least the Athabaskan languages, Eyak, and Tlingit languages. Haida was formerly included but is now general ...
language family. It is spoken by the
Upper Kuskokwim people in the Upper
Kuskokwim River villages of
Nikolai,
Telida, and
McGrath,
Alaska
Alaska ( ) is a non-contiguous U.S. state on the northwest extremity of North America. Part of the Western United States region, it is one of the two non-contiguous U.S. states, alongside Hawaii. Alaska is also considered to be the north ...
. About 40 of a total of 160 Upper Kuskokwim people (Dichinanek’ Hwt’ana) still speak the language.
A practical
orthography
An orthography is a set of convention (norm), conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, punctuation, Word#Word boundaries, word boundaries, capitalization, hyphenation, and Emphasis (typography), emphasis.
Most national ...
of the language was established by Raymond Collins, who in 1964 began linguistic work at Nikolai.
Since 1990s, the language has also been documented by a Russian linguist
Andrej Kibrik.
Phonology
Consonants
Vowels
/ɪ/ may range to either
�or mid as
�
Morphology
Nouns
Nouns are divided into two classes: those which can be possessed, but do not have to be (such as clothing, animals and lake names) and those which are always possessed (such as body parts).
For the former group, some nouns that are possessed have a change in spelling and pronunciation when they are possessed. For example, the prefix "si-" indicates "my".
However, other nouns that may be possessed do not undergo any sound changes, and instead the possession is indicated either by the separate possessive word , or by the prefix . For example, (
birch tree
A birch is a thin-leaved deciduous hardwood tree of the genus ''Betula'' (), in the family Betulaceae, which also includes alders, hazels, and hornbeams. It is closely related to the beech-oak family Fagaceae. The genus ''Betula'' contains 30 to ...
) becomes (my birch tree) and (trail) becomes ().
Verbs can be changed into nouns with the suffix . This also causes sound changes in some verbs.
Adjectives
There are few adjectives that modify nouns in Upper Kuskokwim. Adjectives are added after nouns, e.g. ().
Syntax
Upper Kuskokwim uses
SOV word order. It is a partially
inflectional and partially
agglutinative
In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes (word parts), each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglu ...
language, and a
pro-drop
A pro-drop language (from "pronoun-dropping") is a language in which certain classes of pronouns may be omitted when they can be pragmatically or grammatically inferable. The precise conditions vary from language to language, and can be quite ...
language.
Bibliography
Alaska Native Language Center Retrieved on 2007-03-14.
*
References
Links
Upper Kuskokwim Language and Culture Preservation(website in development)
Dinak'i , Upper Kuskokwim DictionaryiOS app
Northern Athabaskan languages
Indigenous languages of Alaska
Indigenous languages of the North American Subarctic
Endangered Athabaskan languages
{{Alaska-stub