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ABSTRACT - M. Krauss
This project centers on definitive documentation in the form of dictionaries and/or grammars of ten endangered northern languages in or near Alaska. These belong to four families: Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit, Tsimshianic, Eskimo-Aleut, and Indo-European (Kodiak Russian Creole). Four are at the very brink of extinction: Southern Tsimshian, has one speaker, age 94 ; Eyak, one speaker, 88; Kodiak Russian Creole perhaps 5 speakers, average age 90; Attuan Aleut, one rememberer, 80. The rest range in viability from Han Athabaskan, with perhaps 9 speakers, youngest in sixties, to Central Alaskan Yupik, still with children speakers in perhaps 15 of 67 villages.
The 10 linguists are all proven senior scholars in their field. Their experience in the languages or language families averages almost 40 years, one being a native speaker of her North Slope Inupiaq, Edna Ahgeak MacLean. In most cases this project will enable these scholars to finish work which is the result of a lifetime or decades of work, based in every case on all previous documentation of the language and their own fieldnotes. The intent is to produce comprehensive documentation, both grammar and lexicon (with priority on lexicon)-- unless either is otherwise already available, or possible at a later point, or available at least for a closely related dialect or language. The languages are in Alaska, Canada, and Russia; the scholars are based in Canada (Ritter, Tarpent), Russia (Kibrik, Golovko), Japan (Miyaoka), the rest in the U.S. Listing follows:
Han Athabaskan, Willem de Reuse, mostly lexicon;
Upper Kuskokwim Athabaskan, Andrej Kibrik, lexicon and grammar;
Eyak, Michael Krauss, lexicon and grammar;
Tlingit, Jeff Leer, lexicon;
Southern Tsimshian, Marie-Lucie Tarpent, lexicon and grammar; this divergent form of Tsimshianic, recognized only since the 1970s, is especially important for comparative purposes. The work will proceed in a comparative framework, including Macro-Penutian;
North Slope Inupiaq, Edna Ahgeak MacLean, lexicon;
Central Alaskan Yupik, Osahito Miyaoka, grammar;
Central Siberian Yupik, Steven Jacobson, lexicon; an extremely important data source, the card-file of N. M. Emel?ianova, will be processed in St. Petersburg for this;
Alutiiq, Jeff Leer, lexicon;
Kodiak Russian Creole, Evgenii Golovko; virtually no documentation yet exists; it remains unclear how far it diverges from Ninilchik or Kenai Russian Creole; it was natively spoken on Afognak Strait until the earthquake and tsunami of 1964;
Atuuan Aleut, Evgenii Golovko; another exceptional situation; 12 phonograph cylinders of text (ca. 30 minutes) recorded in 1909 by Jochelson still need to be transcribed, of which 7 are chanted ? the only instance of such attested in this part of the world; Golovko will work with Moses Dirks and John Golodoff, raised on Attu 1927-1942, to transcribe them;
Alaska-Yukon Border Athabaskan (Han, Kutchin, Tanacross, Upper Tanana), John Ritter; to provide an account of especially complex tone movement or assimilation in this area, necessary even for text orthography and pedagogy.
All subprojects of course involve participation of native speakers of these communities, and are recognized there as vital to the future of each of the languages.
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