Recording the Dena'ina Language [ISO 639 tfn]

Alaska Native Heritage Center, Anchorage AK

Investigators

Abstract

Dena'ina is an endangered Athabascan language of Alaska, with fewer than 75 speakers remaining. There are four primary dialects: Upper Inlet (spoken in Eklutna, Tyonek, Susitna, and Knik); Outer Inlet (spoken on the Kenai Peninsula); Inland (spoken in Nondalton, Lime Village); and Illiamna (spoken in Pedro Bay, Old Illiamna, Lake Illiamna). Although linguists have recorded a great deal of the language in the past, little has been transcribed or organized into conceptual domains. With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Patricia Partnow of the Alaska Native Heritage Center and her team will conduct three years of research on linguistic domains in the context of rites of passage and coming of age in the Dena'ina villages of Nondalton and Lime Village. The end products of this project will include new audio and video contextualized field recordings. These recordings will be translated, digitized and indexed, then supplemented by existing language materials, and together will encompass twelve aspects of "coming of age" for Dena'ina men and women. Without concentrated fieldwork of this sort, the language is destined for extinction before the middle of this century. The challenge facing Dena'ina learners (three of whom will conduct the bulk of this research) is having both the opportunities for learning the language in meaningful contexts and learning information that is relevant to the needs and interests of the learners themselves. This project will result in a corpus of contextualized language recordings that can be produced as web pages, video teaching tools, and podcasts for dissemination to anyone with an interest in the language. At the same time, young Dena'ina language learners will become proficient in conducting linguistic fieldwork and will improve their skills in translating and transcribing oral texts. Understanding the Dena'ina linguistic domains and the context in which the language is spoken and taught is fundamental to the success of this project.