The Athabaskan Languages OXFORD STUDIES IN ANTHROPOLOGICAL LINGUISTICS William Bright, General Editor Editorial Board Wallace Chafe, University of California, Santa Barbara; Regna Darnell, University of Western Ontario; Paul Friedrich, University of Chicago; Dell Hymes, University of Virginia; Jane Hill, University of Arizona; Stephen C. Levinson, Max Planck Institute, The Netherlands; Joel Sherzer, University of Texas, Austin; David J. Parkin, University of London; Andrew Pawley, Australian National University; Jef Verschueren, University of Antwerp Recent Volumes Published 1 Gunter Senft: Classificatory Particles in Kilivila 2 Janis B. Nuckolls: Sounds Like Life: Sound-Symbolic Grammar, Performance, and Cognition in Pastaza Quechua 3 David B. Kronenfeld: Plastic Glasses and Church Fathers: Semantic Extension from the Ethnoscience Tradition 4 Lyle Campbell: American Indian Language: The Historical Linguistics of Native America 5 Chase Hensel: Telling Our Selves: Ethnicity and Discourse in Southwestern Alaska 6 Rosaleen Howard-Malverde (ed.): Creating Context in Andean Cultures 1 Charles L. Briggs (ed.): Disorderly Discourse: Narrative, Conflict, and Inequality 8 Anna Wierzbicka: Understanding Cultures through Their Key Words: English, Russian, Polish, German, and Japanese 9 Gerrit J. van Enk and Lourens de Vries; The Korowai of Irian Jaya: Their Language in Its Cultural Context 10 Peter Bakker: A Language of Our Own: The Genesis of Michif, the Mixed Cree- French Language of the Canadian Metis 11 Gunter Senft: Referring to Space: Studies in Austronesian and Papuan Languages 12 David McKnight: People, Countries, and the Rainbow Serpent: Systems of Classifica- tion among the Lardil of Momington Island 13 Penelope Gardner-Chloros, Robert B. Le Page, Andrée Tabouret-Keller, and Gabrielle Varro (eds.): Vernacular Literacy Revisited 14 Steven Roger Fischer: Rongorongo, the Easter Island Script: History, Tradition, Text 15 Richard Feinberg: Oral Traditions of Anuta: A Polynesian Outlier in the Solomon Islands 16 Bambi B. Schieffelin, Kathryn A. Woolard, and Paul V. Kroskrity (eds.): Language Ideologies: Practice and Theory 17 Susan U. Philips: Ideology in the Language of Judges: How Judges Practice Law, Politics, and Courtroom Control 18 Spike Gildea: On Reconstructing Grammar: Comparative Cariban Morphosyntax 19 Laine A. Berman: Speaking through the Silence: Narratives, Social Conventions, and Power in Java 20 Cecil H. Brown: Lexical Acculturation in Native American Languages 21 James M. Wilce: Eloquence in Trouble: The Poetics and Politics of Complaint in Rural Bangladesh 22 Peter Seitel: The Powers of Genre: Interpreting Haya Oral Literature 23 Elizabeth Keating: Power Sharing: Language, Rank, Gender, and Social Space in Pohnpei, Micronesia 24 Theodore B. Fernald and Paul R. Platero (eds.): The Athabaskan Language: Perspectives on a Native American Language Family The Athabaskan Languages Perspectives on a Native American Language Family Edited by Theodore B. Fernald Paul R. Platero OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 2000 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogota Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Paris Sao Paulo Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Copyright © 2000 by Oxford University Press Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Athabaskan languages : perspectives on a Native American language family/ edited by Theodore B. Fernald and Paul R. Platero. p. cm. — (Oxford studies in anthropological linguistics : 24) Papers presented at or closely related to the Athabaskan Conference on Syntax & Semantics, held Apr. 25-28, 1996, Swarthmore College. Includes bibliographical reference. ISBN 0-19-511947-9 1. Athapascan languages—Congressed. 2. Navajo language—Congresses. I. Fernald, Theodore B. II. Platero, Paul R. III. Athabaskan Conference on Syntax & Semantics ( 1996 : Swarthmore College) IV. Series. PM841.A93 1999 497'.2—dc21 98-36532 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper To the memory of Gladys Reichard, Swarthmore College class of 1919. This page intentionally left blank ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, which provided major funding for this conference, and of Swarthmore College, which provided space, office support, and housing for the conference participants. We also appreciate the support of the Eugene M. Lang Foundation for making it possible for Paul Platero to come to Swarthmore as the Visiting Professor for Social Change in the spring of 1996 and for funding Herb Benally's participation in the conference. We are also grateful to the Wil- liam J. Cooper Foundation for funding Ken Hale's participation. Special thanks go to Swarthmore College President, Alfred Bloom; to the Provost, Jennie Keith; to Donna Jo Napoli, Naomi Nagy, and Dagmar Jung; and to the many Swarthmore students who assisted in running the conference. We particularly wish to thank Chris Couples, Susan Blair Das, Jennifer Freeman, Eric Raimy, and Tom Stenson for substantial assistance in preparing the camera-ready copy of this volume. Finally we thank the two anonymous Ox- ford reviewers. This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS Contributors xi Introduction 3 Theodore B. Fernald and Paul R. Platero 1. The Semantics of Classification in Koyukon Athabaskan. 9 Melissa Axelrod 2. A Semantic Basis for Navajo Syntactic Typology 28 Leonard M. Faltz 3. Generalizations in Navajo 51 Theodore B. Fernald 4. Negative Polarity Expressions in Navajo 73 Ken Hale and Paul Platero 5. Word Order in Apache Narratives 92 Dagmar Jung 6. The Negative/Irrealis Category in Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit 101 Jeff Leer 1. On a Bipartite Model of the Athabaskan Verb 139 Joyce McDonough 8. Monadic Verbs and Argument Structure in Ahtna, Slave and Navajo, 167 Keren Rice 9. The Semantics of the Navajo Verb Base 200 Carlota S. Smith 10. Iconicity and Word Order in Koyukon Athabaskan 228 Chad L. Thompson