Toward the reconstruction of Proto-Na-Dene .

Sergei Nikolaev (Institute of Slavic studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, sergenicko@mail.ru)

Journal of Language Relationship, № 11, 2014 - p.103-124

Abstract: The paper presents the author’s current version of the reconstruction of the phonological system of Proto-Na-Dene (PND = Proto-Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit in J. Leer’s terms), based on comparison of three groups of languages: 1) Tlingit dialects, 2) Eyak and 3) Athabaskan languages (Proto-Athabaskan). Eyak and the Athabaskan languages are quite close to each other and are traced back to an intermediate Proto-Eyak-Athabaskan language. Regular phonetic correspondences between Eyak and PA have received an original interpretation by Michael E. Krauss and Jeffrey Leer, including very complicated correspondences of sonorants. In his works, J. Leer proposed a PND reconstruction that explained most of the regular sound correspondences between the Na-Dene languages. Although Leer’s reconstruction is quite seductive with its apparent simplicity, in some aspects this simplification is unwarranted, as the real situation turns out to be a lot more complicated. This is possibly a consequence of the number of the roots involved: Leer’s reconstruction is based on a relatively short list of cognate sets (ca. 300), whereas the author of the current paper has tried to take into account the entire comparative corpus (ca. 800 sets). Due to volume restrictions, the paper consists of only a brief summary of the reconstruction and an illustrative subset of the comparative material, dealing with certain complicated sound correspondences between front and lateral affricates/fricatives, previously analysed in a different light by J. Leer.

Keywords: Na-Dene languages, Athabaskan languages, historical phonology

PDF