Athabaskan Origins: Special Session at the 2009 Athabaskan Languages Conference

阿萨巴斯卡语起源：2009 年阿萨巴斯卡语语言会议特别会议

• 批准号: 0854579
• 负责人: Andrew Garrett
• 金额: $ 1.72万
• 依托单位: University of California-Berkeley
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-06-15 至 2010-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0854579&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Athabaskan; Origins; Special; Session; 2009

The 2009 Athabaskan Languages Conference, to be held at the University of California, Berkeley, will feature a special session that addresses one of the outstanding questions in the study of prehistoric America: the precise Asian origins of indigenous Americans. Athabaskan is the largest indigenous language family in North America, both in terms of land area and number of speakers. It spreads over a huge area, with concentrations in Western Canada (Slave, Dëne Suliné, Sarsi), Alaska (Koyukon, Ahtna, Gwich'in), the west coast of the US (Hupa, Tolowa), and the US Southwest (Navajo, Apache). Despite their great geographic separation, the languages are very closely related. Although Athabaskan languages are highly endangered and incompletely researched, documentation and comparative analysis have advanced to the point that it is possible to establish reliable reconstructions of Na-Dene, a protolanguage that is the common ancestor of Athabaskan and the modern Tlingit and Eyak languages. These reconstructions, in turn, have made it possible for linguists from several institutions to assemble compelling evidence in support of a long-sought connection between Na-Dene and the Yeniseian language family of Siberia. Their research has shown that the abstract forms of words and the rules of composition of the verb in Yeniseian languages find systematic and numerous parallels in Na-Dene. These correspondences are too numerous and share too many idiosyncratic features to be explained by anything other than common descent. The comparison has also shown conclusively that Haida, sometimes associated with Na-Dene, is not related. The 2009 Athabaskan Languages Conference will bring together in one place many of the scholars who have participated in this multifaceted research effort. It will be an opportunity for the evidence supporting the Dene-Yeniseian hypothesis to be discussed and critically evaluated by an audience of specialists in Athabaskan and other Na-Dene languages. If correct, the Dene-Yeniseian connection is the first solid linguistic evidence connecting Asian and indigenous American populations. These results have ramifications for our understanding of the prehistoric movement of North American populations. The distance from the Yeniseian range to the most distant Athabaskan languages is the greatest overland distance covered by any known language spread not using wheeled transport or sails. Archaeologists have speculated that the Na-Dene speakers may descend from some of the earliest colonizers of the Americas, who eventually created the successful and long-lived Northern Archaic tool tradition that dominated interior and northern Alaska almost until historical times. The research therefore also has important implications for the theory and practice of historical linguistics itself. Although the precise age of well-understood language families such as Indo-European is sometimes disputed, the oldest dates accepted by most researchers are typically no more than 6,000 BP. Some scholars have suggested that this is near the outer limit of reliability for historical-comparative linguistic methods. The Dene-Yeniseian hypothesis raises the possibility that the method may be reliably used to establish linguistic relationships of a much greater time depth, at least as far back as the last migration from Eastern Siberia into North America, and perhaps much earlier.

2009年阿萨巴斯卡语言会议将在加州大学伯克利分校举行，将举行一次特别会议，讨论史前美洲研究中的一个突出问题：美洲土著人的确切亚洲起源。阿萨巴斯卡语是北美最大的原住民语系，无论是在土地面积还是使用者人数方面。它分布在一个巨大的区域，集中在加拿大西部（奴隶，Dëne Suliné，Sarsi），阿拉斯加州（Koyukon，Ahtna，Gwich'in），美国西海岸（Hupa，Tolowa）和美国西南部（纳瓦霍，阿帕奇）。尽管它们在地理上相距甚远，但语言关系非常密切。虽然阿萨巴斯卡语是高度濒危和不完全的研究，文献和比较分析已经发展到可以建立可靠的重建Na-Dene的地步，Na-Dene是一种原始语言，是阿萨巴斯卡语和现代特林吉特语和Eyak语言的共同祖先。这些重建反过来又使来自几个机构的语言学家有可能收集令人信服的证据，以支持长期寻求的Na-Dene和西伯利亚叶尼塞语系之间的联系。他们的研究表明，叶尼塞语中单词的抽象形式和动词的构成规则在Na-Dene中找到了系统的和大量的相似之处。这些对应关系数量太多，而且具有太多的特质，除了共同的血统之外，无法用任何其他东西来解释。比较结果还表明，有时与Na-Dene有关的Haida没有关系。2009年阿萨巴斯卡语言会议将汇集在一个地方，许多学者谁参加了这一多方面的研究工作。这将是一个机会，支持Dene-Yeniseian假说的证据将由阿萨巴斯卡语和其他Na-Dene语言的专家进行讨论和批判性评估。如果正确的话，Dene-Yeniseian连接是第一个坚实的语言证据连接亚洲和美洲土著人口。这些结果对我们理解北美人口的史前运动有着深远的影响。从叶尼塞语到最远的阿萨巴斯卡语之间的距离是任何已知语言传播所覆盖的最大陆路距离，而不是使用轮式运输或帆船。考古学家推测，说纳-德内语的人可能是美洲最早的殖民者的后裔，他们最终创造了成功和长寿的北方石器传统，几乎直到历史时期都统治着阿拉斯加内陆和北方。因此，该研究对历史语言学本身的理论和实践也具有重要的意义。尽管对印欧语系等已知语系的确切年龄有时存在争议，但大多数研究人员接受的最早日期通常不超过6，000 BP。一些学者认为，这是历史比较语言学方法可靠性的外部极限。Dene-Yeniseian假说提出了一种可能性，即这种方法可以可靠地用于建立更大时间深度的语言关系，至少可以追溯到最后一次从东西伯利亚迁移到北美，甚至更早。