Athabaskan Origins: Special Session at the 2009 Athabaskan Languages Conference

将在加州大学伯克利分校举行的2009年阿萨巴斯坎语言会议将以一个特别会议为特色，讨论史前美洲研究中的一个突出问题：美洲土著确切的亚洲起源。阿萨巴斯坎语是北美最大的土著语系，无论是在土地面积上还是在使用人数上都是如此。它分布在一个巨大的区域，集中在加拿大西部（奴隶，Dëne sulin<s:1>, Sarsi），阿拉斯加（Koyukon, Ahtna, Gwich'in），美国西海岸（Hupa, Tolowa）和美国西南部（纳瓦霍，阿帕奇）。尽管两种语言在地理上相距遥远，但它们之间的关系却非常密切。虽然阿萨巴斯坎语高度濒危，研究也不完全，但文献和比较分析已经发展到有可能建立可靠的Na-Dene重建，这是一种原始语言，是阿萨巴斯坎语和现代特林吉特语和埃亚克语的共同祖先。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到令人信服的证据，以支持长期寻求的纳德尼语与西伯利亚叶尼塞语系之间的联系。他们的研究表明，叶尼塞语中词汇的抽象形式和动词的构成规则在纳德纳语中有系统的和大量的相似之处。这些联系太多了，有太多共同的特征，除了共同的血统之外，不能用其他任何东西来解释。这种比较也明确地表明，有时与Na-Dene有关的Haida并没有关系。2009年的阿萨巴斯坎语言会议将把参与这一多方面研究工作的许多学者聚集在一起。这将是支持Dene-Yeniseian假说的证据被阿萨巴斯坎语和其他Na-Dene语言的专家听众讨论和批判性评估的机会。如果正确的话，dene - yenisian联系将是第一个将亚洲人和美洲原住民联系起来的坚实的语言证据。这些结果对我们对史前北美人口迁移的理解产生了影响。从叶尼塞语的范围到最遥远的阿萨巴斯坎语的距离，是所有已知的不使用轮式运输或帆的语言传播所覆盖的最大的陆地距离。考古学家推测，说纳迪纳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而长寿的北方古代工具传统，这种传统几乎一直统治着阿拉斯加内陆和北部，直到历史时代。因此，该研究对历史语言学本身的理论和实践也具有重要意义。尽管诸如印欧语系等人们熟知的语系的确切年龄有时存在争议，但大多数研究人员所接受的最古老的日期通常不超过6000年前。一些学者认为，这已经接近历史比较语言学方法可靠性的极限了。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到北美的迁徙，也许更早。

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.