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举行一次特别会议，讨论史前美洲研究中的一个悬而未决的问题：土著美国人的确切亚洲起源。就土地面积和讲阿萨巴斯卡语的人数而言，阿萨巴斯卡语是北美最大的土著语系。它分布在一大片地区，集中在加拿大西部(Slave，Dëne Suliné，Sarsi)，阿拉斯加(Koyukon，Ahtna，Gwich‘in)，美国西海岸(Hupa，Tolowa)和美国西南部(Navajo，阿帕奇)。尽管地理上相距甚远，但这两种语言却非常紧密地联系在一起。尽管阿萨巴斯卡语高度濒危，研究也不彻底，但文献和比较分析已经发展到有可能建立可靠的重建纳-德内语的地步，纳-德内语是阿萨巴斯卡语和现代特林吉特语和埃亚克语的共同祖先。反过来，这些重建使来自几个机构的语言学家有可能收集令人信服的证据，支持长期以来寻求的纳-德涅语和西伯利亚叶尼塞亚语系之间的联系。他们的研究表明，也门语言中单词的抽象形式和动词的组成规则在纳-德内语中找到了系统和大量的相似之处。这些对应关系太多了，有太多的特殊特征，除了共同的血统之外，无法用其他任何东西来解释。这一比较也最终表明，海达有时与Na-Dene有关，但并不相关。2009年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个地方。这将是一个机会，支持德内-叶尼赛假说的证据将被阿萨巴斯语和其他纳-德涅语的专家观众讨论和批判性地评估。如果是正确的，德内和叶尼赛人的联系是连接亚裔和土著美国人的第一个确凿的语言学证据。这些结果对我们理解北美人口的史前迁移具有重要意义。从叶尼赛山脉到最远的阿萨巴斯加语之间的距离是已知的不使用轮式交通工具或帆船传播的语言所覆盖的最大陆上距离。考古学家推测，说纳得内语的人可能是美洲一些最早的殖民者的后裔，他们最终创造了成功而持久的北方古代工具传统，几乎一直主导着阿拉斯加的内陆和北部，直到历史时期。因此，这项研究对历史语言学本身的理论和实践也具有重要的意义。尽管印欧语系等广为人知的语系的确切年代有时存在争议，但大多数研究人员接受的最古老的年代通常不超过6000 BP。一些学者认为，这接近历史比较语言学方法的可靠性的外部极限。Dene-Yenissean的假设提出了这样一种可能性，即这种方法可以可靠地用来建立更大时间深度的语言关系，至少可以追溯到上一次从东西伯利亚迁徙到北美的时候，甚至更早。

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.