Athabaskan Languages Conference program available

The  Athabaskan Languages Conference will be held in Whitehorse, Canada, from June 27 to 29 at the High Country Inn. The program is now available.

The registration fee has not been announced.

Coyote Papers Filled with Navajo

As graduate students work toward their degrees, an important step in becoming a recognized scholar is the publication of articles (often called monographs). To help with this, linguistics departments may have a publication that graduate students can publish their working papers (papers in progress) in.

At the University of Arizona, US, the working papers journal for linguistics is called the “Coyote Papers.” Many of the monographs are available online, including the entire 2008 edition, which has six articles, all with a focus on indigenous languages: five featuring Navajo (nav) and one on the Athabaskan language family. (The Athabaskan family has a northern and southern branch as well as some languages on the Pacific Coast.)

The contents of the 2010 edition, volume 16, are:

• Introduction to Navajo Language Studies – Amy V. Fountain
• An Optimality-Theoretic Analysis of Navajo Sibilant Harmony – Stacey Oberly
• Tone, Intonation, Stress and Duration in Navajo – Emily Kidder
• Evidentiality in Athabaskan – Ferdinand de Haan
• A Unification of Indo-European Aktionsart and Navajo Verb Theme Categories –
  Sumayya Racy
• An Experiment in Computational Parsing of the Navajo Verb – Mans Hulden and Shannon T. Bischoff

Although the more recent 2010 edition and some other recent editions do not have topics on endangered languages, the 2004 edition is dedicated to American indigenous languages. Languages featured include: Aymara (family), Capanahua (kaq), the Ehe dialect of Kurripako (Maipurean (kpc)), Kaska (kkz), Nez Perce (nez) and Southern Ute (ute). Also, Erin Haynes has an article titled, “Obstacles Facing Tribal Language Programs in Warm Spring, Klamath, and Grand Ronde.”

For a full list of all the editions, see “Coyote Papers:Working Papers in Linguistics.”