Slavey language

Slavey ( ; also Slave, Slavé) is a group of Athabaskan languages and a dialect continuum spoken amongst the Dene peoples of Canada in the Northwest Territories – or central Denendeh – where it also has official status. The languages are primarily written using a modified Latin script, with some using Canadian Aboriginal syllabics. In their own languages, these languages are referred to as: Sahtúgot’įné Yatı̨́ (spoken by the Sahtu Dene), K’ashógot’įne Goxedǝ́ (the Hare Dene dialect) and Shíhgot’įne Yatı̨́ (the Mountain dialect) in the North, and Dené Dháh (primarily by the Dene Tha' in Alberta), Dene Yatıé or Dene Zhatıé in the South.

North Slavey and South Slavey

North Slavey is spoken by the Sahtu (North Slavey) people in the Mackenzie District along the middle Mackenzie River from Tulita (Fort Norman) north, around Great Bear Lake, and in the Mackenzie Mountains of the Canadian territory of Northwest Territories. The dialect has around 800 speakers.

Northern Slavey is an amalgamation of three separate dialects:

K’ashógot’įne () Goxedǝ́: Hare, spoken by the - "Rabbitskin People" or - "Great Hare People", referring to their dependence on the varying hare for food and clothing, also called or
Sahtúgot’įné () Yatı̨́: Bear Lake, spoken by the or - "Bear Lake People", also known as
Shíhgot’įne () Yatı̨́: Mountain, spoken by the or - "Mountain People" or Mountain Indians, also called or - "People of the west", so called because they lived in the mountains west of the other Slavey groups, between the Mackenzie Mountains and the Mackenzie River, from the Redstone River to the Mountain River

South Slavey ( or ) is spoken by the Slavey people, who were also known as ("people dwelling in the shelter"), in the region of Great Slave Lake, upper Mackenzie River ( - "Big River") and its drainage, in the District of Mackenzie, northwest Alberta, and northeast British Columbia.

Some communities are bilingual, with the children learning Slavey at home and English when they enter school. Still other communities are monolingual in Slavey

In 2015, a Slavey woman named Andrea Heron challenged the territorial government over its refusal to permit the ʔ character, representing the Slavey glottal stop, in her daughter's name, Sakaeʔah, despite Slavey languages being official in the NWT. The territory argued that territorial and federal identity documents were unable to accommodate the character. Heron had registered the name with a hyphen instead of the ʔ when her daughter was born, but when Sakaeʔah was 6, Ms. Heron joined a challenge by a Chipewyan woman named Shene Catholique-Valpy regarding the same character in her own daughter's name, Sahaiʔa.

Also in 2015, the University of Victoria launched a language revitalization program in the NWT, pairing learners of indigenous languages including Slavey with fluent speakers. The program requires 100 hours of conversation with the mentor with no English allowed, as well as sessions with instructors in Fort Providence.

Phonology

Consonants

{| class="wikitable" style=text-align:center

! rowspan="2" colspan="2" |

! rowspan="2" | Labial

! colspan="3" | Alveolar

! rowspan="2" | Post- alveolar

! rowspan="2" | Dorsal

! rowspan="2" | Glottal

! plain

! sibilant

! lateral

! rowspan="3" | Plosive/ Affricate

! plain

| rowspan="3" |

! aspirated

| style="background:#FFDDDD" |

! ejective

! rowspan="2" | Fricative

! voiceless

! voiced

! colspan="2" | Nasal

! colspan="2" | Approximant

| style="background:#DDDDFF" |

The consonant inventories in the dialects of Slavey differ considerably. The table above lists the 30 consonants common to most or all varieties. Hare lacks aspirated affricates (on red background), which have lenited into fricatives, whereas Mountain lacks (on blue). In addition, for some speakers of Hare, an alveolar flap has developed into a separate phoneme. Prenasalized stops may appear in Slavey proper.

The most pronounced difference is however the realization of a series of consonants that vary greatly in their place of articulation:

{| class="wikitable" style=text-align:center

! !! Slavey proper !! Mountain !! Bearlake !! Hare

! Plain stop/affricate

| || || || ,

! Aspirated

| || || ||

! Ejective

| || || ||

! Voiceless fricative

| || || ||

! Voiced fricative / semivowel

| || || ||

In Slavey proper, these are dental affricates and fricatives; comparative Athabaskan work reveals this to be the oldest sound value. Mountain has labials, with the voiceless stop coinciding with pre-existing . Bearlake has labialized velars, but has lenited the voiced fricative to coincide with pre-existing . The most complicated situation is found in Hare, where the plain stop is a labialized velar, the ejective member is replaced by a sequence, the aspirated affricate has turned into a fricative , and both the voiceless and voiced fricatives have been lenited to .

Phonological processes

The following phonological and phonetic statements apply to all four dialects of Slavey.

Unaspirated obstruents are either voiceless or weakly voiced, e.g.
→ or
Aspirated obstruents are strongly aspirated.
Ejectives are strongly ejective.
When occurring between vowels, ejectives are often voiced, e.g.
→ or
is usually strongly velarized, i.e. .
Velar obstruents are palatalized before front vowels, e.g.
→
→
→
Velar fricatives may be labialized before round vowels.
The voiceless fricative is usually labialized, e.g.
→
The voiced fricative is optionally labialized and may additionally be deaffricated e.g.
→ or or
Velar stops are also labialized before round vowels. These labialized velars are not as heavily rounded as labial velars (which occur in Bearlake and Hare), e.g.
→
→
Lateral affricates are generally alveolar, but sometimes velar, i.e.
→ or
→ or
→ or
may be velar or glottal, i.e.
→ or

Vowels

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: center;"

|+Oral

!Front

!Central

!Back

|- class="nounderlines"

!Close

|- class="nounderlines"

!Close-mid

| ⟨ə⟩

|- class="nounderlines"

!Open-mid

|- class="nounderlines"

!Open

a
e or when followed by a back vowel
ə or
i or in syllable onset
o
u
nasal vowels are marked with an ogonek accent, e.g.
Vowel length is distributed as /VV/ in the dialects of Bearlake, Slavey and Mountain.
South Slavey does not have the vowel.

Tone

Slavey has two tones:

high
low

In Slavey orthography, high tone is marked with an acute accent, and low tone is unmarked.

Tones are both lexical and grammatical.

Lexical: 'along' vs. 'rabbit'

Syllable structure

Slavey morphemes have underlying syllable structures in the stems: CV, CVC, CVnC, V, and VC. The prefixes of the stem occur as Cv, CVC, VC, CV, and C.

{| class="wikitable"

! Stem structure !! Example !! English gloss

| CV || tu || "water"

| CVC || ʔah || "snowshoe"

| CVnC || mį́h || "net"

| V || -e || Postposition

| VC || -éh || "with"

| a || c || chʼ || d || ddh

| dh || dl || dz || e || g

| || || || ||

| gh || h || i || j || k

| kʼ || l || ł || m || mb

| || || || ||

| n || nd || o || r || s

| sh || t || th || tł || tłʼ

| || || || ||

| ts || tsʼ || tth || tthʼ || tʼ

| u || w || y || z || zh

| ʔ

| || || || ||

Tone is indicated with an acute accent and the ogonek indicates nasalization.

North Slavey alphabet

South Slavey alphabet

Morphology

Slavey, like many Athabascan languages, has a very specific morpheme order in the verb in which the stem must come last. The morpheme order is shown in the following chart.

{| class="wikitable"

! Position !! Description

| Position 000 || Adverb

| Position 00 || Object of incorporated postposition

| Position 0 || Incorporated postposition

| Position 1 || Adverbial

| Position 2 || Distributive (yá-)

| Position 3 || Customary (na-)

| Position 4 || Incorporated stem

| Position 5 || Number

| Position 6 || Direct Object

| Position 7 || Deictic

| Position 8 || Theme/derivation

| Position 9 || Aspect/derivation

| Position 10 || Conjugation

| Position 11 || Mode

| Position 12 || Subject

| Position 13 || Classifier

| Position 14 || Stem

A Slavey verb must minimally have positions 13 and 14 to be proper. Here are some examples: