Athabaskan Languages - External Classification of The Family

External Classification of The Family

Eyak and Athabaskan together form a genealogical linguistic grouping called Athabaskan–Eyak (AE) - well demonstrated through consistent sound correspondences, extensive shared vocabulary, and cross-linguistically unique homologies in both verb and noun morphology.

Tlingit is distantly related to the Athabaskan–Eyak group to form the Na-Dené family - also known as Athabaskan–Eyak–Tlingit (AET). This latter grouping is considered a well-demonstrated family despite significant problems in establishing a complete set of sound changes because the resemblances in both shared vocabulary and unique verb morphology between the languages are so numerous that it is impossible to ascribe them to mere chance. Because both Tlingit and Eyak are fairly remote from the Athabaskan languages in terms of their sound systems, comparison is usually done between them and the reconstructed Proto-Athbaskan language which resembles both Tlingit and Eyak much more than most of the daughter languages in the Athabaskan family.

Although Ethnologue still gives the Athabaskan family as a relative of Haida in their definition of the Na-Dene family, linguists who work actively on Athabaskan languages discount this position. The Alaska Native Language Center, for example, takes the position that recent improved data on Haida have served to conclusively disprove the Haida-inclusion hypothesis, thus making Haida unrelated to Athabaskan languages. Some debate on the topic still continues, though at present only by linguists who do not work on languages in the Athabaskan family.