Internal Classification of The Family
The internal structure of the Athabaskan language family is complex and its exact shape is still a hotly debated issue among experts. The conventional three-way split into Northern, Pacific Coast, and Southern is essentially based on geography and the physical distribution of Athabaskan peoples rather than sound linguistic comparisons. Despite this inadequacy, it is clear from current comparative Athabaskan literature that most Athabaskanists still use the three-way geographic grouping rather than any of the proposed linguistic groupings given below because none of them have been widely accepted. This situation will presumably change as both documentation and analysis of the languages improves.
Read more about this topic: Athabaskan Languages
Famous quotes containing the words internal and/or family:
“If the Revolution has the right to destroy bridges and art monuments whenever necessary, it will stop still less from laying its hand on any tendency in art which, no matter how great its achievement in form, threatens to disintegrate the revolutionary environment or to arouse the internal forces of the Revolution, that is, the proletariat, the peasantry and the intelligentsia, to a hostile opposition to one another. Our standard is, clearly, political, imperative and intolerant.”
—Leon Trotsky (1879–1940)
“The same dreadful set,
the same family of orange and pink faces
carved and dressed up like puppets
who wait for their jaws to open and shut.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)