Tanacross Language - Previous Research

Previous Research

In addition to the strictly linguistic resources to be discussed below, Isaac (1988) and Simeone (1995) provide important cultural background on the Tanacross community. The former is an oral history told by Chief Andrew Isaac, the last traditional chief of Tanacross. Though much of the text has been translated into English, the translation maintains much of the speech style of the original Tanacross language. The text contains many references to Tanacross flora and fauna, as well as cultural items. Simeone’s book is an ethnographic sketch written by an Episcopal lay worker who spent much of the 1970s living in Tanacross village. Ethnographies of the eastern Alaska Athabaskan region, though not specific to Tanacross, can be found in McKennan (1959) and Andrews (1975). De Laguna & McClellan’s (1960) field notes also contain extensive ethnographic information.

The earliest written record by far of the Tanacross language is the “Copper River Kolchan” vocabulary recorded in Wrangell (1839). This list was probably collected at Nuchek in Prince William Sound, but its character is unmistakably Tanacross. Another short (three typescript pages) word list was collected by J.T. Geoghegan (Geoghegan & Geoghegan 1904). David Shinen compiled a somewhat longer Tanacross word list from Mary Charlie and Oscar Isaac in Tanacross village, and a portion of this list was later published under the heading “Nabesna” in Hoijer (1963). More substantive documentation of Tanacross began with exploratory fieldwork by Krauss, who first called it “transitional Tanana”. In the early 1970s Nancy McRoy compiled some textual materials with speaker Mary Charlie and a short wordlist containing about 400 items, mostly nouns, as well as some basic literacy materials. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Jeff Leer compiled further notes on grammatical paradigms and phonological features, including the three-way fricative voicing contrast. Marilyn Paul (1978) presents some notes compiled from a class taught by Leer at ANLC. Ron Scollon transcribed and translated a collection of texts from speaker Gaither Paul using a revised orthography which indicates tone. Kari has compiled a preliminary stem list based on information collected from several speakers in the 1980s, but tone is not marked. Alice Brean has compiled lexical and paradigmatic information. Minoura has compiled a short word list and information on tone. In spite of the various sources of lexical documentation, Krauss (p.c.) estimates than only twenty percent of the extant body of lexical information has been documented by linguists.

During the early 1990s John Ritter of the Yukon Native Language Center (YNLC) began a comprehensive study of Tanacross phonology in the early 1990s and developed a practical orthography. Tanacross speakers Irene Solomon Arnold and Jerry Isaac have participated in literacy workshops in Tok, Whitehorse and Dawson City, resulting in the production of literacy materials with accompanying cassette tapes. Solomon & Ritter (1997) provides crucial data for the description of tone phenomena. Additional sound recordings and field notes are available at YNLC. Since 2000 Irene Solomon has worked as a language specialist at the Alaska Native Language Center and has collaborated on a number of projects with linguist Gary Holton, including a phrase book, a learners' dictionary, and a multimedia description of the sound system.