Tanacross Language - Relationships To Other Languages

Relationships To Other Languages

Tanacross is a member of the Athabaskan family of languages, a well-established genetic grouping whose members occupy three discontinuous areas of North America: the Northern group in northwestern Canada and Alaska, the Pacific Coast in northern California, Oregon, and southern Washington, and the Apachean group in the desert southwest of the continental United States. The seven Apachean languages include Navajo, the largest North American language in terms of number of speakers. Apachean is a very tightly related and well-defined branch. The Pacific Coast group is much less closely related than Apachean and is perhaps more of a geographic subgroup containing perhaps six languages. Of these only Tolowa and Hupa are still spoken today, and these only by a handful of speakers. Of the roughly 24 Northern Athabaskan languages, eleven are spoken in Alaska, three of which straddle the border with Canada.

Given the available data, it is difficult to discern linguistic subgroups within Northern Athabaskan. This is certainly true for the languages of the Tanana River drainages, which form a continuum extending from Lower Tanana in the west (downriver) to Upper Tanana in the east (upriver). Tanacross itself was not defined as a distinct language until the late 1960s (Krauss 1973a). The dialectology of this area has not been completely unraveled, but it is clear that Tanacross of course shares many features with neighboring languages and dialects, especially the Mentasta dialect of Ahtna, the (now extinct) Salcha dialect of Lower Tanana, the Tetlin dialect of Upper Tanana, and the Han language.

However, Tanacross is distinguished most dramatically from neighboring languages by the development of Proto-Athabaskan (PA) constricted vowels into high tone. In contrast, Lower Tanana, Hän and Upper Tanana developed low tone, while Ahtna either did not develop or lost tone. The Tanacross tone system remains active in the phonology and morphology of the language. Tanacross shares close linguistic, geographical and social ties with Upper Tanana to the east. In fact, the close social ties which have bound Tanacross with other groups in the upper Tanana drainage area argue for the definition of a Tanana Uplands language and culture area. This area would include all groups which have regularly participated in potlatch ceremonies with Tanacross, including the Upper Tanana of Tetlin, Northway and Beaver Creek; the Han of the vicinity of Eagle, Alaska and Dawson City, Yukon; and the Mentasta Ahtna of the Mentasta area. Mentasta is the most divergent dialect of Ahtna and shares many linguistic features with Tanacross and Upper Tanana. Due to extensive multilingualism within the Tanana Uplands area, any study of Tanacross must account for the larger socio-linguistic framework within which Tanacross is embedded.