Misplaced Pages

#395604

39-591: The name Kula is from a Tlingit language word meaning "all gone". As the name suggests, the Kula plate was entirely subducted around 48 Ma and today only a slab in the mantle under the Bering Sea remains. There is some evidence of a Resurrection plate broken off from the Kula plate and also subducted. The Kula plate began subducting under the Pacific Northwest region of North America during

78-416: A circumflex , and long low vowels are marked with a grave accent. Short low vowels are unmarked. Coastal Tlingit <áa> and <aa> are Inland <â> and <à> respectively. Coastal <éi> and <ei> are Inland <ê> and <è>, Coastal <ée> and <ee> are Inland <î> and <ì>, and Coastal <óo> and <oo> are Inland <û> and <ù>. Word onset

117-483: A claim that was subsequently debated by Franz Boas (1917), P.E. Goddard (1920), and many other prominent linguists of the time. Studies in the late 20th century by (Heinz-)Jürgen Pinnow (1962, 1968, 1970, int. al.) and Michael E. Krauss (1964, 1965, 1969, int. al.) showed a strong connection to Eyak and hence to the Athabaskan languages . Sapir initially proposed a connection between Tlingit and Haida , but

156-406: A four-way register contrast between short, long, glottalized, and "fading" vowels. (In the last type, the onset of the vowel is articulated normally but the release is murmured , essentially a rapid opening of the glottis once articulation is begun.) The tone values in two-tone dialects can be predicted in some cases from the three-tone values but not the reverse. Earlier, it was hypothesized that

195-528: A modern work postdating Naish and Story's work in the 1960s. Portland Canal Portland Canal is an arm of Portland Inlet , one of the principal inlets of the British Columbia Coast . It is approximately 114 km (71 mi) long. The Portland Canal forms part of the border between southeastern Alaska and British Columbia . The name of the entire inlet in the Nisga'a language

234-650: A real, if distant, genetic relationship connects Haida to Na-Dene[.]" The Tlingit language is distributed from near the mouth of the Copper River down the open coast of the Gulf of Alaska and throughout almost all of the islands of the Alexander Archipelago in Southeast Alaska . It is characterized by four or five distinct dialects, but they are mostly mutually intelligible. Almost all of

273-594: A relatively steep angle, so that the Canadian Rockies are primarily composed of thrusted sedimentary sheets with relatively little contribution of continental uplift , while the American Rockies are characterized by significant continental uplift in response to the shallow subduction of the Farallon plate. About 55 million years ago, the Kula plate began an even more northerly motion. Riding on

312-425: A similar distinction. For speakers who make the voiced/unvoiced distinction, the distribution is symmetrical with the unaspirated/aspirated distinction among other speakers. Maddieson , Smith, and Bessel (2001) note that all word final non-ejective stops are phonemically unaspirated. That contrasts with the orthography that typically represents them as aspirated stops: t [tʰ] for the more accurate d [t] . There

351-481: A single phoneme word-finally. Maddieson and colleagues also confirm that the ejective fricatives in Tlingit are in fact true ejectives, despite the widely-held assumption that ejective fricatives are not actually phonetically ejective but are as a sequence of fricative and glottal stop. In Tlingit, at least, the articulation of ejective fricatives includes complete closure of the glottis before frication begins, and

390-649: A written version of the language with the Latin alphabet . The history of Tlingit is poorly known, mostly because there is no written record until the first contact with Europeans around the 1790s. Documentation was sparse and irregular until the early 20th century. The language appears to have spread northward from the Ketchikan – Saxman area towards the Chilkat region since certain conservative features are reduced gradually from south to north. The shared features between

429-721: Is Kʼalii Xkʼalaan , with xkʼalaan meaning "at the back of (someplace)". The upper end of the inlet was home to the Tsetsaut ( Jitsʼaawit in Nisgaʼa), who after being decimated by war and disease were taken under the protection of the Laxsgiik (Eagle) chief of the Nisgaʼa , who holds the inlet's title in native law. Despite its naming as a canal , the inlet is a fjord , a completely natural and not man-made geographic feature, and extends 114.6 km (71.2 mi) northward from

SECTION 10

#1732765767396

468-480: Is a wide variation in ordinary speech, ranging from unreleased [t̚] to a very delayed aspiration [tːʰ] . However, the underlying phoneme is certainly unaspirated /t/ since it is consistently produced when the word is suffixed. The orthography usually but not always reflects that: hít "house" is written (du) hídi "(his) house" when marked with the possessive suffix -ÿí . It is possible but has not been verified that aspirated and unaspirated stops are collapsed into

507-618: Is always consonantal in Tlingit and so words never begin with a vowel. Where a vowel would theoretically have occurred, such as by prefixing or compounding, the vowel is always followed by either [ʔ] or [j] . The former is universal in single words, and both are found in word-medial position in compounds. The orthography does not reflect the [ʔ] in word-initial position, but either . or y may be seen in medial position. For example: khu- INDH . OBJ - ÿu- PERF - ÿa- ( 0 , - D , +I)- t'áa hot khu- ÿu- ÿa- t'áa INDH .OBJ- PERF- {(0, -D, +I)}- hot "the weather

546-405: Is hot" Unknown glossing abbreviation(s) ( help ); But when the perfective prefix ÿu- is word-initial, the glottal stop appears to ensure that the word begins with a consonant. ∅- 3 . NEU . OBJ - ÿu- PERF - ÿa- ( 0 , - D , +I)- t'áa hot ∅- ÿu- ÿa- t'áa 3. NEU .OBJ- PERF- {(0, -D, +I)}- hot "it is hot" Unknown glossing abbreviation(s) ( help ); Until

585-475: Is in contradistinction to the glottal modifications in Tongass Tlingit, which Leer argues are symmetric with the modifications of the consonantal system. Thus, a fading vowel V̤ is symmetric with an aspirated consonant Cʰ , and a glottalized vowel Vʔ is symmetric with an ejective (glottalized) consonant Cʼ . That implies that the two systems have no familial relationship. Leer (1978) speculated that

624-591: Is the most conservative of the various dialects of Tlingit, preserving contrasts which have been lost in the other dialects. The fading and glottalized vowels in Tongass Tlingit have also been compared with similar systems in the Coast Tsimshian dialect . However, Krauss and Leer (1981, p. 165) point out that the fading vowels in Coastal Tsimshian are the surface realization of underlying sequences of vowel and glottalized sonorant, VʔC . That

663-411: Is uncertain whether this assimilation is autochthonous or if it arose from contact with English, but the former is more likely from a purely articulatory perspective. Young speakers and second-language learners are increasingly making a voiced/unvoiced distinction between consonants, rather than the traditional unaspirated/aspirated distinction. That is because of the influence of English, which makes

702-571: The Eyak language , found around the Copper River delta, and Tongass Tlingit , near the Portland Canal , are all the more striking for the distances that separate them, both geographic and linguistic. Tlingit is currently classified as a distinct and separate branch of Na-Dene, an indigenous language family of North America . Edward Sapir (1915) argued for its inclusion in the Na-Dené family,

741-712: The Late Cretaceous period much like the Pacific plate does today, supporting a large volcanic arc system from northern Washington to southwestern Yukon called the Coast Range Arc . There was a triple junction of three ridges between the Kula plate to the north, the Pacific plate to the west and the Farallon plate to the east. The Kula plate was subducted under the North American plate at

780-625: The Pacific plate . Tlingit language The Tlingit language ( English: / ˈ k l ɪ ŋ k ɪ t / KLING -kit ; Lingít Tlingit pronunciation: [ɬɪ̀nkɪ́tʰ] ) is spoken by the Tlingit people of Southeast Alaska and Western Canada and is a branch of the Na-Dene language family . Extensive effort is being put into revitalization programs in Southeast Alaska to revive and preserve

819-473: The University of Alaska Southeast . In April 2014, Alaska HB 216 recognized Tlingit as an official language of Alaska, lending support to language revitalization . Tlingit is divided into roughly five major dialects, all of which are essentially mutually intelligible: The various dialects of Tlingit can be classified roughly into two-tone and three-tone systems. Tongass Tlingit, however, has no tone but

SECTION 20

#1732765767396

858-415: The velar and uvular plosives is common among Tlingit-speakers of all dialects. For example, the sequence ng ( /nk/ ) is often heard as [ŋk] and ngh ( /nq/ ) as [ɴq] . Native speakers in a teaching position may admonish learners when they produce these assimilated forms, deriding them as "not Tlingit" or "too English", but it is common to later hear such speakers producing those forms themselves. It

897-471: The Kula plate was the Pacific Rim Terrane consisting of volcanic and sedimentary rock . It was scraped off and plastered against the continental margin , forming what is today Vancouver Island . By 40 million years ago, the compressional force of the Kula plate ceased. The existence of the Kula plate was inferred from the westward bend in the alternating pattern of magnetic anomalies in

936-601: The Northern dialect, the dominant spoken dialect of Tlingit and the standard for written Tlingit, every vowel may take either high or low tone ; in the orthography high tone is indicated by an acute accent ( áa ) and low tone is unmarked ( aa ). The Southern and Transitional dialects have a mid tone which is unmarked and additional low tone which is marked by a grave accent ( àa ). The Inland Tlingit orthography does not use vowel digraphs. Instead, short high vowels are marked with an acute accent, long high vowels are marked with

975-555: The Portland Inlet at Pearse Island , British Columbia, to Stewart, British Columbia , and Hyder, Alaska . Observatory Inlet joins the Portland Canal at Ramsden Point, where both merge with Portland Inlet. Pearse Canal joins Portland Canal at the north end of Pearse Island. Portland Canal was given its name by George Vancouver in 1793, in honour of William Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland . The use of

1014-485: The Tlingit ejective series is [ʃʼ] . The language is also notable for having several laterals but no voiced [l] and for having no labials in most dialects, except for [m] and [p] in recent English loanwords . The consonants in the table are given in the IPA, with the popular orthography equivalents in brackets. Marginal or historical phonemes are given in parentheses. Nasal consonants assimilating with /n/ and

1053-725: The Tlingit language and culture. Missionaries of the Russian Orthodox Church were the first to develop a written version of Tlingit by using the Cyrillic script to record and translate it when the Russian Empire had contact with Alaska and the coast of North America down to Sonoma County, California . After the Alaska Purchase , English-speaking missionaries from the United States developed

1092-569: The area where the Tlingit language is endemic is contained within the modern borders of Alaska . The exception is an area known as "Inland Tlingit" that extends up the Taku River and into northern British Columbia and the Yukon around Atlin Lake ( Áa Tleen "Big Lake") and Teslin Lake ( Desleen < Tas Tleen "Big Thread") lake districts, as well as a concentration around Bennett Lake at

1131-474: The debate over Na-Dene gradually excluded Haida from the discussion. Haida is now considered an isolate , with some borrowing from its long proximity with Tlingit. In 2004, the Haida linguist John Enrico presented new arguments and reopened the debate. Victor Golla writes in his 2011 California Native Languages , "John Enrico, the contemporary linguist with the deepest knowledge of Haida, continues to believe that

1170-443: The diameter of the air column and so further increases pressure. That pharyngeal constriction is not true pharyngealization, however, since the diameter is still greater than what is found in pharyngealized consonants in other languages. Tlingit has eight vowels , four vowels further distinguished formally by length . However, the length distinction is often in terms of tenseness rather than length, particularly in rapid speech. For

1209-879: The end of the Chilkoot Trail ( Jilkhoot ). Otherwise, Tlingit is not found in Canada . Tlingit legend tells that groups of Tlingit once inhabited the Stikine , Nass , and Skeena river valleys during their migrations from the interior. There is a small group of speakers (some 85) in Washington as well. Golla (2007) reported a decreasing population of 500 speakers in Alaska. The First Peoples' Cultural Council (2014) reported 2 speakers in Canada out of an ethnic population of 400. As of 2013, Tlingit courses are available at

Kula plate - Misplaced Pages Continue

1248-688: The international boundary in the Portland Canal was a major issue during the negotiations over the Alaska boundary dispute , which heated up as a result of the Klondike Gold Rush and ended by arbitration in 1903. Together with Pearse Canal and Tongass Passage , the Portland Canal is defined by the Alaska Boundary Settlement (the Hay-Herbert Treaty ) as part of Portland Channel (Canal), a term used as forming

1287-409: The larynx is raised in the same manner as with ejective stops. Characteristically, the ejective fricatives in Tlingit feature a much smaller aperture for frication than is found in ordinary fricatives. That articulation provides increased resistance to counter the continual loss of dynamic airstream pressure. Also, ejective fricatives appear to include tightening of the pharyngeal muscles, which reduces

1326-676: The late 1960s, Tlingit was written exclusively in phonetic transcription in the works of linguists and anthropologists except for a little-known Cyrillic alphabet used for publications by the Russian Orthodox Church . A number of amateur anthropologists doing extensive work on the Tlingit had no training in linguistics and so left numerous samples in vague and inconsistent transcriptions, the most famous being George T. Emmons . However, such noted anthropologists as Franz Boas , John R. Swanton , and Frederica de Laguna have transcribed Tlingit in various related systems that feature accuracy and consistency but sacrifice readability. Two problems ensue from

1365-536: The maintenance of the pretonal system in Tongass Tlingit was caused by the proximity of its speakers around the Cape Fox area near the mouth of the Portland Canal to speakers of Coastal Tsimshian, just to the south. Tlingit has a complex phonological system compared to Indo-European languages such as English or Spanish . It has an almost complete series of ejective consonants accompanying its stop, fricative, and affricate consonants. The only missing consonant in

1404-603: The marine boundary in the Anglo-Russian Treaty of 1825 but which was undefined at the time. This article about a location in the Prince of Wales–Hyder Census Area, Alaska is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This article about a location in the Ketchikan Gateway Borough, Alaska is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This article about a fjord

1443-489: The multiplicity of transcription systems used for Tlingit. One is that there are many of them, thus requiring any reader to learn each individual system depending on what sources are used. The other is that most transcriptions made before Boas's study of Tlingit have numerous mistakes in them, particularly because of misinterpretations of the short vowels and ejective consonants. Accuracy of transcription can be increased by checking against similar words in other systems, or against

1482-469: The three-tone dialects were older and that the two-tone dialects evolved from them. However, Jeff Leer 's discovery of the Tongass dialect in the late 1970s has shown that the Tongass vowel system is adequate to predict the tonal features of both the two-tone and three-tone dialects, but none of the tonal dialects could be used to predict vocalic feature distribution in Tongass Tlingit. Thus, Tongass Tlingit

1521-677: The word canal to name inlets on the British Columbia Coast and the Alaska Panhandle is a legacy of the Spanish exploration of the area in the 18th century. For example, Haro Strait between Victoria and the San Juan Islands was originally Canal de Haro . The English cognate to the Spanish canal is "channel", which is found throughout the coast, cf. Dean Channel . George Vancouver used both terms in his naming of inlets, Hood Canal for example. The placement of

#395604