Talk:Navajo language

Yi/bi

Hi. In the section on "Yi-/bi- Alternation (animacy)", the animacy hierarchy is addressed, but the actual yi-/bi- alternation isn't even mentioned, let alone explained, and there aren't any examples. Given its prominence and imporance in Navajo linguistic studies, it seems like a good thing to include. I'm not entirely clear on the specific workings of the system, myself, though, so I hesitate to try adding that info. Take care, --Miskwito 06:20, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi. Yes, that remains to be written. The section on pronominal marking should probably be a written first. You can a read brief description with Navajo examples here: Southern Athabascan grammar#yi-/bi- Alternation (Animacy). I think I'll eventually replace those Navajo examples there with Western Apache examples. Obviously, much more can be written about it. – ishwar  (speak) 16:59, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Witherspoon??

Hi there. I'm very surprised that no one has made use of Gary Witherspoon's work here. He's a leading expert on the language.--Dylanfly 16:37, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Just a note--the work by William Morgan & Robert W. Young is the accepted standard used for all Navajo language classes including those offered by Diné College. All language text books for modern Navajo are based on their work which, I assume, includes Witherspoon Asdzani Bah (talk) 23:20, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Witherspoon is not the primary author of "Diné Bizaad Bóhoo'aah" I or II. I've checked three different college library catalogs and each has "Navajo Language Institute (N.M.)" listed as the author so it should be treated as having a corporate or institution/association author. Even the Library of Congress Online Catalog does not list a personal name for the author. Asdzani Bah (talk) 02:40, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

He actually is the primary author of the original versions of these works no matter what the catalogs say. But, you're right that we should have the bibliographic info match the catalog since that is what people will need to find these. – ishwar  (speak) 04:26, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Rising/Falling short vowels?

Just a quick general question. Do the Navajo language have rising and falling tones associated with short vowels, or are the moving tones only associated with the long vowels? Or another way of asking this question is if short vowels are subjectable to only low/high tones only or can short vowels also experience shifting tones in addition to low/high tones? CJLippert 16:00, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Hi. I missed this earlier. Rising and falling tones are only seen on long vowels or diphthongs. So, another way to analyze this is to say that Navajo only has two tones, high and low, and that the rising and falling pitch melodies are the result of sequences of different tones.

As for short vowels experiencing shifting tones, there are alternations between short vowels and long vowels. In these cases, you can find alternations betweeen short vowel with high tone and long vowel with falling tone. For example, the verb naashá "I go about" ends in short vowel with a high tone, but when you add the subordinating enclitic -go to the end of this verb, you get naasháago in which case the previously high short vowel is lengthen and partially lowered to a falling tone due the influence of the enclitic -go (which has a low tone). This pattern affects stem-final high short vowels in verb stems that are followed by enclitics with low tones. This doesnt happen when these enclitics follow nouns stems, postposition stems, or particles. – ishwar  (speak) 16:24, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks again. That was simple and clear. CJLippert 01:34, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Where is "Ń"?

Looking at the Navajo language curriculum, it seems they allow several letters with diacritics, mainly a, e, i and o with no diacritic, accute, ogonyek or accute-ogonyek... to indicate tone and nasality for the vowels. However, they also provide two consonants with diacritics: Ł ł and Ń ń. The article speaks of Ł ł, but where is Ń ń? CJLippert 16:06, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

BTW, it would be helpful if the current Navajo Alphabet is first introduced rather delving right into the pronunciation and throwing letters with diacritics at the reader who may not be familiar with the current orthography or the alphabet used in the current orthography. CJLippert 16:12, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

The Navajo alphabet consonants are presented in the Consonant table - where the letters in bold is the written letter and the letters in brackets are the IPA pronunciation of that letter. There is no "Ń". Whether this is a mistake I am not sure about at present but I am inclined to think that it is deliberate.·Maunus· ·ƛ· 17:23, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Table is good but it doesn't give the parsing order... which an alphabet implies. CJLippert 18:21, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

This presentation of the Navajo alphabet also has no "Ń".·Maunus· ·ƛ· 17:26, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

But... see the following:

• http://home.earthlink.net/~pfeiffer/N-Navajo%20Language.html
• http://dine.sanjuan.k12.ut.us/dine_web/downloads/files.htm
• http://www.ncela.gwu.edu/resabout/research/literature_early_literacy.pdf pp. 68-80

CJLippert 18:00, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

I see. It seems we will have to do some research.·Maunus· ·ƛ· 07:45, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Hi. These symbols (both capital and lowercase) represent syllabic nasals with a high tone. They are optional (but very common) contractions of the syllable ní. This also happens with low toned syllable ni turning into a syllabic n. Example: ní’séłt’i’ or ń’séłt’i’ meaning "extend it around/set them in a circle" (perfective mode). Yeah, the whole writing system needs to be better explained. – ishwar  (speak) 01:44, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

yes, thanks, that was helpful. CJLippert 14:28, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

the navajos are the largest american indian tribe in the us. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.117.239.32 (talk) 01:01, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Visual aspects and Classifiers

Here is a passage from "For Hearing People Only" (3rd Ed, Deaf Life Press 2003; it's an introduction to Deaf culture for outsiders) which leads me to believe that Navajo has visual aspects which are important, but don't seem to be mentioned in the article: "Classifiers are also found in Navajo, a highly visual spoken language that, until recently, lacked a written form. ASL and Navajo use classifiers in the exact same way; their morphology (word formation) is similar. ASL is thus structurally closer to Navajo than to English!" (71) Are there noteworthy visual aspects of Navajo? Are the classifiers visual? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.123.186.208 (talk) 03:33, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

It's not really clear what you mean, but I think you are misunderstanding that passage. Navajo is spoken so the classifying segments of classificatory verb stems are pieces of spoken words, which are by definition indicated aurally. Note that we're talking about classificatory verb stems and not the "classifier" prefixes which dont classify anything ("classifier" prefix is a bad name that is handed down from tradition). ASL is signed so its classifiers are pieces of signed words, which are by definition indicated visually. So the passage is just pointing out that ASL and Navajo are similar in that they classify nouns into certain semantic categories while English doesnt. The phrase "highly visual" is poorly worded in my opinion. This is just referring to the fact that nouns are classified according to specific criteria that is probably most often perceived with the eyes. For example, a FFO (flat flexible object) noun like a blanket is probably considered to be FFO because the speaker can see that it is indeed flat and flexible. However, you could also tell if an object is FFO by touching it, and presumably blind Navajo speakers have no problem speaking Navajo and putting nouns into categories even though they cannot see the objects that the nouns refer to.

The morphology being similar is a separate issue. See ling.ucsc.edu/Jorge/fernald.html (Athabaskan Satellites and ASL Ion-Morphs) for discussion. – ishwar  (speak) 05:12, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

See also: www.ingentaconnect.com/content/jbp/sll/2000/00000003/00000001/art00002 (Exploitation of morphological possibilities in signed languages: Comparison of American Sign Language with English). – ishwar  (speak) 05:41, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Where to find citation for ł in Navajo?

The article L with stroke has the following statement:

In Navajo, ł is used for a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative (ɬ), like the Welsh Ll.

Where could I find a citation for this? Jindřichův Smith (talk) 22:28, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Sapir, Edward, & Hoijer, Harry. (1942). Navaho texts. William Dwight Whitney series, Linguistic Society of America.

– ishwar  (speak) 05:18, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Is the language in decline, or incline?

In the intro of Navajo language the article states that "..more than 100,000 native speakers, and this number has actually increased with time." then right after that in the current use section, it claims that "the language is in decline" Which is it? 76.166.177.72 (talk) 17:14, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Both.

the number of Navajo speakers has increased but the percentage of children learning Navajo is decreasing. We can have an increase in total numbers due to population expansion but a decrease in percentage of speakers in that population expansion. Of course, if it continues, the numbers of speakers will decline eventually as well as we need children to pass the language down to. – ishwar  (speak) 05:23, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Grammar: polysynthetic?? SOV??

The article says that Navajo is polysynthetic and SOV, but I wonder if these are really accurate statements. The examples in the article don't seem to illustrate the degree of incorporation of noun and verb morphemes into a single word that I thought was characteristic of polysynthetic languages. And given the effect of animacy on the ordering of nouns in a sentence, it seems that the most that can really be said is that Navajo word order is verb-final, but not specifically either SOV or OSV. Can any experts comment on these issues? Richwales (talk) 06:24, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Navajo verbs can have around 8 prefixes attached to the verb stem, which is kind of a lot. It is not as much as some other languages which are even more polysynthetic (e.g. Eskimo langs which can have theoretically infinitely long verbs with recursion of affixes internal to the verb). If you're talking about noun incorporation, Navajo doesnt have productive lexical noun incorporation like Northern Athabascan languages, but you can see incorporated noun elements that seem to be nouns historically. Whether you consider them as incorporated nouns or as something else depends on your analysis. Also the pronominal prefixes are often analyzed as being pronouns that are incorporated into the verb. Others consider these prefixes as agreement markers. Again depends on the analysis. Clearly the prefixes at the leftmost edge of the verb appear to be more recently incorporated into the verb complex historically including postpositions which look similar to postpositions that are syntactically independent from the verb. At any rate, incorporation is not a defining characteristic of polysynthesis. And polysynthesis is a matter of degree rather than clearly defined type.

The unmarked order is SOV. The OSV order is usually called subject object inversion. Accordingly, the OSV sentences are translated and/or analyzed as passive sentences (which are marked compared to active sentences). Although there are analyses of the OSV order as being sensitive to animacy, other analyses consider it to be topicalization due to pragmatics. It should be noted, however, that Navajo usually does not have two overt nouns in sentences because the verb prefixes indicate both subjects and objects which are usually recoverable via the linguistic or situational context. So, a SOV or a OSV sentence is rather rare. But SOV occurs more often than OSV. One study of written Navajo narrative only found one OSV clause out of 294 (which is only 0.3%). But you're right to think about pressures conditioning word order because it may be the word order is determined by pragmatics and not by syntax at all. We can compare this to Lakhota which had only 0.9% deviance from SOV order (out of a 500 clause sample) and Tuscarora with 68% deviance from SOV. Navajo and Lakhota seem to have a more rigid order (at least from these counts) while Tuscarora is rather free. However, there needs to be more research done on their frequency of occurrence. I dont think that 294 clauses is a very big sample. – ishwar  (speak) 08:16, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

I've learned to read, write & speak Nvajo for the last 40 years. It's not as complicated as linguists make it sound. The best reason to lear it and keep it alive is the fact that the Navajo culture is "locked" up in their language. It is always fun to travel fron the Westren Agency to the East side of the reservation and see how well you are understood, Another important definer of communication is the age bracket you are addressing. I.E. older Navajos(60 years and up), middle age Navajos(30-60years)and the younger set of NavaJOS(29 7 under). To be fair, this is a generalization but it pretty much holds true. There is a vast cultural difference between these groups and this makes the language even more dynamic. Remember, the language is seriously important to the culture. As the old generation depleats many of the old stories are lost and the language and words of the old stories are so simply beautiful it's hard to imagine the Navajo language could be the same without them. Even the old jokes told by many are only funny in navajo. Tell them in english and it's simply not funny any more because you've lost too much in the translation. Futher more it's just as important note that what you say and how you say it is equaly important.

Typos?

In the Nouns section, am I right in thinking that beeʼdldǫǫh is a typo for beeʼeldǫǫh? -- Curious, - Erik Anderson 98.225.16.161 (talk) 06:04, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

That’s right. —Stephen (talk) 14:32, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

yi-

Since when is yi- a possessive prefix? Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 23:56, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Nevermind... it's so rare, I couldn't think of an example right away. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 00:07, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Person

I'd greatly appreciate it if someone would add a sentence or two explaining the different concepts of person -- the text and tables use 3a, 3o, and 3i with no real explanation of what these are. The page on Grammatical person wasn't too much of a help, though if I understand it aright, Navajo's a- prefix sounds similar to how Finnish passive is described at the bottom of the Grammatical_person#Additional_persons section. -- Cheers, Erik Anderson -- 205.166.76.15 (talk) 02:01, 13 October 2010 (UTC)