Tahltan

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Tahltan (also Nahanni) refers to a Northern Athabaskan people that live in northern British Columbia around Telegraph Creek, Dease Lake, and Iskut.

Contents 1 Culture 2 Language 2.1 Sounds 2.1.1 Consonants 2.1.2 Vowels 2.1.3 Phonological processes 3 External links 4 Bibliography

[edit] Culture

[edit] Language

Tahltan is a poorly documented Northern Athabaskan language. Some linguists consider Tahltan to be a language with 3 divergent but mutually intelligible dialects (Mithun 1999). The numbers below are according to Poser (2003):

• Tahltan   (approximately 35 speakers)
• Kaska   (approximately 400 speakers)
• Tagish   (approximately 2 speakers)

Other linguists consider these to be separate languages.

[edit] Sounds

[edit] Consonants

The 45 consonants of Tahltan:

		Bilabial	Interdental	Dental		Post-alveolar	Palatal	Velar		Uvular	Glottal
				central	lateral			plain	labial
Stop	unaspirated	p		t				k	kʷ	q
	aspirated							kʰ	kʷʰ	qʰ
	ejective							k’	k’ʷ	q’	ʔ
Affricate	unaspirated		tθ	ʦ	tɬ	ʧ
	aspirated		tθʰ	ʦʰ	tɬʰ	ʧʰ
	ejective		tθ’	ʦ’	tɬ’	ʧ’
Nasal	plain	m		n
	glottalized			n’
Fricative	voiceless		θ	s	ɬ	ʃ	ç	x	xʷ	χ	h
	voiced		ð	z	ɮ	ʒ		ɣ	ɣʷ	ʁ
Approximant							j		w

[edit] Vowels

[edit] Phonological processes

• Vowel flattening.
• Consonant harmony
• Vowel nasalization
• Vowel laxing

[edit] External links

• map of Northwest Coast First Nations (including Tahltan)

[edit] Bibliography

• Cook, Eung-Do. (1972). Stress and related rules in Tahltan. International Journal of American Linguistics, 38, 231-233.
• Gafos, Adamantios. (1999). The articulatory basis of locality in phonology. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc. ISBN 0-8153-3286-6. (Revised version of the author's Doctoral dissertation, Johns Hopkins University).
• Hardwick, Margaret F. (1984). Tahltan phonology and morphology. (Unpublished M.A. thesis, University of Toronto, Ontario).
• Mithun, Marianne. (1999). The languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-23228-7 (hbk); ISBN 0-521-29875-X.
• Nater, Hank. (1989). Some comments on the phonology of Tahltan. International Journal of American Linguistics, 55, 25-42.
• Poser, William J. (2003). The status of documentation for British Columbia native languages. Yinka Dene Language Institute Technical Report (No. 2). Vanderhoof, British Columbia: Yinka Dene Language Institute.
• Shaw, Patricia. (1991). Consonant harmony systems: The special status of coronal harmony. In C. Paradis & J.-F. Prunet (Eds.), Phonetics and phonology 2, the special status of coronals: Internal and external evidence (pp. 125-155). London: Academic Press.