Languages of canada 26 Flashcards
how many unrelated language families exist in America
dozens
Language families of canada: Eskimo-Aleut. who, where, how many
members include: Inuktitut, greenlandic, Aleut
40,000 people speak. nothern, north eastern canada, alaska, greeenland
Na-dene
only language family with proposed relative in eurasia.
members: Navajo, dogrib, tlingit
20,000 speakers. notrhwest canada and south US
Algonquin
grouped with wiyot and yurok languages as Algic
Members: Cree, Ojibwe, blackfoot
150,000 speakers. south canada and us
other language families
Siouan: mostly in the Canadian Prairies and American Mid-west
Salishan: mostly in British Columbia and Washington State
Wakashan: Western British Columbia and Vancouver Island
Tsimshianic: Northern British Columbia
Iroquoian: (historically) around the Great Lakes region
* There are many more language families in the US, other parts of North
America, and in South America
whats the name of alphabet developed for indigenous languages
canadian syllabics
What is language isolate
language with no known relatives. ex : Basque, Korean.
Haida: language isolate spoken in nothern BC
Ktunaxa: language isolate in South eastern BC
some languages, pronouns/verbs are inflected for clusivity
inclusive we: speaker, listener, 3rd party
exclusive: speaker, 3rd party, not listener.
Many Algonquin, iroquoian, siouan,wakashan mark clusivity in inflectional morphology. What other languages
Tagalog
what is proximate and obviative. which one is the default
proximate: nearby physically, contextually, metaphorically . the default.
obviative: distant or not important(salient in convo). 4th person
Look at east cree example.
if you use two 3rd person subject, one is the proximate and one the obviative
john (he) proximate doesn’t his obviate fathers name. He and his are two distinct person. ***
Not rare in north american languages (algonquin-cree) absent in indo european
