The Languages of Native North America

414 7 Catalogue: language families and isolates

Haida: Southern (Skidegate, Ninstints*), Northern (Alaskan = Kaigani, Masset)

Haida (from their word $ayda 'person') is a language isolate spoken on the Queen
Charlotte Islands off the coast of British Columbia and north into Alaska. The
southernmost dialect, once spoken on Anthony Island, was called Ninstints by
Swanton after the main town (1911b: 209). Though only a few speakers remained at
the beginning of the 20th century, the last survived until 1970 (Krauss 1973a). The
dialect of Skidegate, representing an amalgamation of villages in the central Queen
Charlottes that merged between 1870 and 1900, is now spoken by about 10 (Krauss
1997). The Masset dialect, spoken by people from villages of the northern Queen
Charlottes that came together between 1876 and 1885, has perhaps 30 speakers
(Krauss 1997). In the early 18th century, before contact, a group left the northern
islands for Prince of Wales and Dall Islands in southeastern Alaska, establishing
villages at Kaigani, Howkan, Sukwan, Klinkwan, Koiandlas, and Kasaan. Since about
1912 their descendants have lived at Hydaburg. Perhaps 15 still speak the language
at Hydaburg and Ketchikan (Krauss 1997). All Haida speakers are probably over 60
years of age. The possibility was long pursued of a genetic link to Athabaskan, Eyak,
and Tlingit in a hypothesized Na-Dene stock. It is now generally felt that similarities
between Haida and Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit are due to contact and errors in analysis
(Levine 1979, Leer 1990, 1991a). The proposal is discussed in detail in section 6.3.

Early Haida vocabularies appear in Radloff 1858, Tolmie 1884, Boas 1891, and La
Grasserie 1902. Missionary grammars followed, in Harrison 1895 and Keen 1906, as
well as Bible translations by both. Swanton's work at the turn of the century resulted
in preliminary notes (1902), texts (1905, 1908), songs (1912), and a grammatical
sketch (1911b). Haeberlin (1921) suggested a revision in Swanton's analysis of the
verb stem. Also based on the Swanton material and on a few hours' work with a
Skidegate speaker, is a description of phonetics and some morphology in Sapir 1923c.
Benveniste worked extensively with speakers but published only comments in 1953.
Studies of songs (Bursill-Hall 1964) and kinship (Anker 1974) contain material on the
language. Bibliographies of Haida linguistic materials are in Kess 1968 and especially
Krauss & McGary 1980. In publications in 1964, 1965, and 1968, Krauss compared
available Haida data with Athabaskan, Eyak, and Tlingit.

Since the 1970s substantial work has been carried out on all three surviving
dialects. Preliminary phonological analysis of Kaigani (Alaskan Haida) is in Welsch
1976 and Eastman & Aoki 1978. Work on Kaigani grammar includes discussion of
pronouns in Kess 1974 and Welsch 1975a, postpositions in Edwards 1977, number
marking in the verb phrase in Eastman 1976, tense and aspect in Eastman, Welsch,
& Vaughn 1975, spatio-temporal particles in Eastman 1979a, question formation in
Edwards & Eastman 1981, nominalization in Edwards & Eastman 1985, conjunction

Haida 415

in Eastman & Edwards 1982, subordination in Eastman & Edwards 1980, word order
and information structure (topic, focus) in Welsch 1975b, Eastman 1979b, Eastman
& Edwards 1979, 1983a,b, 1984, Edwards 1979, 1982, 1983, 1985. In 1977 Lawrence
published a Kaigani dictionary with a substantial grammatical sketch by Leer (1977a).
Texts are in Eastman & Edwards 1983c, 1991, Edwards 1995, and Edwards &
Eastman 1995. There is a grammar of Skidegate Haida in Levine 1977a, pitch is
discussed in Hori 1994, 1996, and texts are in Enrico 1995. Enrico has produced
substantial work on both Masset and Skidegate, with a grammatical sketch (1989) and
studies of phonology (1990a, 1991), classifiers (1987), case (1990b), tense in relative
clauses (1983), deixis (1985), word order (1986), and songs (Enrico & Stuart 1995).
Discourse structures are examined in Breinig 1995 and Hymes 1995.

Mithim, Marianne. 1999. The Languages of Native
North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.