Chief Marie Smith Jones (1918 – 2008)
Last speaker of Eyak

I’ve tried to write before about the contradictions faced by linguistic science in an imperialist country. But sometimes history puts its terrible irony on full display, and that speaks much more eloquently on the subject than I can.

Such is the case with some recent news items. First, the extinction of two more languages: Eyak, an Alaskan language, extinct with the death of Marie Smith Jones on January 21; and Plains Apache, extinct with the recent death of Alfred Chalepah, Jr.

And then, five weeks to the day after Marie Smith Jones passed away, a major event in historical linguistics took place. At the Dene-Yeniseic Symposium in Fairbanks, Alaska, Edward Vajda presented a powerful argument for the linking of Na-Dene languages (including Tlingit in Alaska and the Athabaskan family, which includes languages from Alaska to as far south as Texas) with the Yeniseic languages of central Siberia. The proposed family links the languages shown below (graphic from Bernard Comrie; the little dots each represent a language in the proposed family):

If this family is accepted by the field, it will be a major milestone: the first demonstrated connection between Old World and New World languages. Linguists have been searching for such a connection for hundreds of years; this appears to be the likeliest effort ever to stand up to linguistic scrutiny. If proven, it will be a major piece of the historical puzzle concerning the historical connection between New World and Old World populations.

The kicker is that Eyak and Plains Apache were both members of the proposed Dene-Yeniseic family. To over-simplify things only slightly, the science which is answering some of the great mysteries about these languages is a key part of the civilization which is driving them extinct. The word ‘irony’ doesn’t seem strong enough.

April 3rd, 2008 | Category: linguistics, politics | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL