Orthography of Dene Sųłiné

Different orthographies have been developed and used for the Dene Sųłiné languages over time; even today, different commuities may use slightly different sets of symbols. The orthography used on this page and on the DSA for Dene Sųłiné is one commonly used in contemporary work and dictionaries. In the tables on this page, in bold on the left is the phoneme in Dene Sųłiné orthography; next to it is the IPA equivalent.

Consonants

The consonant sounds in a language are divided into two groups: obstruents and sonorants. Obstruents are stops, fricatives, and affricates, and are the largest group in the inventory of Dene Sųłiné sounds. The second group of sounds is sonorants; this is a smaller group, consisting mainly of nasals and approximants.

Dene Sųłiné has around thirty-five consonants in total; the exact number varies based on dialect. In Table 1 below, the consonants of Dene Sųłiné are given.

Table 1: Dene Sųłiné Consonants

		Bilabial	Interdental	Alveolar	Lateral	Palato-alveolar	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m [m]		n [n]
Stop	Voiced	b [b]		d [d]			g [g]	ʼ [ʔ]
	Velar Affrication			t [tx]			k [kx]
	Ejective			tʼ [tʼ]			kʼ [kʼ]
Affricate	Voiced		ddh [dð]	dz [dz]	dl [dl]	j [dʒ]
	Aspirated		tth [tθ^h]	ts [ts^h]	tłʼ [tɬ^h]	ch [tʃ^h]
	Ejective		tth [tθʼ]	tsʼ [tsʼ]	tłʼ [tɬʼ]	chʼ [tʃʼ]
Fricative	Voiceless		θ [th]	s [s]	ł [ɬ]	sh [ʃ]	x [x]	h [h]
Fricative	Voiced		ð [dh]	z [z]	l [l]	zh [ʒ]	gh [ɣ]
Glide				r [ɹ]		y [j]

Vowels

There are five or six phonemic vowel qualities in the Dene Sųłiné languages. The sixth vowel is a front central vowel ë [ɛ~ə], which may not be present in all Dene Sųłiné languages. This vowel is included in parenthesis in Table 2 below, but is not included in the vowel space of Figure 1. The vowel phoneme qualities of Dene Sųłiné are given in Table 2 below. The vowel space, according to the energy of the formants, is illustrated in Figure 1 below.

Table 2: Dene Sųłiné Vowels

	Front	Back
High	i [i]	u [u]
Mid-high	e [e]	o [o]
Mid-low	( ë [ɛ~ə] )
Low	a [ɑ]

Figure 1: The Dene Sųłiné Vowel Space

The vowels contrast in tone (high or low), length, and nasality. The long versus short vowel contrast may not be present in all Dene Sųłiné languages. The Dene Sųłiné languages are orthographically 'high tone marked' languages, meaning that high tone is marked on vowels with an acute accent, while low tone is unmarked. The contrasts of tone, length and nasality are marked as follows.

aa long vowel
ą nasal vowel
á high tone (low tone is unmarked)
ą́ high tone nasal vowel

Resources

[Dead Link: Rice, Sally. Dene Suline Dictionary, Grammar, and Text Project. Online information: Department of Linguistics, University of Alberta.]
Cook, Eung-Do. (2004). A Grammar of Dëne Sųłiné (Chipewyan). Algonquian and Iroquoian Linguistics - Special Athabaskan Number, Memoir 17. Winnipeg: Algonquian and Iroquoian Linguistics. ISBN 0-921064-17-9.
Li, Fang-Kuei. (1946). Chipewyan. In C. Osgood & H. Hoijer (Eds.), Linguistic Structures of Native America (pp. 398–423). New York: The Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology (No. 6). (Reprinted 1963, 1965, 1967, & 1971, New York: Johnson Reprint Corp.).
Mithun, Marianne (1999). The languages of native North America. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
A set of index cards comprising an English-Chipewyan Dictionary by Eung-Do Cook made available at the University of Calgary. It features animal names, tools, clothing, body parts, people, plants, weather, food, colors, and seasons.
Chris Harvey. (2012) LanguageGeek [website]

2018-08-06