Sprachhistorische Untersuchung zur Stellung des Haida

Abstract

The present paper, in its essential parts, dates from as early as 1978. It represents the first of a series of studies to show how the ingenious Edward Sapir, concerning the much disputed Na-Dene hypothesis, not only correctly classified Tlingit— which now implicitly is accepted even by his critics – but also leaded the right way in the much more complicated case of Haida. On the other hand, the crushing criticism chiefly by R. Levine on Sapir, Hymes, and Pinnow, reveals itself to be substantially as well as methodically vastly wrong. Most of the etymologies given by Sapir and/or Pinnow are defensable, new ones could be added. Ostensible separating features can no longer be regarded as such, e. g., s- and ł - as first members in initial consonant clusters — according to Krauss and Levine they are not even fossilized prefixes — can clearly be isolated as prefixes (comparable with Tlingit s-, c-, ł etc.) in a great number of items, e. g. HS q'a "harpoon", HK sq'a= "stick, e t c . " , HK łq'a= "many-pointed object" (PA *q'a' "arrow"); HS gal "night", łgał "black"; HK gáy "blood", sgit "to be red", HM geed "to be ashamed" etc. — The morphology of the noun, principle concern of the present paper, shows many parallels to Tlingit-Eyak-Athapaskan. The much more evidential morphology of the verb, together with numerous new etymologies, shall be published at a later date (Das Haida als Na-Dene-Sprache, Komparative Untersuchung über das Verbum, Ms, 300 pp.). Thus, in the light of these new materials, fundamental elements of Haida in phonemics, morphology and vocabulary prove themselves to be genetically related to Tlingit-Eyak-Athapaskan.