NAVAJO AFFIXATION 1

Gabriel Romero LING 3040-001

Pantos Spring 2016

Abstract

This paper will analyze the grammatical function of specific affixes in Navajo, as well as the

language’s geographic classification and its closely-related languages in the Southern

Athabaskan language family. To provide a contextual framework, this paper will discuss the

number of speakers each language has, as well as each tribe’s self-designation in their native

language. Following that, this paper will narrow its scope to just the Navajo language; as it is the

language with the highest number of living native speakers and thus has the most comprehensive

data in the Athabaskan family. This paper will then briefly explain the typological classification

and grammatical structure of the Navajo language and identify which affixes are used to indicate

grammatical person, possession, mode, aspect, and classification; as well as discuss affixes

which alter their stem’s part of speech.

Morphology and Affixation in Navajo

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Navajo— self-designated Diné bizaad [tné piz̥ɑ̀ːt] or Naabeehó bizaad [nɑ̀ːpèːhó piz̥ɑ̀ːt/]

(Pritzker, 2000)— is a Southern Athabaskan language belonging to the Na-Dené family which, it

has been proposed, might trace back further to the Dené-Yenisian language family, linking it to a

number of languages spoken in Central Siberia. (Shaul, 2014). Prior to the Mexican Cession of

1848, South Athabaskan populations were located in Mexico’s northern territories Alto

California and Nuevo México, as well as northern Sonora, Mexico. Post-1848, the Navajo

Nation is located on Four Corners, stretching into New Mexico, Arizona, and a tiny portion of

Utah and Colorado.

Southern Athabaskan falls under the broader classification Na-Dené

They belong to the language family Na-Dené, which also includes many Native American

languages throughout northern Canada, southeastern Alaska, and some of the northeastern

United States. It is proposed that this family can be traced further back to the Dené-Yenisian

language family, which includes languages spoken in the Americas as well as central Siberia.

Interestingly, Apachean languages are the only ones in the Na-Dené family spoken by

people outside of the northwestern United States, western Canada, or Alaska. The Na-Dené

languages spoken in this area are separated into Northern Athabaskan (southern Alaska and

northern Canada) and Pacific Coast Athabaskan (northwestern California, Oregon, and

Washington, as well as some west-central Canada). It is likely that Apachean speakers migrated

from these areas to the southwestern United States some time around 400 CE (Krauss and Golla,

1981). Although many of these languages are mutually intelligible (Fountain, 2008), Apachean

languages tend to be more similar to one another than they are to Northern or Pacific Coast

Athabaskan languages. Furthermore, West Apachean languages— Navajo, West Apache, and

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Mescalero-Chiricahua— tend to be more similar to one another than they are to East Apachean

or Plains Apachean languages— Jicarillo, Lipan† or Kiowa†.

Many Northern-Athabaskan languages are considered endangered, having anywhere from

only a few elders who are native speakers to several hundred living speakers. Of these,

Chipewyan has the most speakers; around 4,000. This is where Southern Athabaskan languages

significantly differ, especially those in the west. Navajo alone is spoken by 170,000 native

speakers (Ryan, 2011), and is currently considered the most widely-spoken Native American

language.

Typologically, Navajo is difficult to succinctly classify. It relies heavily on affixes, a

feature of agglutinative languages (Young and Morgan, 1992:841), but its individual morphemes

are difficult to segment, making it equally similar to fusional languages (Mithun, 2001:323).

Some linguists claim that the canonical word order for Navajo is SOV (Speas, 1990), however,

more recent studies posit that Navajo has no fixed word order, and should be classified as a

discourse-configurational language (Willie and Jelinek, 2000). This argument suggests that word

order is mutable, and determined by the importance of each word in relation to the speaker’s

larger message. Although the unpredictable word order may pose a certain ambiguity on the

surface, each clause’s meaning is clear within the larger context of what is being said.

The grammatical personhood of Navajo is as follows:

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Personhood English equivalent Number Description

1st Person I, me, my, mine, myself Singular One object.

2nd Person You, your, yours, yourself Dual Two objects.

3rd Person He, him, his, himself; She, her, hers, herself; They, them, theirs, theirself; It, those, its, itself.

Plural More than two objects.

4th Person One, one’s, oneself.

Navajo verbs receive the majority of affixation, although it is possible to attach certain

affixes to nouns. All verb stems have an initial consonant, and are bound; needing to be fused

with a mode, aspect, and classifier before any additional prefixes can be applied.

According to Faltz (1998), Navajo verbs are constructed in the following order:

outer prefix + plural + object prefix + inner prefixes + subject prefix + V stem

“V stem” refers to the stem-set made up of the initial bound stem, mode, aspect, and classifier as

it is impossible to separate out again after fusion. For a verb to be understood as such, it requires

the outer prefix na-, and its V stem must begin with a consonant.

There are eleven primary classifiers in Navajo, each assigned an acronymic label, as

following:

Classifier + Stem Label Explanation

-‘a ̜́ SRO Solid Rounded Object; eg. marble, bottle

-yį̜́ LPB Load, Pack, Burden; eg. backpack, bundle

-ł-jool NCM Non-Compact Matter; eg. fog, a clump of hair

-lá SFO Slender Flexible Object; eg. rope, socks

-tį̓ SSO Slender Stiff Object; eg. arrow, cigarette

-ł-tsooz FFO Flat Flexible Object; eg. blanket, coat

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Classifier + Stem Label Explanation

-tłéé’ MM Mushy Matter; eg. oatmeal, mud

-nil PLO1 Plural Objects 1; eg. coins, dogs

-jaa’ PLO2 Plural Objects 2; eg. seeds, sugar

-ka ̜́ OC Open Container; eg. glass of milk, handful of flour

-ł-tį̜́ ANO Animate Object; eg. person, doll

Once the root has received its classifier, the stem it forms then receives affixes according

to its mode and aspect, fusing the stem past the point where individual morphemes can be

separated out. This serves to indicate a verb’s position in time. Navajo has seven modes:

Mode Description

Imperfective Incomplete action; past, present, or future tense.

Perfective Completed action; past (eg. ‘I would have gone’ or future (eg. ‘I had gone’).

Progressive Incomplete action; typically present tense.

Future Prospective/intended action; future tense only.

Usitative Habitual action; similar to AAVE “be” (eg. ‘he be going,’ meaning ‘he goes regularly’).

Iterative Recurring action; interchangeable with usitative mode.

Optative Desired/hoped-for action; similar to conditional mood, future tense only.

For every verb, the usitative and repetitive modes share the same stem, as do the

progressive and future modes. In some cases, other pairs of modes can share the same stem, but

the additional pairs that share stems are not regular across the language.

Aspect affixation occurs simultaneously with mode affixation, so two verb stems with the

same mode might take different forms if they have different aspects. For example, the verb “rain

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falls” in the perfective momentaneous form appears as -tsąąʼ, but in the perfective distributive

form, it appears as -tsįʼ. Navajo has twelve primary aspects and ten sub-aspects, as follows:

Primary

Aspects

Description Sub-Aspects Description

Momentaneous Definite time span, specified direction.

Completive Action simply happens.

Continuative Indefinite time span, specified direction.

Terminative Action ends.

Durative Indefinite time span, uninterrupted non-movement.

Stative Sequentially durative and unmoving.

Repetitive Repeated acts, or connected series of events.

Inceptive Beginning of action.

Conclusive Same as durative, but with static termination in perfective mode.

Terminal An action which will inherently end.

Semelfactive Single act in a series of acts. Prolongative Impeded beginning or ending of an action.

Distributive Distribution of objects or performance of actions.

Seriative Interconnected series of separate, distinct actions.

Diversative Similar to distributive, but referring specifically to movement.

Inchoative Puts the focus on the beginning of a non-moving action.

Reversative Action resulting from directional change.

Semeliterative Single repetition of an action.

Conative Attempted action.

Transitional Shift from one state to another.

Cursive Progressive mode only; a linear progression through time/space.

The navajo subject prefixes— in regular imperfective mode— are:

Singular Dual Plural

1st Person shi- nihi- danihi-

2nd Person ni- nihi- danihi-

3rd Person bi-

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Singular Dual Plural

4th Person (obj) yi-

4th Person (subj) ha-, hw-

Indefinite Person a-

Two of the above affixes determine word order in Navajo: /-bi/ to indicate OSV, and /-yi/

to indicate SOV (Hale, 2001). Following are a couple examples of verbs in Navajo, examining

construction:

na- sh- né

V 1S.SUBJ play.PRES.IMPRF

'I am playing’

łééchąą'í bilasáana ła' yi- ya

dog apple DET SOV eats

'The dog is eating an apple'

da- doh- niił

PLU 2D/P say.FUT

'You all will say'

There are very few suffixes in Navajo. The most popular of these is /go/, which

fascinating, syntactically speaking. It is an adverbializer that is subordinate not to its clause, or

its surrounding clauses, but to the overall context; almost like a parenthetical. Navajo sets /go/

apart in a couple of ways, the first being phonological: prosody of the word following /go/, and

the second being its placement as a suffix.

Here are some examples:

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nizhónígo

ni-zhóní-go

N.PRF-be.beautiful-ADVZR

‘beautifully’

ayóo łikango

ayóo łikan-go

very sweet-ADVZR

‘it being very sweet’

In conclusion, Navajo is a Southwest Athabaskan, Na-Dené language in the Southwestern

United States which is a templatic mix of fusional and agglutinative. It is inflectional, and almost

entirely Head-marking. Word order is not fixed but rather designated by an animacy hierarchy,

and verbs can receive up to eight prefixes, indicating number, grammatical gender, transitive

properties, word order, and part of speech.

Appendix

Notes on IPA and other non-Latin symbols used.

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All IPA transcriptions are by the author, Gabriel Romero, based on the

orthographic/phonological data provided by Redish and Lewis, 1998.

Key

* = unconfirmed/theoretical

† = extinct

Apache IPA notes:

• High tones are marked with an acute accent: /á/, /ó/, /í/, /ɛ̜́ /, /ú/

• Low tones are unaccented.

Navajo IPA notes:

• High tones are marked with an acute accent: /á/, /ó/, /í/, /é/

• Rising tones are marked with an acute accent, followed by a colon: /áː/, /óː/, /íː /, /éː/

• Falling tones are marked with a grave accent, followed by a colon: /àː/, /òː/, /ìː /, /èː/

• Low tones are unaccented.

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