The Kaska language originated from the family of

Athabaskan languages Athabaskan (also spelled ''Athabascan'', ''Athapaskan'' or ''Athapascan'', and also known as Dene) is a large family of indigenous languages of North America, located in western North America in three areal language groups: Northern, Pacific C ...

. Traditionally Kaska is an oral aboriginal language that is used by the

Kaska Dena The Kaska or Kaska Dena are a First Nations people of the Athabaskan-speaking ethnolinguistic group living mainly in northern British Columbia and the southeastern Yukon in Canada. The Kaska language, originally spoken by the Kaska, is an Ath ...

people.Farnell, G. (2014). The Kaska Dene: A study of Colonialism, Trauma and Healing in Dene Kēyeh. The University of British Columbia

/ref> The Kaska Dene region consists of a small area in the Southwestern part of the

Northwest Territories The Northwest Territories (abbreviated ''NT'' or ''NWT''; french: Territoires du Nord-Ouest, formerly ''North-Western Territory'' and ''North-West Territories'' and namely shortened as ''Northwest Territory'') is a federal territory of Canada. ...

, the Southeastern part of

Yukon Yukon (; ; formerly called Yukon Territory and also referred to as the Yukon) is the smallest and westernmost of Canada's three territories. It also is the second-least populated province or territory in Canada, with a population of 43,964 as ...

Territory, and the Northern part of

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include ...

. The communities that are in the Kaska Dene region are Fort Ware in N.W.T.; Ross River and Watson Lake in Y.T.; Dease Lake, Good Hope Lake, Lower Post, Fireside, and Muncho Lake in B.C. Kaska is made up of eight dialects, all of which have similar pronunciations and expressional terms. The town of Watson Lake was established around the period of the second World War when the Alaska Highway was first built in 1942. A major consequence of colonization was Kaska language loss. Another major cause of Kaska language loss in Canada was due to the Canadian Residential School System. The effect that these schools had on the Kaska language have caused a language gap between two generations resulting in few young speakers.

Phonology

Consonants

Vowels

Kaska makes use of the vowels /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, and /u/, which, through various combinations of inflection (high, falling, and rising tone), lengthening and nasalization, produce about 60 vowel sounds in total. Allophones of sounds can also be heard as .

Morphology

Kaska is a polysynthetic language, commonly featuring sentence words. It is head-final, availing nine prefix positions to a given stem verb morpheme. Kaska does not mark for control or grammatical gender. (Sexual gender is often implied in narratives through contextual association with the prevalent gender roles of Kaska society, particularly with regard to warfare.)

The Verb-Sentence

Verb-sentences, or single-word sentences consisting of a stem verb modified by inflectional, derivational and/or other types of affixes, commonly appear in Kaska. In these cases, a word-final verb morpheme may be accompanied by up to nine prefixes grouped into three categories: the disjunct, the conjunct and the verb theme. O'Donnell's Kaska verb structure diagram is shown below.

Verb Theme

The verb theme carries the stem verb morpheme, which is immediately preceded by one of four ''classifiers'' (-h-, -Ø-, -l-, -d-). The ''-Ø-'' classifier primarily marks intransitive and stative verbs. The classifier ''-h-'', referred to as ''ł'' classification in Athabaskan literature, marks transitivity and/or causativity and deletes when preceded by the first-person singular subject marking ''s-''. Though it is found in some intransitive clauses, as in ''sehtsū́ts'' ("clothlike object is located"), these generally bear the ''-Ø-'' classifier.
Moore, Patrick James. "Point of view in Kaska historical narratives". Indiana University, ProQuest, UMI Dissertations Publishing, 2003. PDF file. *etsén segan 'the meat is dried' *etsén sehgan 's/he dried the meat' The ''-d-'' classifier serves a more complex function, accompanying self-benefactives, reflexives, reciprocals, iteratives (marked by the prefix ''ne-'') and passives. The ''-l-'' classifier combines the functions of the ''-d-'' and ''-h-'' (''ł'') classifiers.

Conjunct

The conjunct, which appears between the disjunct prefix group and the verb theme, carries inflectional information including subject, direct object and mood/aspect markings. In ''subject'' markings, Kaska syntactically differentiates between "subject I" and "subject II" morphemes (the latter represented in the gray boxes in the table below to the left). Subject I markers occur conjunct-finally, while subject II markers occur conjunct-initially. The ''direct object'' markings are given in the table at right. The marking for third-person singular direct object depends on the subject of the sentence: if the subject is in first- or second-person, then it is ''Ø-'', but becomes ''ye-'' when the subject is in third-person.

Disjunct

The disjunct typically carries adverbial and derivational prefixes, including the negative marker ''dū-'' and the distributive plural morpheme ''né-'', which pluralizes otherwise dual subjects and, in some cases, singular objects. The presence (or absence) of this feature bears most of the numerical marking that is not already indicated contextually or through the subject and object affixes themselves. The prefix ''ɬe-'' marks for dual subject in at least one verb phrase: "to sit." Postpositional morphemes, such as ''ts'i'-'' ("to") and ''yé-'' ("about"), also appear in the disjunct, along with the oblique object markings listed in the table below.

Space, Time and Aspect

In Kaska, time is expressed primarily through aspect marking, called ''modes'' when described in Athabaskan languages. These prefixes convey imperfective, perfective and optative aspect. Overt expressions for quantified units of time exist, such as ''tādet'ē dzenḗs'' ("three days"), but rarely appear in Kaska dialog. The ''imperfective'' (prefix ''Ø-'') expresses incomplete action, is used in instrumental marking, descriptions of static situations and to express irrealis mood. In Kaska narratives, imperfective verb forms commonly accompany a humorous tone. The ''perfective'' mode (prefix ''n-'') functions largely in complement to the imperfective, expressing complete action, is used in descriptions of kinetic events and establishing realis mood. Kaska narratives tend to express a more serious tone through perfective verb forms. The ''optative'' mode (prefix ''u-'' in conjunction with suffix ''-í'') expresses unrealized or desired activity. Directional prefixes, stems and suffixes also index spatial relations in Kaska narratives. These include allatives, ablatives, areals and punctuals, with some examples listed below. *kúh- 'distant location (known to both speaker and addressee)' *de- 'distant location (known exclusively to speaker)' *ah- 'distant location (determined by non-focal character)' *júh-, jah- 'nearby location' *degé- 'up ahead' (also used to mean 'in the future') *nā́né- 'across' *-áné 'to the side' (often used in conjunction with ''ah-'' prefix)

Syntax

When a sentence contains two independent nominals, it takes on Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) structure. When only one independent nominal is present, the subject and object are differentiated by the prefixes in the verb, shown using the same sample sentence. *eskie ganehtan ("She saw/looked at the boy") #eskie meganehtan #boy 3sg.Obj... #"The boy saw/looked at her" Subordinate clauses are marked with an ''-i'' or ''-í'' suffix and appear before the independent clause, as in the following example: The available literature on Kaska makes no mention of applicatives, relatives or complements, and case marking appears restricted to nominative (subject), accusative (object) and the various forms of locative case marking conveyed through directional morphemes.

Endangerment

With around 200 speakers as of 2011, the Ethnologue lists Kaska as Status 7 (shifting). It is mostly Kaska Dena Elders who are the fluent speakers despite four communities ( Good Hope Lake, Lower Post, Watson Lake and Ross River) where the language is taught in schools. Kaska Dena children are not learning to be fluent because many families do not use the Kaska language at home. The Kaska Dena people recognize the importance in revitalizing the Kaska language and have worked towards building Kaska language written and oral materials as well as programs such as culture camps and training programs.

References

Yukon Native Language CenterKaska Language Website, University of British ColumbiaKaska Dena CouncilKaska Welcome Page - First Voices