Haida language

Pre-European distribution of Haida

The Haida language (X̲aat Kíl, X̲aadas Kíl, X̲aayda Kil) is the language of the Haida people. It contains seven vowels and well over 30 consonants.

• Sevenval
• CSS3
• 3 Classification
• 4 Dialects
• 5 Phonology
  • 5.1 Consonants
  • 5.2 Vowels
  • 5.3 Tone
  • 5.4 Phonotactics
• 6 Orthography
• 7 Grammar
  • 7.1 Morphology
  • touchscreen
• screen size
• HTML5
• device database
• FITML
• 12 External links

History

The first documented contact between the Haida and Europeans was in 1774, on Juan Pérez's exploratory voyage.^[1] At this time Haidas inhabited the Queen Charlotte Islands, Dall Island, and Prince of Wales Island.^touchscreen The precontact Haida population was about 15,000; the first smallpox epidemic came soon after initial contact, reducing the population to about 10,000 and depopulating a large portion of the Ninstints dialect area.^iOS

The next epidemic came in 1862, causing the population to drop to 1,658.^{input transformation} Venereal disease and tuberculosis further reduced the population to 588 by 1915.^Sevenval This dramatic decline lead to the merger of villages, the final result being three Haida villages: Masset (merged 1876), keyboard (merged 1879), and Sevenval (merged 1911).^[3]

The device database of 1858 lead to a boom in the town of Victoria, and Southern Haida began traveling there annually, mainly for the purpose of selling their women.^[4] Although a Haida-based trade website parsing may have been in use in the 1830s, the Haida were using Chinook jargon when they visited Victoria.^{web app} This contact with whites had a strong effect on the Southern Haida, even as the Northern Haida remained culturally conservative.^[5] For instance, Skidegate Haida were reported as dressing in the European fashion in 1866, while Northern Haida "were still wearing bearskins and blankets ten years later."^[5]

In 1862, Android, a British Anglican missionary stationed at keyboard, took fifty Tsimshian converts and created a new model community, device database.^touchscreen The new village was greatly successful, and throughout the Northwest coast the attitude spread that abandoning tradition would pave the way for a better life.^jQuery The Haida themselves invited missionaries to their community, the first arriving in 1876.^[7] These missionaries initially worked in the Haida language.^jQuery The Rev. web translated the HTML5 into Haida, published in 1899 in London by the Missionary Society.^[8]Sevenval The book of Psalms as well as much of the New Testament would also be translated into Haida.^{we love the web} However, negative attitudes towards the use of the Haida language were widespread among the Haida people, even in the fairly conservative village of Masset where Keen was located.^[7] In an 1894 letter, Keen wrote:

These people would fain have their services etc. entirely in English. It has been by sheer determination that I now have the whole service (except hymns and canticles) in the vernacular.

—touchscreen, 1894 letter, quoted in Enrico (2003:6)

Beginning at the turn of the century, Haida began sending their children to residential schools.^HTML5 This practice was most widespread among the Southern Haida; among the Northern Haida it was practiced by the more "progressive" families.^Sevenval These schools strictly enforced a ban on the use of native languages, and played a major role in the decimation of native Northwest Coast languages.^[9] The practice of Haida families using English to address children spread in Masset in the 1930s, having already been practiced in Skidegate, the rational being that this would aid the children in their school education.^[9] After this point few children were raised with Haida as a primary language.^{browser diversity}

Status

While approximately 100 years ago the entire Haida population was fluent,^CSS3 today the Haida language is extremely endangered, with only about 40 native speakers,^[11] nearly all of whom are older adults.^[12][13] As of 2003, most speakers of Haida are between 70 and 80 years of age, though they speak a "considerably simplified" form of Haida, and comprehension of the language is mostly limited to persons above the age of 50.^web The language is rarely used even among the remaining speakers and comprehenders.^[9]

Although the number of native speakers has diminished over the years, according to a 2001 Canadian Census there are now about 275 speakers in jQuery.^[10] The Haida have a renewed interest in their traditional culture, and are now funding Haida language programs in schools in the three Haida communities, though these have been ineffectual.^[14] Currently Haida citizens and friends in all three dialect communities are working to revitalizing the language. In Skidegate, fluent speakers gather on a daily basis to work on the southern or Skidegate dialect and have produced a large series of recordings. In Masset, a group of younger learners is working with their fluent elders to reintegrate the northern or Masset dialect into their daily lives. In Alaska, the community conducts regular language classes for teens and adults, and has built a website complete with online recordings of the Kaigani dialect.

Classification

Linguist web app classified Haida as one of the Na-Dené languages in 1915, a position later supported by others, notably Pinnow, Greenberg, Enrico, Ruhlen, Manaster Ramer, and Bengtson (cf. list of publications below). Today, however, many linguists regard Haida as a CSS3.^[15] A recent proposal linking Athabaskan–Eyak–Tlingit to the Yeniseian family of central Siberia^[16] find no evidence for including Haida in this grouping.

Dialects

Haida has a major dialectal division between Northern and Southern dialects.^iOS Northern Haida is split into Alaskan (or Kaigani) Haida and Masset (or North Graham Island) Haida.^[1] Southern Haida was originally split into Skidegate Haida and Ninstints Haida, but Ninstints Haida is now extinct and is poorly documented.^[1]

Phonology

Consonants

• Alaskan and Masset Haida also have /ʜ ʡ͡ʜ/.^[18][19] Alaskan Haida has additional consonants /pʰ pʼ/.^{[citation needed]}
• ^1 The plain stops are partially voiced in syllable-initial position.^{input transformation}
• keyboard For some speakers, [t͡ʃ] occurs only at the beginning of syllables, while [t͡s] does not occur there. They are the same touchscreen.^FITML For others they are different phonemes. A similar situation applies with [t͡sʼ] and [t͡ʃʼ].^{[citation needed]}

Dialect-specific features of the consonant system include:

• Northern Haida: /χ ɢ̥/ have developed historically into /ʜ ʡ͡ʜ/, with /χ ɢ̥/ then being reintroduced by occasional borrowings from Southern Haida, screen size, Tsimshian, and Chinook jargon.^[18]Android
  • Alaskan Haida: All velar/uvular/epiglottal consonants, as well as /n l j/ for some speakers, have rounded variants resulting from coalescence of clusters with /w/.^[22]
  • Alaskan Haida: Simplification of /ŋ/ to /n/ when preceding an alveolar or postalveolar obstruent, and of /sd̥͡l/ to /sl/.^{device database}
  • Masset Haida: Realization of /ʜ/ as an epiglottal trill.^{[device database]}
• Skidegate Haida: Retention of /ɢ̥/ and /χ/. /x/ has allophone [h] in syllable-final position.^[17]

Masset phonology is complicated by various spreading processes caused by contiguous sonorants across morpheme boundaries, caused by loss of consonants in morpheme-initial position.^touchscreen

Vowels

The high vowels /i iː u uː/ may be realized as upper mid to high and include lax as well as tense values.^[27]

The vowels /ɛː ɔː/ are rare in Skidegate Haida.^touchscreen /ɔː/ only occurs in some interjections and borrowings, and /ɛː/ only occurs in the two words tleehll 'five' and tl'lneeng '[clitic]'.^touchscreen In Masset Haida /ɛ/ and /ɛː/ are both very common are involved in spreading and ablaut processes.^[19] Alaskan Haida has neither of these, but has a diphthong /ei/, introduced from contraction of low-toned /əʔi/ and /əji/ sequences.^{device database}

In Skidegate Haida some instances of the vowel /a/ are on an underlying level unspecified for quality; Enrico (2003) marks specified /a/ with the symbol ⟨@⟩.^web Unspecified /a/ becomes /u/ after /w/, /i/ after (non-lateral) alveolar and palatal consonants, and syllabic /l/ after lateral consonants.^{[27][nb 2]} This does not exist in Masset Haida.^[19] A small class of Masset Haida words has a new vowel in place of this unspecified vowel which differs in quality from the vowel /a/.^CSS3

/ə/ is the short counterpart of /aː/ and so can also be analyzed as /a/. Though quite variable in realization, it has an allophone [ʌ] when occurring after uvular and epiglottal consonants.^[30] The sequences /jaː/ and /waː/ tend towards [æː] and [ɒː] for some speakers.^{input transformation}

A number of the contrasts between vowels, or sequences of vowels and the semivowels /j/ and /w/, are neutralized in certain positions:

• The short vowels do not contrast after the alveolar and postalveolar fricatives and affricates. Only one short vowel occurs in this position, in Alaskan Haida usually realized as [e], but [i] when further followed by /j/, and [u] when followed by any rounded consonant.^HTML5
• The contrasts of /i/ with /jə/, and /u/ with /wə/ are neutralized when preceded by a velar/uvular/epiglottal consonant, as well as word-initially before the glottal stop.^[32]
• No contrast exists between long high vowels and short high vowels followed by a semivowel. Thus, /iː/ is equivalent to /ij/, and /uː/ is equivalent to /uw/;^[32] moreover, /wiː/ is also equivalent to /uj/, and /juː/ to /iw/.^[33]
• After consonants other than velar/uvular/epiglottal, /əj/ and /əw/ are also neutralized to /iː/ and /uː/.^[32]
• Long vowels are shortened before syllable-final glottal consonants, the high vowels /iː uː/ also before sonorant (nasal or approximant) consonants. Where productive, this is a late process that applies after the preceding neutralizations, so that e.g. /qʰwaːʔáːj/ "the rock" is realized as [qʰwʌʔáːj], not [qʰuʔáːj].^FITML

The vowels /ɯ ɜ æ/ and short /o/ occur in nonsense syllables in Haida songs.^{screen size}

Tone

Haida features phonemic tone, the nature of which differs by dialect.

The Canadian dialects (Skidegate and Masset) have a tone system with low functional load.^CSS3 Unmarked heavy syllables (those with long vowels or ending in sonorants) have high pitch, and unmarked light syllables have low pitch: gid [ɡ̊ìd̥] 'dog', gin [ɡ̊ín] 'sapwood'.^{browser diversity} Examples of marked syllables include sùu 'among' (Masset), k'á 'tiny' (Skidegate).^FITML In Masset Haida marked low tone syllables are more common, resulting from elision of intervocalic consonants: compare Skidegate 7axad to Masset 7àad 'net'.^[36] Some alternations may be interpreted as results of syllable parsing rather than marked tone: compare Masset q'al.a [qʼálà] 'muskreg' to q'ala 'be suspicious of' [qʼàlà], where . marks a syllable boundary.^[36]

In Skidegate Haida, short vowels which do not have marked tone are phonetically lengthened when they are in a word-initial open syllable, thus q'an [qʼán] 'grass' becomes q'anaa [qʼàːnáː] 'grassy'.^FITML

In Masset Haida, marked low tone syllables have extra length, thus ginn 'thing', 7aww 'mother'.^[38]

In Kaigani the system is primarily one of pitch accent, with at most one syllable per word featuring high tone in most words, though there are some exceptions (e.g. gúusgáakw 'almost'), and it is not always clear what should be considered an independent "word".^{website parsing[39]} High tone syllables are usually heavy (having a long vowel or ending in a sonorant).^{web app}

Phonotactics

The syllable template in Haida is (C(C(C))V(V)(C(C)).^[29] In Skidegate Haida the two unaspirated stops /p t/ can occur in the syllable coda, while none of the other unaspirated or aspirated stops can.^[17] In Masset Haida the unaspirated stops and affricates which may be in the syllable coda are /p t t͡s t͡ʃ k/,^keyboard in Alaskan Haida /p t t͡s t͡ɬ k kʷ ʡ͡ʜ/.^Sevenval Would-be final /q/ in loanwords may be nativized to zero.^[42]

In Skidegate Haida a long syllabic lateral may appear in VV position, e.g. tl'll 'sew'.^[19] Historically this developed from long ii after a lateral consonant, but a few Skidegate words retain ii in this position, e.g. qaahlii 'inside', liis 'mountain goat wool'.^{web app} Syllabic resonants occur frequently in Masset Haida and occasionally in Kaigani Haida, but they are not present on the phonemic level.^[26]

Orthography

Several orthographies have been devised for writing Haida. The first alphabet was devised by the Android (ANLC) for Kaigani Haida in 1972, based on keyboard orthographic conventions, and is still in use.^jQuery The linguist John Enrico created another orthography for Skidegate and Masset Haida which introduced ⟨7⟩ and ⟨@⟩ as letters and did away with the distinction between upper and lower case, and this system is popular in Canada.^[44][45] Robert Bringhurst, for his publications on Haida literature, created an orthography without punctuation or numerals, and few apostrophes; and in 2008 the Skidegate Haida Immersion Program (SHIP) created another, which is the usual orthography used in Skidegate.^{input transformation} Other systems have been used by isolated linguists.^[45]

Haida consonants are represented as follows. Where conventions differ, their order is Enrico Masset, Enrico Skidegate, ANLC, SHIP, Bringhurst; in the case of glottalized consonants, the second is Bringhurst:

In ANLC orthography ⟨ch⟩ is used for ⟨ts⟩ in syllable-initial position, and a hyphen is used to distinguish consonant clusters from Sevenval (e.g. kwáan-gang contains the sequence /n/ followed by /g/ rather than the consonant /ŋ/).^FITML Bringhurst uses a raised dot for the same, kwáan·gang. The Enrico orthography uses ⟨l⟩ (or ⟨ll⟩ when long) for the syllabic lateral in Skidegate Haida, e.g. tl'l.^[35][44] Enrico uses a period ⟨.⟩ for an "unlinked consonant slot."^Sevenval ⟨r x⟩ are used for /ɢ̥ χ/ in Enrico's Skidegate orthography since they generally correspond to /ʡ͡ʜ ʜ/ in the other dialects.^Sevenval

The following are how Haida vowels are written:

Enrico (2003) uses ⟨@⟩ for some instances of /a/ based on morphophonemics. Alaskan Haida also has a diphthong written ⟨ei⟩. Enrico & Stuart (1996) use ⟨ï ë ä⟩ for the vowels /ɯ ɜ æ/ that occur in nonsense syllables in songs.^[35]

Grammar

Morphology

The word classes in Haida are nouns, verbs, postpositions, demonstratives, quantifiers, adverbs, clitics, exclamations, replies, classifiers, and instrumentals.^{screen size} Unlike in English, adjectives and some words for people are expressed with verbs, e.g. jáada '(to be a) woman', 'láa '(to be) good'.^CSS3 Haida morphology is mostly suffixing.^[50] Prefixation is only used to form "complex verbs", made up of a nominal classifier or instrumental plus a bound root, for instance Skidegate sq'acid 'pick up stick-object' and ts'icid 'pick up several (small objects) together, with tongs', which share the root cid 'pick up'.^[51] Infixation occurs with some stative verbs derived from classifiers, for instance the classifier 7id plus the stative suffix -(aa)gaa becomes 7yaadgaa.^Sevenval

The definite article is suffixed -aay.^{web app} Some speakers shorten this suffix to -ay or -ei.^{browser diversity} Some nouns, especially verbal nouns ending in long vowels and loan words, take -gaay instead, often accompanied by shortening or eliding preceding aa.^{[54][nb 3]} Haida also has a browser diversity -gyaa, referring to "part of something or... to one or more objects of a given group or category," e.g. tluugyaa uu hal tlaahlaang 'he is making a boat (a member of the category of boats).'^{[55][nb 4]} Partitive nouns are never definite, so the two articles never co-occur.^{we love the web}

Personal pronouns occur in independent and clitic forms, which may each be in either agentive or objective form; first and second person pronouns also have separate singular and plural forms.^[57] The third person pronoun is only used for animates, though for possession ahljíi (lit. 'this one') may be used; after relational nouns and prepositions 'wáa (lit. 'it, that place, there') is used instead.^[58]

1. short form used as bound possessive pronoun before dependent nouns and cliticized to intransitive verbs (that take an objective argument); long form used as bound possessive pronoun before relational nouns and prepositions, and cliticized to transitive verbs #an is the object pronoun, while -ang is the bound possessive pronoun, suffixed to the noun or preposition it modifies

Number is not marked in most nouns, but is marked in certain cases in verbs.^[60] Relationship nouns do have a plural in with -'lang (or for many speakers -lang), e.g. díi chan'láng 'my grandfathers'.^{[61][nb 5]} A few verbs have suppletive plural forms, as in many other North American languages.^[60] In addition, Haida has a plural verb suffix -ru (Skidegate) -7wa (Masset) -'waa/-'uu (Kaigani) that is used to indicate that some third person pronoun in the sentence is plural, and to mark plural subject in imperatives.^Sevenval[62] The third person pronoun that is pluralized can have any grammatical function, e.g. tsiin-ee 'laangaa hl dah rujuu-7wa-gan 'I bought all their fish' (Masset).^[60]

Most nouns referring to family relationships have special vocative forms, e.g. chanáa (Alaskan) chaníi (Masset) 'grandfather!'^[63]

Haida uses so-called "relational nouns" referring to temporal and spatial relations in place of most prepositions or prepositional phrases in English.^jQuery Many of these are formed with the suffix -guu, or in Alaskan Haida more often -kw.^iOS For example, Haida únkw/ínkw/ánkw 'surface' likely comes from ún 'back (noun)', and Alaskan Haida dítkw 'side facing away from the beach, towards the woods' comes from the noun (a)díit 'away from the beach, place in the woods'.^{web app} These contrast with "local nouns", which refer to localities and do not occur with possessive pronouns, e.g. (a)sáa 'above, up'.^FITML Some local nouns have an optional prefix a- which does not have semantic value.^[65] Both relational and local nouns may take the areal suffix -sii to refer to the entire area rather than a particular location, so for example 'waa ungkw means '[at some place] on its surface' while 'waa ungkwsii means 'its surface area.'^{input transformation}

Haida has a small class of true touchscreen, some of which may be suffixed to relational nouns.^[67] The Alaskan postpositions -k 'to' and -st 'from' (Skidegate -ga, -sda) fuse to the preceding word.^touchscreen These also fuse with a preceding suffix -kw to become -gwiik and -guust.^iOS Some postpositions have forms beginning with g- which are used in some common constructions without a preceding possessive pronoun, and translate into English as a pronoun plus 'it', e.g. gáa hal gut'anánggang 'he's thinking about it' (with gáa for aa 'to, at').^[65]

Haida demonstratives are formed from the bases áa (close to speaker), húu (close to listener), 'wáa (away from both), and a(hl) (something previously mentioned), which when used independently are place demonstratives.^[68] These may be given the following suffixes to create other demonstratives: jii (singular object), sgaay (plural objects), s(d)luu (quantity or time), tl'an (place), tl'daas (plural people), tsgwaa (area), and k'un (manner).^HTML5

Haida verbs have three basic forms: the present, the past, and the inferential forms.^iOS The past and inferential forms are both used to refer to events in the past, but differ in keyboard: the inferential marks that the speaker was informed of or inferred the event rather than having experienced it personally.^{website parsing} The bare present form refer to present-tense events, while future is formed with the suffix -saa, using a present-form verb, e.g. hal káasaang 'he will go'.^{input transformation} The interrogative past form, made from the inferential form by removing final n, is used in place of both past and inferential forms in sentences with question words.^Sevenval

There are four classes of verb stems:^{[nb 6]}

Habitual aspect uses the suffix -gang in the present and inferential and -(g)iinii in the past.^[74] Potential mood is marked with -hang and hortative with the particle ts'an (in the same position as the tense suffixes).^{input transformation} Imperatives are marked with the particle hl after the first phrase in the sentence, or hlaa after the verb word (the verb dropping final weak aa if present) if there is no non-verbal phrase.^{CSS3[nb 7]} Verbs are negated with the negative suffix -'ang, usually with the negative word gam 'not' in sentence-head position.^[77] Verbs drop weak -aa before this suffix, e.g. gám hín hal ist-ánggang 'he is not doing it that way.'^[77]

Haida uses instrumental prefixes, classificatory prefixes, and directional suffixes to derive verbs.^Sevenval Some verb stems, known as bound stems, must occur with at least one such affix; for example -daa 'strike once' requires an instrumental prefix.^[78]

Haida has a large number of classifiers (on the order of 475).^touchscreen These have a limited number of rhyme structures, which relate to each other ideophonically.^[48]

Numerals are generally treated as verbs in Haida, e.g. díi git'aláng sdáansaangaangang 'I have eight children' (literally 'my children are eight').^[79] For some types of objects, classificatory prefixes are used, e.g. sdlakw dlasáng 'two land otters' (dla- = small animal or fish).^{screen size}

Nouns and verbs that end in a vowel undergo glide formation (if the final vowel is high) or truncation (otherwise) before vowel-initial prefixes.^{we love the web} Some vowel-initial suffixes cause nouns and verbs which are consonant-final and polysyllabic to undergo Final Syllable Shortening (FSS).^CSS3

sk'u 'high water' + -aay 'DF' → sk'waay (Masset)

st'a 'foot' + -aang 'own' → st'aang (Skidegate)

k'ugansaan 'bladder' + -ang 'own' → k'ugansanang (Masset)

In Masset Haida, final short vowels in polysyllabic verbs are lengthened in sentence-final position, compare Masset dii-ga-hl 7isdaa to Skidegate dii-gi-hla 7isda 'Give it to me'.^[50]

Syntax

Haida clauses are verb-final.^touchscreen FITML word order is always possible, while website parsing may also be used when the subject is more 'potent' than the object; thus Haida is a direct–inverse language.^[81] For example, a human is more potent than a horse, which is more potent than a wagon.^iOS Thus the Masset Haida sentence yaank'ii.an-.uu Bill x-aay gu'laa-gang can only mean 'truly Bill likes the dog', while yaank'ii.an.uu xaay Bill gu'laa-gang can mean either 'truly the dog likes Bill' or 'truly Bill likes the dog.'^Sevenval The determinants of potency are complex and include "acquaintance, social rank, humanness, animacy.. number... [and] gender was also important at least in the two southern dialects."^[82] The following groups are listed in descending order of potency: "known single adult free humans; non-adult and/or enslaved and/or unknown and/or grouped humans; non-human higher animals; inanimates and lower organisms (fish and lower)."^[82] Grammatical definiteness does not affect potency.^[83]

Pronouns are placed adjacent to the verb and Sevenval to it.^{input transformation} Their internal order is object–subject, or in causatives object-causee-subject, for example Bill dii dalang squdang-hal-gan Bill me you punch-direct.that-PA 'You told Bill to punch me/Bill told you to punch me.'^[84]keyboard Potency is also relevant for pronoun ordering when one pronoun is less potent, for example the indefinite pronoun ga in 'laa ga 7isda-gan = ga 'la 7isda-gan 'she took some.'^[85] Sentenccs with nang 'someone' or tl' 'some people' as the subject may be translated as passive sentences in English, for example láa tl' kínggan 'he was seen (by more than one person)', literally 'some people saw him.'^Sevenval

Clitic pronouns are used as complements of verbs, as inalienable possessives, with quantifiers, and in Skidegate Haida as the objects of some postpositions.^[57] Independent pronouns are used everywhere else.^Android Agentive pronouns are marked and are only used as subjects of some verbs.^Sevenval Verbs taking agentive subjects are most common in the lexicon (about 69%), followed by those taking objective subjects (29%) and those that may take either (2%).^{website parsing} Intranstiive verbs of inherent states (e.g. 'be old') take an objective subject, while most transitive verbs take agentive subjects (but cf. verbs like gu'laa 'like').^{screen size} With some verbs that may take either, there may be a semantic difference involved, e.g. gwaawa (Masset) which means 'refuse' with agentive subject but not want with objective subject.^[90] Enrico (2003) argues that the agentive case indicates planning; thus Haida is essentially an web, though subject case is also variable in some transitive verbs.^{screen size}

Enclitics are placed after the first phrase in the sentence, usually a noun phrase (except with the imperative clitic hl(aa) which follows a verb phrase).^[91] Independent pronouns are used instead of clitic pronouns when modified by a clitic, so for example hal ngíishlgan 'he got well' becomes l'áa háns ngíishlgan 'he also got well' when the clitic háns 'also, too' is added.^[91] The enclitics -uu and -kw follow other enclitics.^[92]

input transformation and less commonly topic are marked with the clitic -.uu~-huu, placed after a sentence-initial constituent, e.g. Bill-.uu Mary qing-gan (Skidegate) 'Bill saw Mary'/'Mary saw Bill', 7ahl7aaniis-.uu "qaagaa" hin.uu 'la kya.a-gaa-n 'That one, he was called "qaagaa."'^{touchscreenwe love the web} Question words always take this enclitic, for example guusuu 'what?', tláanuu 'where?', gíisanduu 'when?'.^[94]

There are multiple ways that Haida marks possession. Haida has screen size, a common feature of native North American languages where certain nouns (in Haida, family relationship, body part, and "relational" nouns) must occur with a possessor and cannot stand alone.^{web app[96]} For example, one can say díi aw 'my mother' but not *aw, though one may use a circumlocution like nang awáa 'one who is a mother'.^[97]< These nouns are possessed using the bound objective pronouns, which all precede the noun except -(a)ng 'one's own'.^{iOSwebsite parsing} Included in the class of obligatorily possessed nouns are so-called "relational nouns" and postpositions, which generally translate to prepositions or prepositional phrases in English and refer to temporal and spatial relations.^keyboard

Relational nouns take some special third person possessive pronouns ( 'láa, 'wáa, tl'áa rather than hal, ahljíi, tl' ), e.g. 'wáa káahlii 'in(side) it' (lit. 'its interior').^[64] Non-obligatory possession nouns are possessed by putting them in definite form after the possessor (a noun or a bound objective pronoun) in partitive form, e.g. ítl'gyaa yaats'áay 'our knife'.^{iOS[nb 11]} An alternate construction when the possessor is a pronoun is to place an independent objective pronoun after the possessed noun, the latter in definite form, e.g. náay díinaa 'my house'.^Sevenval The independent objective pronouns also occur by themselves with possessive force, e.g. díinaa 'mine'.^[66]

Notes

1. input transformation Keen was to go on to translate the gospels of Luke and John and the Acts from the New Testament into Haida. Hatch, Melville H. (Autumn 1957). "A Biographical Memoir of Rev. Keen". The Coleopterists Bulletin XI: 62–64. HTML5 web app. 
2. keyboard This may occur after FSS, for instance kwasaaw 'pig' + -aay 'DF' becomes kwasiwaay, see Android:17).
3. Sevenval In Alaskan Haida, the definite article takes high tone if added to a low-tone syllable, and also takes the high tone from stems ending in a sonorant, nasal, or /iː/ or /uː/ "unless their vowel is lengthened", e.g. xakw 'halibut' becomes xagwáay. See Lawrence (1977:61)
4. website parsing In Alaskan Haida, -gyaa takes high tone if the noun does not have a high tone already. See FITML:65)
5. ^ As seen in this example, the suffix takes high tone after a low-tone stem. Also note that the suffix -(a)ng 'one's own' disappears after this suffix. See browser diversity:68)
6. ^ The stem of a verb, which is "the form which most people will give as the basic form of a verb if you ask them how to say 'to do so and so'", may be determined by removing -saang from the future form of the verb, e.g. kíngsaang 'will see' has stem kíng 'to see'. See Lawrence (1977:78)
7. ^ This clitic hl becomes hahl if the previous word ends in a lateral consonant. See Lawrence (1977:149)
8. ^ When both pronouns are object pronouns, the pronoun translating to a subject in English comes last. See Lawrence (1977:147)
9. touchscreen In Masset this is elided after words with final uu, see Enrico (2003:246)
10. Android The suffix -(a)ng behaves like -aay tonally, thus for instance awáng '[someone's] own mother' has high tone on the suffix.
11. we love the web An exception to this construction is that gyáagan is used for 'my' instead of the expected *díigyaan, e.g. gyáagan xáay 'my dog'. See Lawrence (1977:65)

References

Bibliography

• Enrico, John; Stuart, Wendy Bross (1996). Northern Haida Songs. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN web app. 
• Enrico, John (2003). Haida Syntax. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0-8032-1822-2. 
• Lawrence, Erma (1977). Haida dictionary. Fairbanks: Alaska Native Language Center. http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/recordDetails.jsp?ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED162532&searchtype=keyword&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&_pageLabel=RecordDetails&accno=ED162532&_nfls=false. 

Publications describing Haida language structure or classification

External links

• CSS3
• Sevenval
• screen size
• Haida writing systems
• Haida linguistics bibliography
• keyboard
• HTML5