Book
Chipewyan semantics: form and meaning in the language and culture of an Athapaskan-speaking people of Canada
Xerox University Microfilms • Ann Arbor, Mich. • Published In 1989 • Pages: 3, 11, 232 leaves
By: Carter, Robin Michael.
AbstractBrief abstract written by HRAF anthropologists who have done the subject indexing for the document
This source presents a semantic analysis of the Chipewyan language '…from its origins in the syntax of that language, through a description of the structure and content of selected portions of a total semantic description of the language, and finally up to an application of the semantic generalities thus derived to the problem of the ethnographic description of Chipewyan culture and society' (p. 12). Starting with an analysis of the classificatory verb stem system the author hypothesizes that those specific semantic elements which help to delineate this complex system also may be relevant to the native speakers encoding of all aspects of Chipewyan culture. To test this hypothesis Carter converts certain basic elements pertaining to Chipewyan beliefs about death, the nature of women, and a particular origin myth into semantic features deduced from the analysis of the classificatory verb system. The results are compared mathematically '…by considering each belief as a vector in a semantic space defined by the logical union of all the semantic features derived from the verbs' (p. iv). In addition to the analysis based on the author's study of verb forms, two additional approaches are discussed in the text. These are based on the derivation of semantic features from the Chipewyan bird classification system, and on the classification of parts of the body. As an additional test of the hypothesis noted above, kinship terms are used containing certain semantic features derived from the three-way analysis noted above, and these terms compared to the traditional ethnographic description of normative kin behavior. The results, according to the author, are comparable.
- SubjectsDocument-level OCM identifiers given by the anthropology subject indexers at HRAF
- Culture summary
- Geography
- Functional and adaptational interpretations
- Language
- Speech
- Grammar
- Semantics
- Kinship terminology
- Ethnoanatomy
- Ethnoanatomy
- cultureCulture name from the Outline of World Cultures (OWC)
- Chipewyans
- HRAF PubDateThe date HRAF published the document
- 2000
- RegionThe area the document pertains to
- North America
- Sub RegionThe more specific area the document pertains to, which is located within the Region
- Arctic and Subarctic
- Document TypeMay include journal articles, essays, collections of essays, monographs, or chapters/parts of monographs
- Book
- Evaluation
- Creator TypesThe type of person writing the document, e.g. Ethnographer, Missionary, Archaeologist, Folklorist, Linguist, Indigenous Person, and so on.
- Ethnologist
- Linguist
- Document Rating A ranking done by HRAF anthropologists based on the strength of the source material on a scale of 1 to 5, as follows: 1 - poor; 2 - fair; 3 - good, useful data, but not uniformly excellent; 4 - excellent secondary data; 5 - excellent primary data.
- 5: Excellent Primary Data
- AnalystThe HRAF anthropologist who subject indexed the document and prepared other materials for the eHRAF culture/tradition collection
- John Beierle ; 1990-1991
- Field DateThe date the researcher conducted the fieldwork or archival research that produced the document
- 1972-1973
- Coverage DateThe date or dates that the information in the document pertains to
- not specified
- Coverage PlaceLocation of the research culture or tradition (often a smaller unit such as a band, community, or archaeological site)
- Black Lake, northwestern Saskatchewan, Canada
- NotesAdditional notes
- [by] Robin Michael Carter
- Thesis (Ph.D.) - Duke University, 1974
- Includes bibliographical references (p. 220-230)
- LCSHLibrary of Congress Subject Headings
- Chipewyan Indians