A Grammar of Dëne Suliné (Chipewyan)

John Stanley is a senior policy advisor in the Corporate Policy Branch
Management Board Secretariat, Government of Ontario.

Recently retired from the linguistics department at the University of
Calgary, Eung-Do Cook is one of the giants in the field of Athabaskan
linguistics, having made major contributions not just in Chipewyan, but
in Sarcee and Chilcotin as well. This book represents more than two
decades of fieldwork in Chipewyan communities across the northern
Prairies and in the Northwest Territories.

The key word for this book is detailed. As a major phonetician, Cook
delights in the minutiae of the language’s sound system. There are,
therefore, more phonetics than you might expect from a book termed a
“grammar.” A Grammar of Dлne Suliné was originally conceived of as
a teaching grammar, but Cook had to switch purposes as the complexity of
his project grew.

This is a book to which you must come prepared. To comprehend fully the
most basic of the chapters (e.g., Chapters 1 and 4), you need an
introductory course on linguistics. For the other chapters, a few more
courses are necessary.

For scholars of other Aboriginal languages, this is a useful
comparative book (especially Chapter 6). It is instructive to see how an
Aboriginal language uses tone (among Canadian languages a property
confined to Athabaskan), and to view the workings of a distinction
between two groups of “classificatory verbs” that mean in the first
group “to handle” and in the second group “to handle with
violence.” It is also instructive to see familiar features such as the
absence of gender differentiation in pronominal affixes, and the
distinction between first person inclusive and exclusive.

This masterful work is a must-read for scholars of Athabaskan
languages. An index would have been very helpful, as would at least a
small dictionary.