The National Science Foundation will support the Athabascan Languages Conference. The conference will be held at Humboldt State University, in Arcata, CA, on June 5-7, 2003. It will combine invited papers, workshops, a general session, and cultural activities hosted by local Native American communities. Participants will report on recent and ongoing research, and will discuss emerging trends and paradigms of linguistic work on Athabascan languages. The focus of the invited papers and many of the presentations will be on the identification and analysis of the linguistic changes that have taken place, or are in process, as these unwritten indigenous languages undergo a shift in function from being the primary mode of communication and social solidarity in their communities to being a consciously used marker of ethnic identity in special social contexts. One workshop will consider the changes in function and structure that take place when an Athabascan language is formally taught in college classrooms and codified in pedagogical materials and reference books. Another will consider historical and contemporary changes that have taken place in the complex morphology of the Athabaskan verb as the result of functional shifts in language use.
Adaptation and change in language structure and use are important topics not only to linguists but also to the thousands of members of Athabascan-speaking communities in the United States and Canada. These communities are struggling to retain their cultural and linguistic heritage in a society that is overwhelmingly English-speaking. Language education and other retention or revitalization efforts can be improved by understanding of the changes that are taking place in Athabascan languages - even in such widely spoken examples as Navajo - as they move from mainly being acquired as first languages in childhood to mainly being learned as second languages in school and adult life. Conference participants will return to their language revitalization efforts with a clearer sense of what "preservation" entails.
