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The
Lower Tanana Dene Dictionary is a midsized Lexware dictionary that consolidates nearly all primary data for this language of Alaska's middle Tanana River Valley from the years 1903 to 2023. The LTDD presents the words, skills, and ideas of more than 40 expert Lower Tanana speakers. New features increase the book's accessibility for a range of users, from members of the Lower Tanana community, to specialists in Dene linguistics or ethnology, to those in allied fields of interdisciplinary prehistory. The Lower Tanana Table of Headwords (pp. 1-11) has 1149 consolidated headwords or separate entries. These assembled headwords plus tag definitions are an outline of the cosmographic breadth of the Lower Tanana language. The material and natural world, the conscious and the subconscious, the lexical and the grammatical are displayed as an alphabetized outline that reflects the long-term Dene ecological, cognitive and linguistic adaptations to Interior Alaska. The book is arranged as a multi-disciplinary resource that invites browsing and study. Appendix B has an editable LT Verb Complex and Kari's current model of Dene word formation. Other appendices summarize LT numerals, classificatory verbs, kinship, loan words, anatomy, fish and fishing, and shelter. Local place names and Dene Generative Geography are presented in many figures and in Appendix D. Chena dialect speakers Helen David Charlie and Laura David Anderson are featured with colorful quotes and drawings from the classic booklet According to Mama (1956).
About the author
James Kari is professor emeritus of linguistics with the Alaska Native Language Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks, and the author or editor of numerous publications on Athabascan languages and peoples.
