BabineâÂÂWitsuwitüen or Nadotüen-Wetüsuwetüen is an Athabaskan language spoken in the Central Interior of British Columbia. Its closest relative is Carrier. Because of this linguistic relationship together with political and cultural ties, BabineâÂÂWitsuwitüen is often referred to as Northern Carrier or Western Carrier. Specialist opinion is, however, that it should be considered a separate, though related, language (Kari 1975, Story 1984, Kari and Hargus 1989).
A term used briefly in the 1990s is Bulkley Valley â Lakes District Language, abbreviated BVLD. Ethnologue uses the bare name Babine for the language as a whole, not just for the Babine dialect.
As its name suggests, BabineâÂÂWitsuwitüen consists of two main dialects:
The two dialects are very similar and are distinguished primarily by the fact that in Babine but not in Witsuwitüen the Athabaskan front velar series have become palatal affricates.
Like most languages native to British Columbia, BabineâÂÂWitsuwitüen is an endangered language. It is spoken by a minority of the population, primarily elders. There are 161 fluent and 159 partial speakers of the Babine dialect and 131 fluent and 61 partial speakers of the Witsuwitüen dialect. At most, a handful of children are still speaking the language.
Babine-Witsuwitüen is classified as Northern Athabaskan, in the same linguistic subgrouping as Dakelh and Chilcotin (though the latter is far more distinctly separate from Babine-Witsuwitüen).
Several non-specialist sources (the First Peoples' Heritage Language and Culture Council, the British Columbia Ministry of Education, and the University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology) classify Witsuwitüen as one language and Babine as a distinct language, either on its own or together with Carrier proper under the name Dakelh. Experts on the languages reject this classification. All agree that the differences between Babine and Witsuwitüen are small and that the major split is between Babine and Witsuwitüen on the one hand and Carrier proper on the other hand. The distinction is because speakers of Babine and of Carrier proper call themselves and their language Dakelh but that speakers of Witsuwitüen do not.
Witsuwitüen has 35 consonants. Aspirated and ejective labials are rarer than other consonants.
The ejective consonants are lenis and may be perceived as voiced; see neighboring Gitxsan language for a similar situation.
Witsuwitüen and Babine both have six underlying vowels in its inventory.
Witsuwitüen lexical categories include nouns, verbs, adjectives, and postpositions. Directional terms are considered to be a lexical group in Witsuwitüen found throughout lexical categories.
Witsuwitüen nouns are only inflected for possession, and no case marking exists in Witsuwitüen. Possessive morphology takes different forms depending on whether the referent is alienable or inalienable.
Because trap bait is an alienable entity which need not be possessed by anyone/anything, it does not include any possessive morphology but stands alone in its bare form. In contrast, brother is an inalienable entity; a brother cannot exist without someone else to be in relation to. Thus, brother requires possessive morphology, as exampled in sÃÂìtsen 'my brother'.
The basic lexical verb in Witsuwitüen is the verb theme, a unit composed of two parts: a verbal root and required thematic prefixes.
Verbal morpheme order is stable throughout the Athabaskan family; thus, the template of the Witstuwitüen verb is very similar to other Athabaskan languages. Prefixes which are furthest away from the lexical stem display more variability. The Witsuwitüen verb consists of a lexical root and an aspectual, tense, or modal affix (most often a suffix). All Witsuwitüen verbs carry tense and subject inflection; there is no Witsuwitüen equivalent to the English infinitive.
Postpositional object marking is demonstrated in the examples below. Postpositions can stand by themselves, as in the example 3s was playing with it,' or attach to the verbal complex.
Complex directional systems and directional terms have been described in Ahtna, Slavey, Kaska, Koyukon, Tsek'ene, and Witsuwitüen. Directional terms are composed of a directional root, prefixes which describe distance, and suffixes which indicate motion or rest.
Like most Athabaskan languages, basic word order in Babine-Witsuwitüen is Subject-Object-Verb (SOV), demonstrated in the example below.
Babine-Witsuwitüen uses verbal morphology to express grammatical roles. Subjects of transitive and intransitive constructions are marked in the same way and appear in identical positions within the sentence, while objects of transitive constructions may differ in position and occasionally in morphological form. Subjects are marked in different places within the verbal complex, with 1st and 2nd person subjects appearing more closely to the verb stem and 3rd person subjects and direct objects further to the left.
Two object prefixes [] and [y-]:
1st and 2nd person subjects include 1SG, 2SG, and 2PL. 3rd person subjects can be expressed as unspecified (human), indefinite, or 4th person (referred to as the obviative in Algonquian languages).
Athabaskan languages like Babine-Witstuwitüen make use of two main argument transferring morphemes known as classifiers. However, the term classifier is recognized among Athabaskanists as a misnomer; voice and valence markers are more appropriate descriptors. Each lexical entry of Witsuwitüen verbs features a lexicalized voice/valence marker fused with the verb stem, though this element sometimes appears as zero. The classifiers [ì] and [d] regulate transitivity: [ì] increases transitivity by creating causatives and the [d] classifier lowers transitivity to create middle voice. The valence marker [l] is more complex in nature, indicating a combination of [ì] and [d] where a middle is built upon a causative.