Koyukon Athabascan Dictionary [Hardcover]

Jules Jetté (Author), Eliza Jones (Author), James Kari (Editor)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 1118 pages
• Publisher: Alaska Native Language Center; 1 edition (April 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1555000630
• ISBN-13: 978-1555000639
• Product Dimensions: 11.1 x 8.3 x 2.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,931,766 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a magnificent work, April 22, 2001

By 

William J. Poser (Prince George, BC, Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Koyukon Athabascan Dictionary (Hardcover)

During his many years with the Koyukon, Father Jules Jette, one of the few missionaries to learn an Athabaskan language well, made prodigious linguistic and ethnographic notes. This material has been edited and re-organized, and much added, by a distinguished group of linguists, including Eliza Jones, a fluent native speaker of Koyukon. The result is one of the most comprehensive dictionaries ever published for any native language. In part because Jette was able to record so much while elements of the traditional culture now lost were still in place, the ethnographic information is unusually detailed. The dictionary contains hundreds of sketches and photographs. It is in effect not merely a dictionary but an encyclopaedia as well.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars comment to the one below, June 22, 2003

By 

"linguist-guy" (boston) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Koyukon Athabascan Dictionary (Hardcover)

I can't deny the truth of the review below, but this book didn't help me because it is too analytical. Verbs are listed by the root, and since in Athabaskan one root may make many verbs, it's hard to find a form on those 3, 4 or maybe more pages of examples. The grammar is also rather analytical than practical. It is true there is a lot of great nonlinguistic information. The dialect described is toneless. BTW Jette was not a good phonetitian, a modern native speaker corrected his k into k, k', kk(=q), kk', g, gg. This dictionary has the full correct pronunciation.