Colloquium

Age-based variation in Dene verbs
Dr. Olga Lovick, University of Saskatchewan
Date: Friday, January 10, 2025

Time: 3:00-4:15pm, MST

Location: TBA

Zoom: https://ualberta-ca.zoom.us/j/92789969479?pwd=6ziaAEHh3GRoPS9ctAYkeBS1Gziw2Z.1
Meeting ID: 927 8996 9479
Passcode: 197059

 

In this talk, I look at variation in two Dene-speaking communities: Clearwater River Dene Nation and La Loche in northern Saskatchewan (Canada). Dene is still used as the main language of communication by most individuals older than 20, but the language spoken by younger speakers is often disparaged by community discourses. I present initial results from the Talking Dene study, a sociolinguistic study into age-based variation involving 105 speakers born between 1934 and 2009. We observe that in several areas of morphology, speakers born after 1980 use different structures than older speakers. In this talk, I explore not only the nature of these differences, but also consider societal and linguistic factors that may explain this degree of variation.