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Gitksan (git) is an Interior Tsimshianic language spoken in northwestern British Columbia, Canada. It is closely related to Nisga'a, and more distantly related to Coast Tsimshian and Southern Tsimshian. The specific dialect of Gitksan presented here is what can be called Eastern Gitksan, spoken in the villages of Kispiox (Ansbayaxw), Glen Vowell (Sigit'ox), and Hazelton (Git-an'maaxs), which contrasts with the Western dialects, spoken in the villages of Kitwanga (Gitwingax), Gitanyow (Git-anyaaw), and Kitseguecla (Gijigyukwhla). The primary phonological differences between the dialects are a lexical shift in vowels and the presence of stop lenition in the Eastern dialects. While there exists a dialect continuum, the primary cultural and political distinction drawn is between Eastern and Western Gitksan. For reference, Gitksan is bordered on the west by Nisga'a, in the south by Coast Tsimshian and Witsuwit'en, in the east by Dakelh and Sekani, and in the north by Tahltan (the latter four of these being Athabaskan languages). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tsimshian oral records, called adawx, provide an example of the storytelling capacity within a system that has structuring and, thus, historically translatable referents. Although many can be anticipated, here I focus on chronological order and the creation of a relative sequence of events in the adawx that provide an index to history and the most obvious conjunction to archaeological analyses. I argue that the use of significant moments in history as a means of creating chronological order in oral records may be a universal attribute of cultural historiography that is derived from our use of events as touchstones of memory, a phenomenon that seems to be an aspect of all contextualizations of history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the status of intermediate form classes with special reference to Sm'algyax. As a polysynthetic language (Tsimshianic family), Sm'algyax makes use of a great deal of phonologically and/or grammatically dependent morphology. This paper develops a set of criteria for distinguishing the form classes of Sm'algyax based on phonological, grammatical, and semantic information. Particular attention is given to criteria for distinguishing clitics from words and affixes, and for distinguishing different types of clitics from each other. Findings support the idea that clitics behave like phrasal affixes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The data for the Coast Tsimshian calendar include seven different lists, six lunar and one aeolian. The data sources cover a time span of about 70 years. The terms for months in the earliest calendars were morphologically complex and diverse. Later month lists evidence considerable morphological simplification; they typically have generalized one particular archaic pattern, as in the Metlakatla calendars. In one case, the Vickers calendar, the terms have reduced to monomorphic roots. The ancient morphological richness of the calendrical system has all but disappeared. There is also evidence that the number of month names has dwindled over the years and that the amount of agreement between local versions has fallen sharply. At the same time the calendar's semantic model, as expounded in the calendar charter myth, is intact: it has served as inspiration for new substantive reworkings of the calendar. These include the eclectic creolization of the Hudson calendar and the radical, back-to-basics reinvention of the Vickers calendar. This Tsimshian calendrical renaissance with both its introspective and ecumenical elaborations gives assurance that Tsimshian linguistic-cultural traditions have considered resilience and viability: the community that maintains them does so with tenacity and beautiful creativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]