Haida Syntax

The Haida people make their home on the Queen Charlotte Islands in British Columbia and on Prince of Wales Island off the coast of southern Alaska. Their language, distinct from their Northwest Coast neighbors, is spoken today by a few elders and is in danger of becoming extinct, despite efforts by the community to save it. Intimately familiar with the Haida language, John Enrico bases this comprehensive description of the syntax of two Haida dialects on his twenty-five years of fieldwork in the Haida community and on the materials collected by the anthropologist John Swanton in the early twentieth century. This synthesis of the syntax of the Haida language provides an exemplary reference work of the language for the Haida community and for scholars.

John Enrico, an independent scholar, is the author of The Lexical Phonology of Masset Haida, editor and translator of Skidegate Haida Myths and Histories, and coauthor (with Wendy Bross Stuart) of Northern Haida Songs (Nebraska 1996). He is currently working on a dictionary of the three extant Haida dialects.