Ahtna

• James Kari (compiler and editor), Ahtna Athabaskan Dictionary. Alaska Native Language Center, 1990. 702 pp. $25. --- A comprehensive dictionary of the Athabaskan language of the Copper River area in Southern Alaska, based on extensive fieldwork carried out between 1973 and 1989. This is more than the usual dictionary. Coverage is nearly exhaustive (over 6,000 lexical entries, 9,800 example sentences, an English-to-Ahtna index of 11,250 entries). The page format cleverly (through type face and point size, indentation, and sequencing) highlights derivational relationships and allows the reader to cut his/her way through the tangle of Athabaskan verbal morphology. A 60-page introduction includes a summary of dialectology and a discussion of Kari's analysis of the Ahtna verb. Appendices cover verb phonology, verb paradigms, loanwords, kin terms, and directionals. The work also exemplifies the use of Hsu's Lexware computer software. Without doubt, this dictionary is a landmark both in Athabaskan studies and in American Indian lexicography generally. --- Order from: ANLC, U of Alaska, P.O. Box 757680, Fairbanks, AK 99775-7680 (tel: 907/474-7874; fax: 907/474-6586). [April 1990]