At a symposium in Alaska in 2008,
Edward Vajda of
Western Washington University summarized ten years of research, based on verbal
morphology and reconstructions of the
proto–languages, indicating that the Yeniseian and Na–Dene families might be related. The summation of Vajda's research was published in June 2010 in
The Dene–Yeniseian Connection in the
Anthropological Papers of the University of Alaska. This 369-page volume, edited by
James Kari and Ben Potter, contains papers from the February 26–29, 2008, symposium plus several contributed papers. Accompanying Vajda's lead paper are primary data on Na–Dene historical phonology by
Jeff Leer, along with critiques by several linguistic specialists and articles on a range of topics (
archaeology,
prehistory,
ethnogeography,
genetics,
kinship, and
folklore) by experts in these fields. The evidence offered by Vajda includes over 110 proposed cognate morphemes and about ten homologous prefix and suffix positions of the verbs. Vajda compared the existing reconstructions of Proto–Yeniseian and Proto–Na–Dene, augmented the reconstructions based on the apparent relationship between the two, and suggested
sound changes linking the two into a putative Proto–Dene–Yeniseian language. He suggested that Yeniseian tone differences
originated in the presence or absence of
glottalized consonants in the
syllable coda, as still present in the Na–Dene languages. Vajda and others also note that no compelling evidence has been found linking
Haida with either Na–Dene or Yeniseian. As for the wider
Dene–Caucasian hypothesis (see below), while Vajda did not find the kinds of morphological correspondences with these other families that he did with Yeniseian and Na–Dene, he did not rule out the possibility that such evidence exists, and urges that more work be done. In 2011 Vajda published a short annotated bibliography on Dene–Yeniseian languages. On March 24, 2012, the Alaska Native Language Center hosted the Dene–Yeniseian Workshop at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. There were nine papers, the first new papers on Dene–Yeniseian since the 2010 volume was published. As of July 2012, there are no plans to publish the papers, but video from the workshop is available. Vajda's presentations at the 2012 workshop augmented his proposal with additional linguistic and non-linguistic evidence. He discussed a study he did with
Johanna Nichols investigating the history of complex prefixing verb structures in various families possessing morphology of this sort. His conclusion was that, contrary to prevailing belief, such structures are often preserved intact with little change over several thousands of years, and as a result may actually be stronger evidence of a genetic connection than the lexical relationships that are traditionally sought. As a result, he agreed with the consensus belief that lexical evidence of a genetic relationship becomes virtually undetectable after about 8,000 to 10,000 years of linguistic separation, but suggested that certain sorts of complex morphology may remain stable beyond this time period. Further evidence for Dene–Yeniseian is in . Vajda presents comparanda for an ancient Dene–Yeniseian possessive connector prefix (possibly *ŋ) that appears in idiosyncratic ways in Dene (or Athabaskan), Eyak, Tlingit, and Yeniseian nouns, postpositions, directionals, and demonstratives. Vajda also suggests one new lexical cognate:
Proto-Athabaskan directional *ñəs-d "ahead", "out on open water" and Yeniseian root *es "open space". In terms of the sections within Vajda's 2010 paper, this 2013 article can be read as an addition to his §2 (which ends on p. 63). In a subsequent article, , Vajda discusses features in Ket that arose due to prolonged areal contact with suffixal agglutinating languages. In his 2012 presentation, Vajda also addressed non-linguistic evidence, including analyses of
Y-chromosome and
mitochondrial DNA haplogroups, which are passed unchanged down the male and female lines, respectively, except for mutations. His most compelling DNA evidence is the
Q1 Y-chromosomal haplogroup subclade, which he notes arose c. 15,000 years ago and is found in nearly all
Native Americans and nearly all of the Yeniseian
Ket people (90%), but almost nowhere else in Eurasia except for the
Selkup people (65%), who have intermarried with the Ket people for centuries. Using this and other evidence, he proposes a Proto–Dene–Yeniseian
homeland located in eastern Siberia around the
Amur and
Aldan Rivers. These people would have been
hunter-gatherers, as are the modern Yeniseians, but unlike nearly all other Siberian groups (except for some
Paleosiberian peoples located around the
Pacific Rim of far eastern Siberia, who appear genetically unrelated to the Yeniseians). Eventually all descendants in Eurasia were eliminated by the spread of
reindeer-breeding
pastoralist peoples (e.g. the speakers of the so–called
Altaic languages) except for the modern Yeniseians, who were able to survive in swampy refuges far to the west along the
Yenisei River because it is too mosquito–infested for reindeer to survive easily. Contrarily, the
caribou (the North American reindeer population) were never domesticated, and thus the modern Na–Dene people were not similarly threatened. ==Reception==