The Dene Speech Atlas (NSF #0853939) is a community based documentation of the speech patterns of Dene Speaking communities in the Mackenzie Basin drainage, which covers a large geographic area of Northern Canada, including Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and the Northwest Terrtories. The DSA intends to provide a Baseline description and documenation of the segmental inventories in individual communities, baseline information on tone and prosodic systems with sound files illustrating these contrasts and patterns. The Atlas is intended to be a platform for the documentation and investigation of word, sound changes and prosodic variation across the Dene communities, highlighting points of variblity and stability across the communities. We plan to extend work into the collection of annotated natural conversation through techniques such as the Toy Game.
The DSA is accompanied by a Google Earth interface indicating the Dene communities in this geographic area.
Students who have worked on this project as undergraduates
Kate Kelliher
Adina Rubinoff
Jared O'Loughlin
Alexander Venuti