Research

I am currently involved in projects related to the documentation of four Native American (or First Nations) languages: Sahaptin (Yakama (or Yakima) dialect) (spoken in Washington state), Deg Xinag (spoken in Alaska), Kwadacha (Ft. Ware) Sekani (Tsek'ene), and Witsuwit'en (spoken in British Columbia).

Curriculum Vitae

Some research results (textual):

Some research results (lexical):

(2022) Sharon Hargus, compiler. Witsuwit'en Hibikinic: Witsuwit'en-English and English Witsuwit'en. Witset B.C.: Witsuwit'en Language and Culture Society. [print dictionary with 16,138 accompanying sound files] Dictionary website.
(2019) Sharon Hargus, Mike Abou, Mary Charlie, Edna McCook, Eileen McCook, Louie Tomah, Nellie Charlie. Kwadacha Bilingual Dictionary: Tsek'ene-English and English-Tsek'ene. Kwadacha B.C.: Kwadacha Education Society. [print dictionary with 7,440 accompanying sound files] Dictionary website.
(2009) Virginia Beavert and Sharon Hargus. Ichishkíin Sínwit Yakama/Yakima Sahaptin Dictionary. Toppenish and Seattle: Heritage University and UW Press. [There is no colon in the title or other punctuation to separate the two languages of the title for reasons related to maximization of search results.]

Some research results (grammatical):

(submitted) 'Onomatopoeia in Kwadacha Tsek'ene'. Onomatopieia, ed. by Lívia Körtvélyessy. Ms.
(2021) Sharon Hargus and Virginia Beavert. 'Characteristics of non-pre-vocalic ejectives in Sahaptin'. UW Working Papers in Linguistics.
(2021) Joana Jansen and Sharon Hargus. 'Sahaptin research at a distance'. SSILA virtual meeting, Distant Lightning: Language Documentation from a Distance. Slides.
(2020) Alicia Beckford Wassink and Sharon Hargus. 'Heritage Language Features and the Yakama English Dialect'. Speech in the Western States. Vol. 3: Understudied Varieties. (Publication of the American Dialect Society 105) Durham: Duke University Press. 11-38.
(2019, 2020) Witsuwit'en literacy training materials
(2019) 'What toneless Dene languages can tell us about Dene tonogenesis.' Presented at National Science Foundation, May 24, 2019. Slides.
(2019) Sharon Hargus, Gina Levow, Richard Wright. 'An acoustic study of Deg Xinag fricatives'. UW Working Papers in Linguistics.
(2019) 'The Witsuwit'en and Kwadacha dictionary projects,' presented at American Anthropological Association/Canadian Anthropology Society/La Societé Canadienne d'Anthropolgie, Vancouver B.C., November 21, 2019. Slides (expanded for UW presentation, 4-17-20).
(2019) Sharon Hargus, Olga Lovick, Siri G. Tuttle 'Glossing Dene Languages: Issues and recommendations,' presented at Dene Languages Conference, Davis CA, July 7, 2019. Slides
(2018) 'Web sites for Dene texts,' presented at Dene Languages Conference, Smith River CA, June 1, 2018. Slides
(2018) 'The Kwadacha Tsek'ene Nuts'oodalh stories,' presented at SSILA, Salt Lake City UT, Jan. 5, 2018. Slides
(2017) 'Witsuwit'en blends,' presented at Dene Languages Conference, Camp Verde AZ, June 28, 2017. Slides
(2016) 'Sounds and writing systems of Deg Xinag, Tsek'ene and Witsuwit'en.' Guest lecture for Dene course, Leslie Saxon, University of Victoria. Slides
Hargus, Sharon and Virginia Beavert (2016) 'Characteristics of non-prevocalic ejectives in Yakima Sahaptin,' presented at NoWPhon, Eugene OR, May 16, 2016. Slides.
Hargus, Sharon and Virginia Beavert (2015) 'The Northwest Sahaptin present perfect in texts,' presented at SSILA, Portland OR, Jan. 11, 2015. Slides
Beavert, Virginia and Sharon Hargus (2015) 'Dictionaries and texts for all,' presented at SSILA (session: Dictionaries, text editions, and corpora: Ensuring value for multiple stakeholders), Portland OR, Jan. 10, 2015. Slides
(2014) 'The lexical representation of Kwadacha classifiers,' presented at Workshop on Dene Verbal Paradigms, University of Toronto, September 26, 2014. Slides
(2014) 'Documenting for revitalization: Kwadacha Tsek'ene, a case study,' presented at Dene Languages Conference, University of Northern British Columbia, Prince George B.C., June 19, 2015. Slides
(2012) 'Deg Xinag Disjunct Prefixes and Positions', presented at 2012 Athabaskan/Dene Languages Conference, Western Washington University, Bellingham WA, August 15, 2012. Slides
(2012) 'Deg Xinag "Voiceless Unaspirates": A Case of Phonologically Driven Phonetics?', presented at UCSD Department of Linguistics colloquium, May 14, 2012. Slides
(2012) 'First position clitics in Northwest Sahaptin', presented at Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas, Portland, OR. PDF of slides
(2011) 'Stop and affricate features in Athabaskan (in general) and Deg Xinag (in particular)', presented at Western Conference on Linguistics, Vancouver, B.C. PDF of slides
(2011) 'Insubordination in Deg Xinag', presented at the 2011 Athabaskan Languages Conference, Whitehorse YT. PDFs of slides, references.
(2011) 'Athabaskan Languages.' Oxford Bibliographies Online.
(2010) 'Dictionaries and linguists: Some methods and results of Ichishkíin Sínwit.' Department of Linguistics, University of Washington colloquium. PDF of slides.
(2010) 'Athabaskan Phonetics and Phonology'. Language and Linguistics Compass 3/1: 1-22. Corrected proofs.
(to appear) NSF Result Highlight 'Athabaskan Personal Histories of Climate Change in Alaska and Canada', PI Sharon Hargus, University of Washington. Article (PDF), accompanying figures (map, photo1, photo2, graph). Analysis of weather data for this Highlight was performed by Rick Thoman, lead forecaster, National Weather Service, Fairbanks. Thoman has a more detailed write-up of the weather data here.
(2010) Sharon Hargus. Phonetic vs. phonological rounding in Athabaskan languages. PDF of slides, PDF of references. Presented at LabPhon 12, Albuquerque, NM. (reposted July 16, 2010). The article will appear in Journal of Laboratory Phonology 3:163-193.
(2010) Sharon Hargus. Effects on consonant duration in Fort Ware Tsek'ene. Presented at Athabaskan/Dene Languages Conference, Eugene, OR. PDF of slides, PDF of references. Spreadsheets I used to show that the findings of Bird 2004 on consonant duration in Dakelh could have been obtained from unequal numbers of tokens in different positions: this spreadsheet provides plausible durations for tokens in different positions using the numbers given in Appendix B of Bird 2004; this spreadsheet was the input to an ANOVA.
Hargus, Sharon (2010) "Vowel quality and duration in Deg Xinag.", Proceedings of the 2009 Dene (Athabaskan) Languages Conference, ed. by Siri Tuttle and Justin Spence. ANLC Working Papers. Also presented at CAA meeting, Vancouver BC. (slides) [Supported by NSF DEL-0651853 and OPP-0137483]
Hargus, Sharon (2009) "Causatives and transitionals in Kwadacha Tsek'ene." (slides) Presented at the Athabaskan Languages Conference, Berkeley, CA. [Supported by NSF DEL-0651853 and Kwadacha Education Society]
Hargus, Sharon (2009) "A HL% boundary tone in Athabaskan?" Presented at SSILA meeting, San Francisco CA. (slides) [Supported by NSF DEL-0651853 and Kwadacha Education Society]
Hargus, Sharon and Virginia Beavert (2009) "Sahaptin Intonational Phonology." Presented at SSILA meeting, San Francisco CA. (handout summarizing content of poster)
Hargus, Sharon (2008) "A Master-Apprentice program as a component of language revitalization." Presented at Moricetown Language Authority Conference, Moricetown, BC. (slides)
Wright, Richard, Sharon Hargus, and Julia Miller (2008) "Using acoustics to resolve place controversies in Deg Xinag." Presented at CAA meeting, Vancouver BC. (slides) [Supported by NSF DEL-0651853 and OPP-0137483]
Hargus, Sharon and Lillian Morris (2008) "Witsuwit'en perspectives on climate change in the Bulkley R. area (British Columbia)." Presented at Conference on Climate, Language and Indigenous Perspectives, Fairbanks AK. (slides) [Supported by NSF DEL-0651853]
Hargus, Sharon and Mike Abou (2008) "Intonation in Kwadacha (Fort Ware Tsek'ene)." Presented at 2008 Dene Languages Conference, Cold Lake AB. (slides) [Supported by NSF DEL-0651853 and Kwadacha Education Society]
Hargus, Sharon (2008) "Deg Xinag lateral affricates: Phonetic and historical perspectives." Poster presented at SSILA meeting, Chicago IL, January 2008. (handout summarizing content of poster) [Supported by NSF DEL-0651853 and OPP-0137483]
(2008) Review of Making Dictionaries: Preserving Indigenous Languages of the Americas, by William Frawley, Kenneth Hill and Pamela Munro. International Journal of American Linguistics 74:141-146.
(2007) "Design Issues in Athabaskan Dictionaries." Presented at Dene Languages meeting, Tsaile AZ, June 2007. Ms., slides
(2007) Witsuwit'en Grammar: Phonetics, Phonology, Morphology. Vancouver:UBC Press. Errata:
- There is a typo on the subtitle of the cover as printed by UBC Press. The correct subtitle is 'Phonetics, Phonology, Morphology', as shown here. (When it came time to print the book, an older, uncorrected cover illustration was used.)
- p. 49 "usually inspected for errors,": should be "visually inspected for errors,"
Hargus, Sharon and Virginia Beavert (2006) "High-ranking affix faithfulness in Yakima Sahaptin." Don Baumer, David Montero, and Michael Scanlon (eds.) Proceedings of the 25th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics. Somerville: Cascadilla Press. 177-185.
Hargus, Sharon and Virginia Beavert (2006) "Initial clusters and minimality in Yakima Sahaptin." Phonology 23:21-58.
Hargus, Sharon and Virginia Beavert (2005) "A note on the phonetic correlates of stress in Yakima Sahaptin." University of Washington Working Papers in Linguistics 24: 64-95.
Hargus, Sharon and Keren Rice (eds.) (2005) Athabaskan Prosody. John Benjamins.
(2005) "Prosody in two Athabaskan Languages of Northern British Columbia." In Hargus and Rice (eds.), 393-423.
Rice, Keren and Sharon Hargus (2005) "Introduction." In Hargus and Rice (eds.), 1-45.
Hargus, Sharon and Keren Rice (2005) "Preface to Michael Krauss' article." 47-49.

University of Washington Department of Linguistics | Box 354340 Seattle, WA 98195-4340 Email: sharon@uw.edu