The identification of narrative genres in Upper Tanana Athabascan: a preliminary study

Abstract

This paper is an investigation into the local classification of narrative genres in Upper Tanana. After reviewing genre-distinguishing diagnostics developed in the relevant literature, I apply them to a text collection by Upper Tanana speaker Mrs. Cora David and show that only two of them can be successfully applied. Two important additional findings are the fact that the boundary between myth and history is not as clear-cut as the speaker suggested and that genre diagnostics developed for the stories from one cultural group cannot be transferred to a different cultural group without careful investigation.