The Tlingit language is a Na-Dene language spoken by the Tlingit people who are indigenous to most of Southeast Alaska. Its grammar has features similar to that of other languages belonging to the Northwest Coast Sprachbund, including SOV word order, a rich aspectual system, and optional plural marking. The grammar is also similar to other Na-Dene languages like Eyak and the Athabaskan languages, for instance in their shared complexity of verb morphology.

Nouns Nouns in Tlingit are generally much less internally complex than verbs, with some multisyllabic nouns consisting of only one morpheme. However, nouns have systems for compounding and derivation in addition to some suffixes, including a single inflectional suffix.

Possession and alienability Nouns in Tlingit can be divided into two classes, possessable and unpossessable. This division is based on whether a particular noun may have a possessed relationship with another noun. In Tlingit the names for people and places (proper nouns) are unpossessable, while other nouns may be either optionally or obligatorily possessed (called alienable and inalienable, respectively).

Alienable nouns may be used alone or may be possessed by another noun or pronoun. In the latter case, the possessed noun takes the suffix , and, if the possessor is a pronoun, the possessive pronominal is used. is the only inflectional suffix used for nouns. In contrast, inalienable nouns cannot appear without a possessor. Inalienable nouns commonly refer to kinship terms and body parts. Inalienable nouns are not normally marked for possession; that is, they do not take the possessed suffix. However, if the possessed suffix is used on an inalienable noun, the meaning changes from being part of a body to a body part that is somehow separated from the rest of the body. Thus means "a bear's head", but means "a bear's head (detached from its body)".

Suffixes There are three nominal suffixes that do not function as postpositions: the possessed, the plural, and the diminutive. The possessed suffix has eight allomorphs. After a vowel, it will appear with an initial consonant (either or ), whereas if it appears after a consonant, it will only surface as a vowel ( or ). Its tone is the opposite of the stem vowel, so that a low-toned stem vowel will trigger a high tone on the suffix (i.e. ) while a high-toned stem vowel will do the reverse. Roundedness from a vowel or final consonant spreads to the suffix, so it will be pronounced as or .

The nominal plural suffix ( after central vowels) may be attached to most nouns, but it is optional. For example, means "man"/"men", means "my child"/"my children". Kinship terms are pluralized using the or enclitics, which are postnominal modifiers. Meanwhile, the diminutive suffix has the form ( after central vowels) and can also attach to verbal phrases.

Adnominal modifiers Adnominal modifiers can be prenominal (before the noun) or postnominal (after the noun). Prenominal modifiers include numerals, demonstratives, and some descriptive modifiers like ("young"). Postnominal modifiers are all descriptive, including words like ("big"), and many are derived from verbs. The descriptive modifiers are analogous to adjectives in English, although they cannot be predicates.

The order of the adnominal modifiers in relation to the noun according to Constance Naish is given below. Although she gives six different orders for the modifiers, she notes that not more than three at once are typically found in a single phrase and there are usually at most two modifiers if one of them is expressed as a phrase construct.

Prenominal Postnominal No. +5 +4 +3 +2 +1 Noun -1 Type "all" Demonstrative Numeral Possessive Descriptive Descriptive

Pronouns

Tlingit has a complex system of pronouns which vary depending on their relationship to syntactic categories including the verb, in addition to agency and saliency in the third-person pronouns. The subject pronouns are incorporated into the verb in its subject slot. The object pronouns are divided into three forms: the verbal object, nominal object, and postpositional object. The independent pronouns are separate from the verb and occur in independent noun phrases for emphasis.

The pronouns can be visualized in the following table.

{| class="wikitable" !rowspan=2 colspan=2| !!rowspan=2| Subject !!colspan=3| Object !!rowspan=2| Independent |- ! VO !! NO !! PO |- !rowspan=2 | 1 ! || ||, || || || |- !

!rowspan=2 | 2 !

!

!rowspan=3 | 3 ! | rowspan=3 | Ø- | , Ø-

! ||, Ø- || || || |- !

!colspan=2 | || || , Ø- || || || |- !colspan=2 |

!rowspan=2 | Indefinite ! ||||, || || || |- !

!colspan=2 |

The first and second person pronouns both have a distinction between singular and plural. The third person pronouns, which in object form are distinguished as neutral, recessive, and salient, communicate agency and salience. A human third person may be pluralized by the addition of the proclitic before the verb, although the plural is often communicated in other ways. Non-human referents are pluralized with the proclitic , which can also be a distributive plural. The indefinite pronouns are a type of fourth person and distinguish between human and non-human referents.

The subject pronouns are all incorporated into the verb. Object pronouns are divided into three classes: the verbal (VO), nominal (NO), and postpositional (PO). The verbal object pronouns act as the direct object of a verb are incorporated into the verb. The nominal object pronouns are used as possessive pronouns and are often referred to as such. Leer calls them nominal objects because they are almost identical in shape to the VO pronouns and they act as the object to an incorporated inalienable noun. Postpositional object pronouns are the complement of a postposition.

Third person pronouns There is only one class of third person subject in Tlingit, but there are three classes of third person object (neutral, recessive, and salient). This system of object pronouns exist in parallel to similar systems (called "anaphora") in many Athabaskan languages, including in Navajo. All these anaphora have roots in Proto Na-Dene, although Tlingit has a particularly complex system.

In the system, a referent can be either an agent or a non-agent. Agents can only be humans, supernatural beings, natural forces, or personified animals; by contrast, a non-agent is anything else, including other animals, inanimate objects, plants, places, and ideas. Non-agents may only be referred to using the recessive pronouns, while the pronominal for an agent is determined by the presence and situation of saliency.

Saliency is only considered when the following criteria are met: the subject is also third-person both subject and object are agents the subject and object are opposed (or contrasted) in the discourse If saliency is not considered, then the neutral pronominal is used for the agent object. If it is considered, then relative agency is used to determine which pronominal to use for the object. If the object has less agency than the subject, then the recessive pronominal is used; if it has more agency, then the salient pronominal is used. Relative agency is determined both by the degree of control the actors have over a situation and how well the speaker identifies with each of the actors (for instance, whether they are part of the same clan). However, although the agency of the actors may shift in the discourse, the use of anaphora is generally consistent throughout a narrative.

For instance, in a situation where the protagonist of a story is the object of a sentence, while someone else with less agency is the subject, a translation of "He found her" would be:

In the opposite situation, where the subject has more agency than the object, a translation of the same sentence would be:

Conversely, if a human speaker were to sit on a chair (which is inanimate), one could say:

But if that same speaker sat on another person, one would say:

There is no distinction of agency in the verbal object pronouns. So, the neutral and recessive object prefixes of the nominal and postpositional objects correspond to just one non-salient object prefix for the verbal object pronouns. This prefix, , is only pronounced when required by the theme, the subject is also third-person, and it is used for an indefinite object. Otherwise, it is null. It is also unpronounced if the subject is a noun phrase with the ergative suffix and the noun phrase is adjacent to the verb.

Postpositions Nominal cases in Tlingit are designated by postpositions, however they usually behave morphologically like suffixes.

CaseFormUseExampleErgative Marks the agent of a transitive verb with a definite object. The meaning is roughly "by means of" and is consistent with other split ergative languages. When discussing the two arguments of the verb in an ergative sentence, the marked agent is called the "ergative argument" and the definite object is called the "absolutive argument". Note that Tlingit lacks an absolutive case, instead the absolutive argument is not marked. Punctual When used with a positional imperfective it designates physical position, roughly meaning "(resting) at". When used in a telic derivative it means "(coming) to", "(arriving) at"; while in an atelic -aspect derivative it means "(moving) about".Pertingent Can mean an extended physical location or extended contact with an object, e.g. "(usually or always) at". In another sense it indicates repetitive physical arrival, as in "repeatedly arriving at", "always coming to". In a third sense it indicates physical status, i.e. "in the form of".Locative May indicate physical location, such as "at a place", "by a place", "in a structure". It can be extended by analogy to temporal location, such as "at a time", "by a time".Adessive Indicates physical adjacency to place or object, such as "around", "by". By extension of this concept it may indicate physical succession, "(go) after something" or "(follow) something", as well as the temporal associations of "(waiting) for something" and "about (a time)", "around (a time)".Ablative Marks the physical origin of an action, translated as "from (a place)" or "out of (a place)". By temporal extension it means "since (a time)" or "from (a time)".Prolative Marks a course of physical translation by some action, translated as "along (a way)" or "via (a path)". Temporal extension indicates the translation of an action along a duration of time, or the inclusion of a period of time, thus "during (some period)", "including (some time)".Allative Marks a physical or temporal destination, translated as "to, toward" and "until", respectively. It may also describe an analogical motion, "in the manner of".Comitative-instrumental May describe either the instrumental "with (a utensil)", "by means of (something)", or the comitative "with (something, someone)", "along with (something, someone)".Locative-predicative Functions as a postposition plus a nonverbal predicate. Other postpositions function as separate words, and include: — "without" — "away from" — "for" — "like, as much as, according to" — "more than" — "less than"

Directionals

In Tlingit, directionals are a semantic category which indicate direction relative to some stated position. The stated position can be some element of the natural environment, a structure, or a person or group of people. Syntactically, directionals are a subcategory of nouns because, like nouns, they can be arguments of verbs and objects of postpositions. Some examples of directionals can be seen below.

{|class="wikitable" ! !! Noun !! N-dei !! N-naa !! Adverb (+15) |- | up above || || || || |- | down below || || || || |- | upstream || || || ~ || – |- | downstream || || || || – |- | from landshore, interior || || || || |- | from seashore, out to sea || || || ~ || |- | inside || || || — || |- | outside || || || — || —

Verbs