Leslie has been involved with program development at the University of Victoria in the areas of applied linguistics and Indigenous language revitalization and maintenance.
Selected Works
Books
1996 (Co-edited with Mary Siemens)
Tłıįcho Yatıì Enįhtłè/A Dogrib Dictionary.
Dogrib Divisional Board of Education, Rae-Edzo, Northwest Territories.
1996 (Co-edited with Eloise Jelinek, Sally Midgette, and Keren Rice) Athabaskan
Language Studies: Essays in Honor of Robert W. Young. The University of New Mexico Press.
Report
(2008) With Andrea Wilhelm. The 'possessed noun suffix' and "possession" in two Northern Athabaskan languages. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas (SSILA), Chicago, IL, January 3–6, 2008.
(2007) With Andrea Wilhelm. The syntax of numerals in two Dene languages. Presentation given at WSCLA 12 (The 12th Workshop on Structure and Constituency in Languages of the Americas). University of Lethbridge, March 31, 2007.
2002 (with Sally Anne Zoe, Georgina Chocolate, and Allice Legat, Dogrib Treaty 11 Council) Dogrib Knowledge on Placenames, Caribou and Habitat. Report to the West Kitikmeot Slave Study Society, Yellowknife, NWT.
Click to view. (Note: this is an external link)
Articles
2005 (with Keren Rice) Comparative Athapaskan syntax:
Arguments and projections. In Handbook of Comparative Syntax, ed. by Guglielmo
Cinque and Richard Kayne, Oxford University Press. 698-774.
2002 (with Keren Rice) Issues of standardization and community in aboriginal
language lexicography. In Making Dictionaries: Preserving Indigenous Languages of the Americas,
ed. by William Frawley, Kenneth C. Hill, and Pamela Munro. University of California Press, pp. 125-154.
2002 Review of Land Occupancy by the Amerindians of the Canadian Northwest
in the 19th Century, as Reported by Émile Petitot: Toponymic Inventory, Data Analyses, Legal Implications.
Edited by Donat Savoie. Occasional Publication No. 49, Canadian Circumpolar Institute, 2001. Review in
SSILA Newsletter XX:4 (January 2002), p 16.
2000 Head-internal relative clauses in Dogrib (Athapaskan). In Papers
in Honor of Ken Hale, ed. by Andrew Carnie, Eloise Jelinek, and Mary Willie.
MIT Working Papers on Endangered and Less Familiar Languages, volume 1.
1998 Complement clauses in Dogrib. In American Indian Languages: Description
and Theory, ed. by Pamela Munro and Leanne Hinton. University of California
Publications in Linguistics, pp 204-211.
1994 (with Keren Rice) The subject positions in Athapaskan languages.
In The Morphology-Syntax Connection, ed. by Heidi Harley and Colin Phillips.
MIT Working Papers in Linguistics, volume 22, pp. 173-195.
1993 A personal use of Athapaskan "impersonal" ts'e-. International
Journal of American Linguistics 59: 338-350.
1993 (with Keren Rice) Paradigmatic and syntagmatic mechanisms
for syntactic change in Athapaskan. In Proceedings of the Nineteenth Annual
Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, Special Session on Syntactic
Issues in Native American Languages, vol 19S, ed. by D.A. Peterson, pp.
148-159.
1993 (with Keren Rice) On subject-verb constituency: Evidence
from Athapaskan languages. In Proceedings of the West Coast Conference
on Formal Linguistics, vol 11, ed. by Jonathan Mead, pp. 434-450.
1990 On one's own: The semantics and pragmatics of reflexives. In Interdisciplinary
Approaches to Language: Essays in Honor of S.-Y. Kuroda, ed. by Carol
P. Georgopoulos and Roberta L. Ishihara. Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp.
521-537.
Lectures
2002 'Lac de Gras', 'Wait Lake', 'Ant's Mouth Stream', 'Mouth-Poking': The Information of
Placenames in a Northern Community. Dean's Lunchtime Lecture Series at UVic Downtown, Victoria, BC.
2002 (with Rosa Mantla and Therese Mantla) Dogrib Language and Culture in Dogrib Schools.
Athabascan Languages Conference, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, Alaska.
2002 (with Keren Rice) Dictionaries and Their Audiences. Plenary address, Athabascan Languages
Conference, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, Alaska.
2002 (with Keren Rice) Comparative Athapaskan syntax and the positions of subjects and objects.
Plenary address, Workshop on Structure and Constituency in the Languages of the Americas (WSCLA), University of
Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta.
2001 On two OSV constructions in Navajo: beyond Subject-Object Inversion. Plenary address, Western
Conference on Linguistics (WECOL), University of Washington, Seattle, WA.
2001 (with Keren Rice) The y-/b- pronouns in Athapaskan languages: another perspectiveWorkshop
on American Indigenous Languages (WAIL), University of California, Santa Barbara, California.
2001 On two OSV constructions in NavajoWorkshop on Structure and Constituency in the Languages
of the Americas (WSCLA), St. John's, Newfoundland.
1999 Understanding the past through language. Chacmool Conference.
Department of Archeology, University of Calgary, November 1999.
1999 Third person forms in paradigms. The XIVth International
Conference on Historical Linguistics, Vancouver, BC, August 1999.
1997 (with Keren Rice) Re-examining na- 'iterative' in Athapaskan languages,
Canadian Linguistic Association annual meeting, St John's, June 1997.
1997 (with Rosa Mantla) On Standardized Forms of Dogrib
Spellings, Athapaskan Language Conference, University of Oregon, Eugene,
Oregon, May 1997.
1996 Object raising in Dogrib. The Athabaskan Conference on Syntax and
Semantics, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, May 1996.
1996 Reflections of syntax in the Athapaskan verb. The Belcourt
Lecture, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, March 1996.
1995 (with Mary Willie) Third-person forms in Athapaskan languages. Athapaskan
Morphosyntax Workshop, Linguistic Society of America Summer Institute, University of New Mexico,
Albuquerque, July 1995.
1995 Complex pronominals, disjoint anaphora, and indexing.
Linguistic Society of America annual meeting, New Orleans, Louisiana, January 1995.
1994 (with Jacqueline DeBruin) Dogrib first person plural subject inflection.
Athapaskan Language Conference, Prince George, British Columbia, June 1994.
Leslie Saxon completed her B.A. and M.A. in Linguistics at the University of Toronto before undertaking doctoral studies at the University of California, San Diego. She taught at Memorial University of Newfoundland for six years before coming to the University of Victoria in 1991. She has carried out research with colleagues at the University of British Columbia, the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, the University of Toronto, the Dogrib Community Services Board, the Traditional Knowledge Research Group of the Dogrib Treaty 11 Council, and on community literacy projects with staff of Aurora College (Yellowknife). Since 2006 she has participated as a resource person in the community teacher education programs developed jointly by the Tłįchǫ Community Services Agency, the Tłįchǫ Nation, and Aurora College.