| Lillooet | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| St’át’imcets | ||||
| Spoken in | Canada | |||
| Region | British Columbia | |||
| Native speakers | 200 (date missing) | |||
| Language family |
Salishan
|
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| Language codes | ||||
| ISO 639-3 | lil | |||
|
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Lillooet or Lilloet, also known as St’át’imcets (pronounced [ˈst͡ɬʼæt͡ɬʼemxət͡ʃ]), is the Interior Salishan language of the St’át’imc, spoken in southern British Columbia, Canada around the middle Fraser and Lillooet rivers. The dialect of the Lower Lillooet people uses the name Ucwalmícwts[1] as St’át’imcets properly means "the language of the people of Sat’, i.e. the Upper Lillooet of the Fraser River.
Lillooet is an endangered language with as few as 200 native speakers practically all of whom are over 60 years of age (Gordon 2005).
Contents |
St'at'imcets has two main dialects:
Upper St'at'imcets is spoken around Fountain, Pavilion, Lillooet, and neighboring areas. Lower St'at'imcets is spoken around Mount Currie and neighboring areas. An additional subdialect called Skookumchuck is spoken within the Lower St'at'imcets dialect area, but there is no information available in van Eijk (1981, 1997) (which are the main references for this article).
St'at'imcets has 44 consonants:
| Bilabial | Dental | Postalv. /Palatal |
Velar | Post- velar |
Glottal | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| central | lateral | retracted lateral |
plain | retracted | plain | labial | plain | labial | ||||
| Plosive and affricate |
plain | p | t | t͡ʃ | t͡ʂ | k | kʷ | q | qʷ | |||
| glottalized | pʼ | t͡sʼ | t͡ɬʼ | kʼ | kʷʼ | q͡χʼ | q͡χʷʼ | ʔ | ||||
| Fricative | ɬ | ʃ | ʂ | x | xʷ | χ | χʷ | |||||
| Nasal | plain | m | n | |||||||||
| glottalized | ˀm | ˀn | ||||||||||
| Approximant | plain | z | l | ḻ | j | ɣ | ɣʷ | ʕ | ʕʷ | h | ||
| glottalized | zʼ | ˀl | ˀḻ | ˀj | ɣʼ | ɣʷʼ | ʕʼ | ʕʷʼ | ||||
St'at'imcets has 8 vowels:
| Front | Central | Back | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| non- retracted |
retracted | non- retracted |
retracted | non- retracted |
retracted | |
| High | e [e] | e̠ [ɛ] | o [o] | o̠ [ɔ] | ||
| Mid | ə [ə] | ə̠ [ʌ] | ||||
| Low | a [ɛ] | a̠ [a] | ||||
The following table shows the vowels and consonants and their respective orthographic symbols.
| Phoneme | Orthography | Phoneme | Orthography |
| Vowels | |||
| /e/ | i | /e̠/ | ii |
| /o/ | u | /o̠/ | o |
| /ə/ | e | /ə̠/ | v |
| /a/ | a | /a̠/ | ao |
| Consonants | |||
| /p/ | p | /m/ | m |
| /pʼ/ | p̓ | /ˀm/ | m̓ |
| /t/ | t | /n/ | n |
| /tɬʼ/ | t’ | /ˀn/ | n̓ |
| /tʃ/ | ts | /ɬ/ | lh |
| /tʃˠ/ | ts̲ | /z/ | z |
| /tsʼ/ | ts̓ | /zʼ/ | z̓ |
| /k/ | k | /ɣ/ | r |
| /kʷ/ | kw | /ɣʷ/ | w |
| /kʼ/ | k̓ | /ɣʼ/ | r̓ |
| /kʷʼ/ | k̓w | /ɣʷʼ/ | w̓ |
| /q/ | q | /ʕ/ | g |
| /qʷ/ | qw | /ʕʷ/ | gw |
| /qχʼ/ | q̓ | /ʕʼ/ | g̓ |
| /qχʷʼ/ | q̓w | /ʕʷʼ/ | g̓w |
| /ʔ/ | 7 | /h/ | h |
| /ʃ/ | s | /j/ | y |
| /ʃ̠/ | s̠ | /ˀj/ | y̓ |
| /x/ | c | /l/ | l |
| /xʷ/ | cw | /ḻ/ | ḻ |
| /χ/ | x | /ˀl/ | l’ |
| /χʷ/ | xw | /ˀḻ/ | ḻ’ |
Post-velar Harmony (retraction):
| ama "good" | /ʔáma/ | + /-ɣʷélʼx/ | → | /ʔamaɣʷélʼx/ [ʔɛmɛɣʷél̰x] | amagwil’c "to get better" |
| qaoḻ "bad" | /qá̱ḻ/ | + /-ɣʷélʼx/ | → | /qa̠ḻɣʷé̱ḻʼx/ [qaɫɣʷɛ́ɫ̰x] | qaoḻgwiiḻʼc "to get spoiled" |
St'at'imcets has two main types of words:
The variable word type may be affected by many morphological processes, such as prefixation, suffixation, infixation, reduplication, and glottalization.
St’át’imcets, as is typical of the Salishan family, has several types of reduplication (and triplication) that have a range of functions such as expressing plural, diminutive, aspect, etc.
| Initial reduplication: | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| kl’ácw | 'muskrat' | → | kl’ekl’ácw | 'muskrats' | Plural | |||
| stálhlec | 'standing up' | → | státalhlec | 'to keep standing up' | Continuative | (has s- prefix, stem: -tálhlec) | ||
| sráp | 'tree' | → | srepráp | 'trees' | Collective/Plural | (stem: -rap) | ||
| snúk’wa7 | 'friend' | → | snek’wnúk’wa7 | 'friends' | Collective/Plural | (stem: -núk’wa7) | ||
| Final reduplication/triplication: | ||||||||
| p’líxw | 'boil over' | → | p’líxwexw | 'boiling over' | Ongoing Action | |||
| p’líxw | 'boil over' | → | p’lixwixwíxw | 'to keep boiling over' | Continuative/Intensive | |||
| lhésp | 'rash' | → | lhéslhsep | 'rash all over' | Collective/Plural | (stem: lhes-) (the e before -p is epenthetic) | ||
A more complicated type of reduplication is the internal reduplication used to express the diminutive. In this case the consonant before a stressed vowel is reduplicated after the stressed vowel and usually the vowel then changes to e (IPA: [ə]). Examples are below:
| Internal reduplication: | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| naxwít | 'snake' | → | naxwéxwt | 'worm' | (naxwé-xw-t) | |||
| sqáxa7 | 'dog' | → | sqéqxa7 | 'pup' | (sqé-q-xa7) | |||
| sqláw’ | 'beaver' | → | sqlélew’ | 'little beaver' | (sqlé-l-ew’) | (the extra e here is an epenthetic vowel) | ||
More than one reduplicative process can occur in a given word:
| Diminutive | Plural+Diminutive | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| sqáxa7 | 'dog' | sqéqxa7 | 'pup' | sqexqéqxa7 | 'pups' | ||
| s-qéxa7 | s-qé-q-xa7 | s-qex-qé-q-xa7 | |||||
St’át’imcets has several other variants of the above types. Reduplication is further complicated by consonant glottalization (see van Eijk (1997) for details).
The subjunctive mood appears in nine distinct environments, with a range of semantic effects, including:
The St’át’imcets subjunctive also differs from Indo-European subjunctives in that it is not selected by attitude verbs.
St’át’imcets has a complex system of subject and object agreement. There are different subject agreement paradigms for transitive vs. intransitive predicates. For intransitive predicates, there are three distinct subject paradigms, one of which is glossed as ‘subjunctive’ by van Eijk (1997) and Davis (2006)
The following is a portion of a story in van Eijk (1981:87) told by Rosie Joseph of Mount Currie.
St'at'imcets:
Nilh aylh lts7a sMáma ti húz̓a qweqwl’el’tmínan. N̓as ku7 ámlec áku7 tsípunsa. Nilh t’u7 st’áksas ti xláka7sa. Tsicw áku7, nilh t’u7 ses wa7, kwánas et7ú i sqáwtsa. Wa7 ku7 t’u7 áti7 xílem, t’ak ku7 knáti7 ti pú7y̓acwa. Nilh ku7 t’u7 skwánas, lip̓in̓ás ku7. Nilh ku7 t’u7 aylh stsuts: "Wa7 nalh aylh láti7 kapv́ta!" Nilh ku7 t’u7 aylh sklhaka7mínas ku7 láti7 ti sqáwtsa cwilhá k̓a, nao7q̓ spawts ti kwanensása...
English translation:
This time it is Máma I am going to talk about. She went that way to get some food from her roothouse. So she took along her bucket. She got there, and she stayed around, taking potatoes. She was doing that, and then a mouse ran by there. So she grabbed it, she squeezed it. So she said: "You get all squashed now!" So she opened her hand and she let go of what turned out to be a potato, it was a rotten potato that she had caught....
