Chilcotin language

Chilcotin (also Tsilhqot’in, Tsilhqut’in, Tzilkotin) is a Northern Athabaskan language spoken in British Columbia by the Tsilhqot’in people.

The name Chilcotin is derived from the Chilcotin name for themselves: Tŝilhqot’in [ts̠ˤʰᵊĩɬqʰotʼin], literally "people of the red ochre river".

Sounds

Consonants

Chilcotin has 47 consonants:

• Like many Athabaskan languages, Chilcotin does not have a contrast between fricatives and approximants.
• The alveolar series is pharyngealized.
• Dentals and alveolars:
  • Both Krauss (1975) and Cook (1993) describe the dental and alveolar as being essentially identical in articulation—postdental—with the only differentiating factor being their different behaviours in the vowel flattening processes (described below).
  • Gafos (1999, personal communication with Cook) describes the dental series as apico-laminal denti-alveolar and the alveolar series as lamino-postalveolar.

Vowels

Chilcotin has 6 vowels:

• Chilcotin has both tense and lax vowel phonemes. Additionally, tense vowels may become lax due a vowel laxing process (see below).

Every given Chilcotin vowel will have a number of different phonetic realizations due to complex phonological processes (e.g. nasalization, laxing, flattening). For instance, the vowel /i/ can be variously pronounced [i, ĩ, ɪ, e, ᵊi, ᵊĩ, ᵊɪ].

Tone

Chilcotin is a tonal language with two tones:

• high tone
• low tone

Phonological processes

Chilcotin has a number of interesting phonological processes, namely vowel flattening and consonant harmony. Consonant harmony (i.e. sibilant harmony) is rather common in the Athabaskan language family. Vowel flattening, though unique to Chilcotin, is similar to phonological processes in other unrelated Interior Salishan languages spoken in the same area, such as Shuswap, St'át'imcets, and Thompson River Salish (and thus was probably borrowed into Chilcotin). This type of harmony is an areal feature common in this region of North America. The Chilcotin processes, however, are much more complicated.

Vowel nasalization and laxing

Vowel nasalization is a phonological process where the phoneme /n/ is realized as nasalization on the preceding vowel. This process occurs when the vowel + /n/ sequence is followed by a (tautosyllabic) continuant consonant (e.ɡ. /ɬ, sˤ, zˤ, ç, j, χ/).

Vowel laxing is a process where tense vowels (i.e. /i, u, æ/) become lax when followed by a syllable-final /h/ (i.e. the tense and lax distinction is neutralized).

Vowel flattening

Chilcotin has a type of Retracted Tongue Root harmony (or post-velar harmony) called Vowel Flattening. Generally, "flat" consonants lower vowels in both directions, i.e. the assimilation is both progressive and regressive.

Chilcotin consonants can be grouped into three categories: Neutral, Sharp, and Flat.

• Flat consonants trigger vowel flattening.
• Sharp consonants block vowel flattening.
• Neutral consonants do not affect vowel flattening in any way.

The flat consonants can be further divided into two types:

1. a sˤ-series (i.e. /tsˤ, tsʰˤ, tsʼˤ/ˌ etc.), and
2. a q-series (i.e. /q, qʷ, qʰ/ˌ etc.).

The sˤ-series is stronger than the q-series in that the sˤ-series affects vowels for a greater distance across the word.

The table below shows both unaffected vowels and flattened vowels.

The vowel /i/ surfaces as [ᵊi] if preceded by a flat consonant and as [e] if followed by a flat consonant:

Below the progressive and regressive flattening processes are described below in separate sections.

Progressive flattening

In the progressive (left-to-right) flattening, the q-series consonants affect only the immediately following vowel:

Like the q-series, the stronger sˤ-series consonants affects the immediately following vowel. However, this series additionally affects the vowel in the following syllable, if the first flattened vowel is a lax vowel. If the first flattened is tense, then the vowel of the following syllable is not flattened.

As can be seen above, the neutral consonants are "transparent" in the flattening process. In the first word /sˤɛɬ.tʰin/ 'he's comatose', /sˤ/ flattens the /ɛ/ of the first syllable to [ə] and the /i/ of the second syllable to [ᵊi]. In the word /sˤi.tʰin/ 'I'm sleeping', /sˤ/ flattens /i/ to [ᵊi]. But since the vowel of the first syllable is /i/, which is a tense vowel, the /sˤ/ cannot flatten the /i/ of the second syllable.

The sharp consonants, however, block the progressive flattening caused by the sˤ-series:

Regressive flattening

In regressive (right-to-left) harmony, the q-series flattens the preceding vowel (just like it does in the progressive harmony mentioned above).

The regressive (right-to-left) harmony of the sˤ-series, however, is much stronger than in the progressive harmony. Here these consonants flatten all preceding vowels in a word:

Both progressive and regressive flattening processes occur in Chilcotin words:

References

External links

• The Chilcotin Language (YDLI)
• Bibliography of Materials on the Chilcotin Language (YDLI)

Bibliography

• Andrews, Christina. (1988). Lexical Phonology of Chilcotin. (unpublished M.A. thesis, University Of British Columbia).
• Campbell, Lyle. (1997). American Indian Languages: The Historical Linguistics of Native America. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509427-1.
• Clements, G. N. (1991). A Note on Chilcotin Flattening. (unpublished manuscript).
• Cook, Eung-Do. (1976). A Phonological Study of Chilcotin and Carrier. A Report to the National Museums of Canada. (unpublished manuscript).
• Cook, Eung-Do. (1983). Chilcotin Flattening. Canadian Journal of Linguistics, 28 (2), 123-132.
• Cook, Eung-Do. (1986). Ambisyllabicity and Nasalization in Chilcotin. In Working Papers for the 21st International Conference on Salish and Neighboring Languages (Pp. 1–6). Seattle: University Of Washington.
• Cook, Eung-Do. (1989). Articulatory and Acoustic Correlates of Pharyngealization: Evidence from Athapaskan. In D. Gerdts & K. Michelson (Eds.), Theoretical Perspectives on Native American Languages (Pp. 133–145). Albany: State University of New York Press.
• Cook, Eung-Do. (1989). Chilcotin Tone and Verb Paradigms. In E.-D. Cook & K. Rice (Eds.), Athapaskan Linguistics (Pp. 145–198). Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter.
• Cook, Eung-Do. (1993). Chilcotin Flattening and Autosegmental Phonology. Lingua, 91 12/3, 149-174.
• Cook, Eung-Do; & Rice, Keren (Eds.). (1989). Athapaskan Linguistics: Current Perspectives on a Language Family. Trends in Linguistics, State of-the-art Reports (No. 15). Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter. ISBN 0-89925-282-6.
• Gafos, Adamantios. (1999). The Articulatory Basis of Locality in Phonology. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc. ISBN 0-8153-3286-6. (revised version of the author's Doctoral dissertation, Johns Hopkins University).
• Hansson, Gunnar O. (2000). Chilcotin Vowel Flattening and Sibilant Harmony: Diachronic Cues to a Synchronic Puzzle. (Paper presented at the Athabaskan Language Conference, Moricetown, British Columbia, June 10).
• Krauss, Michael E. (1975). Chilcotin Phonology, a Descriptive and Historical Report, with Recommendations for a Chilcotin Orthography. Alaskan Native Language Center. (unpublished manuscript).
• Krauss, Michael E., and Victor K. Golla (1981) Northern Athapaskan Languages, In June Helm (ed.), Handbook of North American Indians: Subarctic, Vol. 6. Smithsonian Institution, Washington.
• Latimer, R. M. (1978). A Study of Chilcotin Phonology. (M.A. thesis, University of Calgary).
• Mithun, Marianne. (1999). The Languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-23228-7 (hbk); ISBN 0-521-29875-X.

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