Alsea language

Alsea
Yakonan
Pronunciation /ˈælsiː/
Region Oregon
Ethnicity Alsea people, Yaquina people
Extinct 1942, with the death of John Albert
Dialects
  • Alsea
  • Yaquina
Language codes
ISO 639-3 aes
Glottolog alse1251[1]

Pre-contact distribution of Alsean

Alsea or Alsean (also Yakonan) was two closely related speech varieties spoken along the central Oregon coast. They are sometimes taken to be different languages, but it is difficult to be sure given the poor state of attestation; Mithun believes they were probably dialects of a single language.[2]

Varieties

  1. Alsea (Alséya) (†)
  2. Yaquina (Yakwina, Yakona) (†)

Both are now extinct.

The name Alsea derives from the Coosan name for them, alsí or alsí·, and the Marys River Kalapuyan name for them, alsí·ya. Alsea was last recorded in 1942 from the last speaker, John Albert, by J. P. Harrington.

The name Yaquina derives from the Alsean name for the Yaquina Bay and the Yaquina River region, yuqú·na. Yaquina was last recorded in 1884 by James Owen Dorsey.

Alsea is usually considered to belong to the Penutian phylum, and may form part of an Oregon Coast Penutian subgroup together with Siuslaw and the Coosan languages (Grant 1997). Numerous lexical resemblances between Alsea and the Northern Wintuan languages, however, are more likely the result of borrowing about 1,500 years ago when the (Northern) Wintuan speech community appears to have been located in Oregon (Golla 1997).

Sounds

Consonants

Alsea had 34 consonants:

  Bilabial Alveolar Post-
alveolar		 Velar Uvular Glottal
central lateral plain labial plain labial plain labial
Stop plain p t     k kʷ q qʷ    
glottalized p’ t’     k’ k’ʷ q’ q’ʷ ʔ  
Affricate plain   ts                
glottalized   ts’ tɬ’              
Nasal plain m n                
glottalized m’ n’                
Fricative     s ɬ ʃ x xʷ χ χʷ h (hʷ)
Approximant plain     l j   w        
glottalized     l’ j’   w’        

Vowels

Front Central Back
oral nasal oral nasal oral nasal
High i ĩ u ũ
Mid e ə o
Low a ã

References

  1. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Alsea". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  2. ↑ Mithun, Marianne. (1999). The languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-23228-7 (hbk); ISBN 0-521-29875-X

Bibliography

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