Lillooet language

Lillooet
St’át’imcets
Native to Canada
Region British Columbia
Ethnicity 6,670 St'at'imc (2014, FPCC)[1]
Native speakers
140 (2014, FPCC)[1]
Salishan
Language codes
ISO 639-3 lil
Glottolog lill1248[2]

Lillooet /ˈlɪlɛt/, also known as St’át’imcets (Lillooet: St’át’imcets [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,[3] because St’át’imcets 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).

Regional varieties

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). A common usage used by the bands of the Lower Lillooet River below Lillooet Lake is Ucwalmicwts.

The "Clao7alcw" (Raven's Nest) language nest program at Mount Currie, home of the Lil’wat, is conducted in the Lil’wat dialect."[4]

As of 2014, "the Coastal Corridor Consortium— an entity made up of board members from First Nations and educational partners to improve aboriginal access to and performance in postsecondary education and training— ... [has] developed a Lil’wat-language program."[5]

Phonology

Consonants

St'at'imcets has 44 consonants:

Analysis of van Eijk (1997)
Bilabial Dental Postalv.
/Palatal
Velar Post-
velar
Glottal
central lateral retracted
lateral
plain retracted plain labial plain labial
Stop plain p t t͡ʃ t͡ʂ k q
glottalized t͡sʼ t͡ɬʼ kʷʼ q͡χʼ q͡χʷʼ ʔ
Fricative ɬ ʃ ʂ x χ χʷ
Nasal plain m n
glottalized ˀm ˀn
Approximant plain z ɬ j ɣ ɣʷ ʕ ʕʷ h
glottalized ˀl ˀḻ ˀj ɣʼ ɣʷʼ ʕʼ ʕʷʼ

Vowels

St'at'imcets has 8 vowels:

Front Central Back
non-
retracted
retracted non-
retracted
retracted non-
retracted
retracted
High e   [e]   [ɛ] o   [o]   [ɔ]
Mid ə   [ə] ə̠   [ʌ]
Low a   [ɛ]   [a]

Phonological processes

Post-velar Harmony (retraction):

ama "good" /ʔáma/ + /-wélʼx/ /ʔamaɣʷélʼx/ [ʔɛmɛɣʷél̰x] amawíl’c  "to get better"
qvḻ "bad" /qʌḻ/ + /-ɣʷélʼx/ /qʌḻɣʷé̱ḻʼx/ [qaɫɣʷɛ́ɫ̰x] qvḻwíiḻʼc  "to get spoiled"

Orthography

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/ /ˀm/
/t/ t /n/ n
/tɬʼ/ t’ /ˀn/
/tʃ/ ts /ɬ/ lh
/tʃˠ/ ts̲ /z/ z
/tsʼ/ ts̓ /zʼ/
/k/ k /ɣ/ r
/kʷ/ kw /ɣʷ/ w
/kʼ/ /ɣʼ/
/kʷʼ/ k̓w /ɣʷʼ/
/q/ q /ʕ/ g
/qʷ/ qw /ʕʷ/ gw
/qχʼ/ /ʕʼ/
/qχʷʼ/ q̓w /ʕʷʼ/ g̓w
/ʔ/ 7 /h/ h
/ʃ/ s /j/ y
/ʃ̠/ /ˀj/
/x/ c /ɬ/ l
/xʷ/ cw /ḻ/
/χ/ x /ˀl/ l’
/χʷ/ xw /ˀḻ/ ḻ’

Grammar

St'at'imcets has two main types of words:

  1. full words
    1. variable words
    2. invariable words
  2. clitics
    1. proclitics
    2. enclitics

The variable word type may be affected by many morphological processes, such as prefixation, suffixation, infixation, reduplication, and glottalization.

St’át’imcets, like the other Salishan languages, exhibits predicate/argument flexibility. All full words are able to occur in the predicate (including words with typically 'nouny' meanings such as nk’yap 'coyote', which in the predicate essentially means 'to be a coyote') and any full word is able to appear in an argument, even those that seem "verby", such as t’ak 'go along', which as a noun, is equivalent the noun phrase 'one that goes along'.[6]

Sentence T’ak tink’yápa.
Morphemes t’ak ti- nk’yap -a
Gloss go.along DET- coyote -DET
Parts Predicate Subject
Translation The/a coyote goes along.
Sentence Nk’yáp tit’aka.
Morphemes nk’yap ti- t’ak -a
Gloss coyote DET- go.along -DET
Parts Predicate Subject
Translation The one going along is a coyote.

Reduplication

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-qáxa7   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).

Mood and modality

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)

Sample text

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....

References

  1. 1 2 Lillooet at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Lillooet". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
  3. BCGNIS listing "Perrets Indian Reserve" - one of seven references in BCGNIS to "Ucwalmícwts"
  4. McIvor, Onowa. Language Nest Programs in BC. Early childhood immersion programs in two First Nations Communities. Practical questions answered and guidelines offered (PDF). Retrieved 2013-06-02.
  5. Wood, Stephanie (2014-01-22). "Despite limited resources, indigenous-language programs persevere in B.C.". Georgia Straight, Vancouver's News & Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved 2014-02-27.
  6. Cable, Seth. Lexical Categories in the Salish and Wakashan Languages (PDF). Retrieved 2013-11-20.

Bibliography

External links

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