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Chilcotin

The Chilcotin (also Tsilhqot’in) are a Northern Athabaskan people that live in British Columbia and Washington.

Contents

1 Language

1.1 Sounds

1.1.1 Consonants
1.1.2 Vowels
1.1.3 Phonological processes

1.1.3.1 Vowel nasalization and laxing

2 Bibliography

Language

Sounds

Consonants

The 47 consonants of Chilcotin:

		Bilabial	Dental		Alveolar	Alveopalatal	Velar		Uvular		Glottal
		Bilabial	central	lateral	Alveolar	Alveopalatal	plain	labial	plain	labial	Glottal
Stop	unaspirated		t̪				k	kʷ	q	qʷ
	aspirated	pʰ	t̪ʰ				kʰ	kʷʰ	qʰ	qʷʰ
	ejective		t̪’				k’	k’ʷ	q’	q’ʷ	ʔ
Affricate	unaspirated		ʦ̪	tɬ	ʦ̱ˁ	ʨ
	aspirated		ʦ̪ʰ	tɬʰ	ʦ̱ʰˁ	ʨʰ
	ejective		ʦ̪’	tɬ’	ʦ̱’ˁ	ʨ’
Nasal		m	n̪
Fricative	voiceless		s̪	ɬ	s̱ˁ	ç		xʷ	χ	χʷ	h
Fricative	voiced		z̪		ẕˁ				ʁ	ʁʷ
Approximant	central					j		w
Approximant	lateral			l

Regarding the dental, alveolar, and alveopalatal series, the consonant chart above is a compromise between two differing descriptions in Cook (1993) and Cook (personal communication, cited in Gafos 1999).

Vowels

Chilcotin has 6 vowels:

		Front	Central	Back
High	tense/long	i		u
High	lax/short	ɪ		ʊ

Low	lax/short	ɛ
Low	tense/long	æ

Phonological processes

Chilcotin has a number of interesting phonological processes, namely vowel flattening and consonant harmony. Consonant 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 , Lillooet, and Thompson. This type of harmony is an areal feature common in this region of North America.

Vowel nasalization and laxing

This section is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by Bibliography of Materials on the Chilcotin Language (YDLI)

Bibliography

Cook, Eung-Do. (1976). A phonological study of Chilcotin and Carrier. A report ot the National Museums of Canada. (Unpublished manuscript).
Cook, Eung-Do. (1983). Chilcotin flattening. Canadian Journal of Linguistics, 28 (2), 123-132.
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 0-8992-5282-6.
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, John Hopkins University).
Krauss, Michael E. (1975). Chilcotin phonology, a descriptive and historical report, with recommendations for a Chilcotin orthography. Alaskan Native Language Center. (Unpublished manuscript).
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.

Categories: Section stubs | Native American languages of the Subarctic | Languages of Canada | Languages of the United States | Northern Athabaskan languages | Tonal languages

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10-26-2009 08:16:03
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