Extinct language family
The
Chinookan languages
are a small family of extinct languages spoken in
Oregon
and
Washington
along the
Columbia River
by
Chinook peoples
. Although the last known native speaker of any Chinookan language died in 2012, the 2009-2013 American Community Survey found 270 self-identified speakers of
Upper Chinook
.
[2]
Family division
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]
Chinookan consisted of three languages with multiple
varieties
. There is some dispute over classification, and there are two
ISO 639-3
codes assigned:
chh
(Chinook, Lower Chinook) and
wac
(Wasco-Wishram, Upper Chinook). For example, Ethnologue 15e classifies Kiksht as Lower Chinook, while others consider it instead Upper Chinook (
discussion
), and others a separate language.
Phonology
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]
The vowels in the Chinookan languages are
/a
i
?
?
u/
. Stress is marked as
/a/
.
Morphology
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]
As in many North American languages,
verbs
constitute complete
clauses
in themselves.
Nominals
may accompany the verbs, but they have
adjunct
status, functioning as appositives to the pronominal affixes. Word order functions purely pragmatically; constituents appear in decreasing order of newsworthiness. Clauses are combined by juxtaposition or particles, rather than subordinating
inflection
.
Verbs
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]
Verbs may contain an initial
tense or aspect
prefix,
ergative
pronominal prefix, obligatory
absolutive
prefix,
dative
prefix,
reflexive
/
reciprocal
/middle prefix,
adverbial
prefix, directional prefix, and verb stem. The number of tense/aspect prefix distinctions varies among the languages. Kiksht shows six way tense distinctions: mythic
past
, remote past, recent past, immediate past,
present
, and
future
.
The pronominal prefixes are obligatory, whether free nominals occur in the clause or not. Three can be seen in the Kathlamet verb. The ergative refers to the
agent
of a
transitive verb
, the absolutive to the
patient
of a transitive or the single argument of an
intransitive
, and the dative to the indirect
object
. Reflexive prefixes can serve as reciprocals and as
medio-passives
. When the reflexive follows can ergative?absolutive pronoun sequence, it indicates that one indirectly affected is the same as the ergative. When it follows an absolutive?dative pronoun sequence, it indicates that one indirectly affected is associated with the absolutive, perhaps as the whole in a part-whole relationship, or the owner.
Absolutive pronominal prefixes
|
Sing.
|
Dual
|
Plural
|
1st
|
excl.
|
n-
|
nt'-
|
nc-
|
incl.
|
lx-
|
2nd
|
m-
|
mt-
|
mc-
|
3rd
|
masc.
|
i-
|
c-
|
l-
|
fem.
|
a-
|
neut.
|
l-
|
Aside from certain secondary irregularities in the third person dual and third person plural, the pronominal subject of the transitive verb differs from the pronominal subject of the intransitive verb only in the case of the third person singular masculine and feminine. The difference between the two sets of forms is for the most part indicated by position and, in part, by the use of a "post-pronominal" particle -g- which indicates that the preceding pronominal element is used as the subject of a transitive verb.
The phonetic parallelism would then be perfect among the absolutive, ergative, and possessive (see below). If we compare the theoretical forms *ag- "she" and *itc- "he" with the remaining subjective forms of the transitive verb, we obtain at once a perfectly regular and intelligible set of forms. Including the "post-pronominal" -g-, the system is as follows:
Ergative pronominal prefixes
|
Sing.
|
Dual
|
Plural
|
1st
|
excl.
|
n-
|
nt-g-
|
nc-g-
|
incl.
|
lx-g-
|
lx-g-
|
2nd
|
m-
|
mt-g-
|
mc-g-
|
3rd
|
masc.
|
*i-tc-
|
c-g-
|
l-g-
|
fem.
|
*a-g-
|
neut.
|
l-g-
|
Verbs stems may be simplex or compound, the second member indicating direction, including motion out of, from water to shore or inland, toward water, into, down or up.
Suffixes include repetitive,
causative
, involuntary
passive
, completive,
stative
, purposive, future,
usitative
, successful completive and so on.
Nouns
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Nouns contain an initial prefix, pronominal prefix, possessive prefix, inner
nominalizer
, root, a qualifying suffix,
plural
, and final suffix. Initial prefixes serve primarily as nominalizers. Masculine prefixes appear with nouns designating male persons, feminine with those denoting female persons. The neuter may indicate
indefiniteness
. All are used for nouns referring to objects as well. Masculine prefixes appear with the large animals; feminine for small ones. Masculine prefixes also appear with nouns expressing qualities.
The
gender
-number prefixes are followed by possessive pronominal prefixes. These distinguish possessors by
person
,
clusivity
, and number.
The possessive prefix for the third person singular is -ga- when the noun itself is feminine, neuter, dual, or plural. It is -tca- when the noun itself is masculine. It is preceded by the gender-number prefixes:
|
Lower Chinook
|
Wishram
|
Singular
|
fem.
|
??
|
(w)?-
|
neut.
|
L-
|
ii-
|
Dual
|
c-, s-
|
(ic-, is-)
|
The possessive prefix for the first person singular ("my") is ?gE (Wishram -g-, -k-; -x?- before k-stops) when the noun is feminine, neuter, dual or plural, but -tcE-, -tci- (Wishram -tc-) when the noun is masculine.
The possessive prefixes are followed by noun stem, perhaps including another nominalizer. Nominal suffixes indicate emphasis or contrast, specificity, succession in time, definiteness, plurality, and time, location, or similarity.
Sociolinguistics
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]
There were Lower and Upper Chinookan groups, but only a single variety of the latter now survives: Wasco-Wishram (Wasco and Wishram were originally two separate, similar varieties). In 1990, there were 69 speakers (7 monolinguals) of Wasco-Wishram; in 2001, 5 speakers of Wasco remained; the last fully fluent speaker, Gladys Thompson, died in 2012.
Chinook-speaking groups were once powerful in trade, before and during early European contact (
Lewis & Clark
), hence developed the Chinook Jargon – a pre-European contact language, with lexicon from at least Chinook, Chehalis, and Nootka or Nuu-chah-nulth.
Chinook people were quickly diminished by European diseases: Numbered around 800 persons in 1800; they mixed with Chehalis (in fact, the very word
Chinook
is a Chehalis word for those who lived on the south of the river). Most of the language family became extinct as separate groups by 1900, except a few hundreds who mixed with other groups. Around 120 people in 1945, though some 609 were reported in the 1970s, having by then mixed extensively with other groups. Language is now extinct.
Chinook Jargon
also flourished from 1790s–1830s, then experienced a flood of English and French new vocabulary. It was used by up to 100,000 speakers of 100 mother tongues in the 19th century. Then declined, was recorded by linguists in the 1930s, and died out by the early 1900s. The Chinook people were finally recognized by the US Govt. in Jan. 2001, but in the 90-day grace period the
Quinault Tribe
filed an appeal stating that the Chinook Nation made mistakes when applying for federal recognition.
See also
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]
References
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]
Bibliography
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]
Further reading
[
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]
- As Our Elders Teach Us to Speak it
. Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon. 2012.
ISBN
978-0-295-99186-3
.
- Bartley, Nancy (19 June 2004).
"Once-dying Chinook Language Finds Future in Voices of Children"
.
Canku Ota
.
- Suttles, Wayne (1990).
Handbook of North American Indians: Northwest Coast
. Smithsonian Institution Washington. p. 533
- George Gibbs,
Alphabetical Vocabulary of the Chinook Language,
New York : Cramoisy Press, 1863.
- Sapir, E. (1926). "A Chinookan Phonetic Law".
International Journal of American Linguistics
.
4
(1): 105?110.
doi
:
10.1086/463761
.
JSTOR
1263359
.
S2CID
144740621
.
- Mithun, Marianne (2001).
The Languages of Native North America
. Cambridge University Press.
ISBN
978-0-521-29875-9
.
- Hymes, Dell (1 January 1987). "A pattern of verbal irony in Chinookan".
International Journal of the Sociology of Language
.
1987
(65): 97?110.
doi
:
10.1515/ijsl-1987-6509
.
S2CID
151596199
.
- Bergmann, Mathias D. (2008). "
'We Should Lose Much by Their Absence': The Centrality of Chinookans and Kalapuyans to Life in Frontier Oregon".
Oregon Historical Quarterly
.
109
(1): 34?59.
doi
:
10.1353/ohq.2008.0080
.
JSTOR
20615823
.
S2CID
159916157
.
- Gibbs, George (1863).
Alphabetical Vocabulary of the Chinook Language
. New York: Cramoisy Press. pp. 11?26.
External links
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Language families
and isolates
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