Nuxalk language

Template:Cleanup langTemplate:Template otherTemplate:Main other Template:Infobox ethnonym Nuxalk (Template:IPAc-en, Template:Respell), also known as Bella Coola Template:IPAc-en, is a Salishan language spoken by the Nuxalk people. Today, it is an endangered language in the vicinity of the Canadian town of Bella Coola, British Columbia. While the language is still sometimes called Bella Coola by linguists, the native name Nuxalk is preferred by some, notably by the Nuxalk Nation's government.

Though the number of truly fluent speakers has not increased, the language is now taught in both the provincial school system and the Nuxalk Nation's own school, , which means "a place of learning". Nuxalk language classes, if taken to at least the Grade 11 level, are considered adequate second-language qualifications for entry to the major B.C. universities. CKNN-FM Nuxalk Radio is also working to promote the language.

Name

The name "Nuxalk" for the language comes from the native (or ), referring to the "Bella Coola Valley". "Bella Coola" is a rendering of the Heiltsuk , meaning "stranger".Template:Sfn

Geographical distribution

Nowadays, Nuxalk is spoken only in Bella Coola, British Columbia, surrounded by Wakashan- and Athabascan-speaking tribes. It was once spoken in over 100 settlements, with varying dialects, but in the present day most of these settlements have been abandoned and dialectal differences have largely disappeared.Template:Sfn

Classification

Nuxalk forms its own subgroup of the Salish language family. Its lexicon is equidistant from Coast and Interior Salish, but it shares phonological and morphological features with Coast Salish (e.g., the absence of pharyngeals and the presence of marked gender). Nuxalk also borrows many words from contiguous North Wakashan languages (especially Heiltsuk), as well as some from neighbouring Athabaskan languages and Tsimshian.Template:Sfn

Phonology

Consonants

Nuxalk has 29 consonants depicted below in IPA and the Americanist orthography of Davis & Saunders when it differs from the IPA.

		Labial	Alveolar			Velar		Uvular		Glottal
			plain	sibilant	lateral	palatal	labialized	plain	labialized
Stop	aspirated	Template:IPA link Template:Angle	Template:IPA link Template:Angle	Template:IPA link Template:Angle	Template:IPA link Template:Angle	Template:IPA link Template:Angle	Template:IPA link Template:Angle	Template:IPA link Template:Angle	Template:IPA link Template:Angle
	ejective	Template:IPA link Template:Angle	Template:IPA link Template:Angle	Template:IPA link Template:Angle	Template:IPA link Template:Angle	Template:IPA link Template:Angle	Template:IPA link Template:Angle	Template:IPA link Template:Angle	Template:IPA link Template:Angle	Template:IPA link
Fricative				Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link Template:Angle	Template:IPA link Template:Angle	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link Template:Angle	Template:IPA link Template:Angle	(Template:IPA link)
Sonorant		Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link Template:Angle	Template:IPA link

What are transcribed in the orthography as 'plain' velar consonants are actually palatals, and the sibilants palatalize to before .

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	Template:IPA link
Mid			Template:IPA link
Open		Template:IPA link

Allophony

may be pronounced:

• before postvelars
• between postvelars
• , before a sonorant followed by a consonant or word boundary
• adjacent to palatovelars
• elsewhere

may be pronounced:

• (?) surrounded by postvelars
• before rounded velars followed by a consonant or word boundary
• (?) before a sonorant followed by a consonant or word boundary
• elsewhere

may be pronounced:

• surrounded by postvelars
• before a sonorant followed by a consonant or word boundary
• before rounded velars followed by a consonant or word boundary
• elsewhereTemplate:Sfn

Orthography

In addition to the Americanist orthography of Davis & Saunders used in this article for clarity, Nuxalk also has a non-diacritical Bouchard-type practical orthography that originated in Hank Nater's The Bella Coola Language (1984), and was used in his 1990 Nuxalk-English Dictionary. It continues to be used today at for Nuxalk language learning, as well as in Nuxalk documents and names. The orthographic variants are summarized below.

Phoneme	Americanist	Practical
	a	A
	x	C
	xʷ	CW
	h	H
	i	I
	k	K
	k̓	K'
	kʷ	KW
	k̓ʷ	KW'
	l	L
	ł	LH
	m	M
	n	N
	p	P
	p̓	P'
	q	Q
	q̓	Q'
	qʷ	QW
	q̓ʷ	QW'
	s	S
	t	T
	t̓	T'
	ƛ	TL
	ƛ̓	TL'
	c	TS
	c̓	TS'
	u	U
	w	W
	x̣	X
	x̣ʷ	XW
	y	Y
	ʔ	7

Notes

• The Nuxalk alphabet lacks ten letters: B, D, E, F, G, J, O, R, V, and Z. However, these letters are often used for foreign loanwords or may be kept for foreign names.
  • These letters also are often replaced by other letters (e.g. ⟨p⟩ for ⟨b⟩, ⟨f⟩, and ⟨v⟩, ⟨t⟩ for ⟨d⟩, ⟨i⟩ for ⟨e⟩, ⟨k⟩ for ⟨g⟩, ⟨c⟩ for ⟨j⟩, ⟨u⟩ for ⟨o⟩, ⟨l⟩ for ⟨r⟩, and ⟨s⟩ for ⟨z⟩).

Syllables

The notion of syllable is challenged by the Nuxalk language, in that the language includes long strings of consonants without any intervening vowel or other sonorant. Salishan languages, and especially Nuxalk, are famous for this. For instance, the following word contains only obstruents:

Other examples are:

• 'shape, mold'
• 'bend'
• 'bunchberry'
• 'he arrived'
• 'little boy'
• 'saliva'
• 'northeast wind'
• 'cut with scissors'
• 'animal fat'
• 'that's my animal fat over there'
• 'seal fat'
• 'strong'
• 'go to shore'
• 'crooked'
• 'you had seen that I had gone through a passage'Template:Sfn

There has been some dispute as to how to count the syllables in such words, what, if anything, constitutes the nuclei of those syllables, and if the concept of 'syllable' is even applicable to Nuxalk. However, when recordings are available, the syllable structure can be clearly audible, and speakers have clear conceptions as to how many syllables a word contains. In general, a syllable may be , (where F is a fricative), , or . When C is a stop, CF syllables are always composed of a plain voiceless stop () plus a fricative (). For example, 'thick' is two syllables, , with a syllabic fricative, while in 'stone', 'salt', 'crooked', 'to see' and 'wet' each consonant is a separate syllable. Stop-fricative sequences can also be disyllabic, however, as in 'strong' (two syllables, at least in the cited recording) and 'rough' (one syllable or two). Syllabification of stop-fricative sequences may therefore be lexicalized or a prosodic tendency. Fricative-fricative sequences also have a tendency toward syllabicity, e.g. with 'bad' being one syllable or two, and 'seal fat' being two syllables () or three. Speech rate plays a role, with e.g. 'you spat on me' consisting of all syllabic consonants in citation form () but condensed to stop-fricative syllables () at fast conversational speed.Template:Sfn This syllabic structure may be compared with that of Miyako.

The linguist Hank Nater has postulated the existence of a phonemic contrast between syllabic and non-syllabic sonorants: , spelled ṃ, ṇ, ḷ. (The vowel phonemes would then be the syllabic counterparts of .)Template:Sfn Words claimed to have unpredictable syllables include 'mute', '(the fact) that they are children'.Template:Sfn

Grammar

Events

The first element in a sentence expresses the event of the proposition. It inflects for the person and number of one (in the intransitive paradigm) or two (in the transitive paradigm) participants.

Single-participant event inflectionsTemplate:Sfn

Intr. inflection	Singular	Plural
1st Person
2nd Person
3rd Person	-Ø or

E.g. 'the dog is running'.

Whether the parenthesized segments are included in the suffix depends on whether the stem ends in an underlying resonant (vowel, liquid, nasal) and whether it is non-syllabic. So 'drink' becomes 'we drink', 'you (pl.) drink', 'they drink', but 'sing' becomes 'we're singing', 'you (pl.) are singing', 'they're singing'.

However, the choice of the 3ps marker -Ø or - is conditioned by semantics rather than phonetics. For example, the sentences and could both be glossed 'it's the man', but the first is appropriate if the man is the one who is normally chosen, while the second is making an assertion that it is the man (as opposed to someone else, as might otherwise be thought) who is chosen.Template:Elucidate

The following are the possible person markers for transitive verbs, with empty cells indications non-occurring combinations and '--' identifying semantic combinations which require the reflexive suffix followed by the appropriate intransitive suffix:

Two-participant event inflectionsTemplate:Sfn

Transitive inflection			Experiencer:
			singular			plural
			1	2	3	1	2	3
rowspan="6" Template:Vert header	rowspan="3" Template:Vert header	1	–
2		–
3
rowspan="3" Template:Vert header	1				–
2					–
3

E.g. 'the man struck the tree'.

Whether a word can serve as an event is not determined lexically, e.g. 'the thief is a boy', 'the one who is ill is a thief'.

There is a further causative paradigm whose suffixes may be used instead:

Causative paradigmTemplate:Sfn

Transitive inflection			Experiencer:
			singular			plural
			1	2	3	1	2	3
rowspan="6" Template:Vert header	rowspan="3" Template:Vert header	1	–
2		–
3
rowspan="3" Template:Vert header	1				–
2					–
3

This has a passive counterpart:

Passive Causative paradigmTemplate:Sfn

Passive Causative	Singular	Plural
1st Person
2nd Person
3rd Person

This may also have a benefactive gloss when used with events involving less activity of their participant (e.g. 'the man made/let the boy sing'/'the man sang for the boy'), while in events with more active participants only the causative gloss is possible. In the later group even more active verbs have a preference for the affix (implying passive experience) before the causative suffix.

The executor in a transitive sentence always precedes the experiencer. However, when an event is proceeded by a lone participant, the semantic content of the event determines whether the participant is an executor or an experiencer. This can only be determined syntactically if the participant is marked by the preposition , which marks the experience.

Some events are inherently transitive or intransitive, but some may accept multiple valencies (e.g. 'to be needy'/'to want [something]').

Prepositions may mark experiencers, and must mark implements. Any participants which are not marked by prepositions are focussed. There are three voices, which allow either the executor, the experiencer, or both to have focus:

• Active voice – neither is marked with prepositions.
• Passive voice – the event may have different suffixes, and the executor may be omitted or marked with a preposition
• Antipassive voice – the event is marked with the affix before personal markers, and the experiencer is marked with a preposition

The affix ( after the antipassive marker ) allows an implement to have its preposition removed and to be focused. For example:

• 'the father sang the song to his son'
• 'the father sang the song to his son'

Prepositions

There are four prepositions which have broad usage in Nuxalk:

PrepositionsTemplate:Sfn

Prepositions	Proximal	Distal
Stative
Active

Deixis

Nuxalk has a set of deictic prefixes and suffixes which serve to identify items as instantiations of domains rather than domains themselves and to locate them in deictic space. Thus the sentences and , both 'the one that's running is a dog', are slightly different – similar to the difference between the English sentences 'the visitor is Canadian' and 'the visitor is a Canadian' respectively.Template:Sfn

The deixis system has a proximal/medial/distal and a non-demonstrative/demonstrative distinction. Demonstratives may be used when finger pointing would be appropriate (or in distal space when something previously mentioned is being referred to).

Proximal demonstrative space roughly corresponds to the area of conversation, and proximal non-demonstrative may be viewed as the area in which one could attract another's attention without raising one's voice. Visible space beyond this is middle demonstrative, space outside of this but within the invisible neighborhood is medial non-demonstrative. Everything else is distal, and non-demonstrative if not mentioned earlier.

The deictic prefixes and suffixes are as follows:

Deictic suffixesTemplate:Sfn

Deictic Suffixes	Proximal		Medial		Distal
	Non-Demon- strative	Demon- strative	Non-Demon- strative	Demon- strative	Non-Demon- strative	Demon- strative
Masculine
Feminine
Plural

Female affixes are used only when the particular is singular and identified as female; if not, even if the particular is inanimate, masculine or plural is used.

The deictic prefixes only have a proximal vs. non-proximal distinction, and no demonstrative distinction:

Deictic prefixesTemplate:Sfn

Deictic Prefixes	Proximal	Medial and Distal
Masculine
Feminine		()
Plural		()

is used in earlier varieties and some types of narratives, except for middle non-demonstrative, and the variant may be used "in the same collection of deictic space".

While events are not explicitly marked for tense per se, deixis plays a strong role in determining when the proposition is being asserted to occur. So in a sentence like 'the boy felt that rope', the sentence is perceived as having a near-past (same day) interpretation, as the boy cannot be touching the rope in middle space from proximal space. However this does not hold for some events, like 'to see'.Template:Sfn

A distal suffix on any participant lends the event a distant past interpretation (before the past day), a medial suffix and no distal suffix lends a near past time, and if the participants are marked as proximal the time is present.

Not every distal participant occurs in past-tense sentences, and vice versa—rather, the deictic suffixes must either represent positions in space, time, or both.

Pronouns

Personal pronouns are reportedly nonexistent but the idea is expressed via verbs that translate as "to be me", etc.

PronounsTemplate:Sfn	Singular	Plural
1st person
2nd person
3rd person	,

Particles

ParticlesTemplate:Sfn

Particle	Label	Gloss
	Quotative	'he said'
	Dubitative	'maybe'
	Attemptive	'try'
	Inferential Dubitative	'I figure'
	Optative	'I wish/hope'
	Expectable	'again'
	Confirmative	'really'
	Surprisative	'so'
	Expective	'expected'
	Interrogative	[yes/no questions]
	Perfective	'now'
	Imperfective	'now'
	Usitative	'usually'
	Absolutive	'always'
	Individuative	'the one'
	Persistive	'still, yet'
	Non-contrastive conjunction	'and'
	Contrastive conjunction	'but'

See also

• Coast Salish languages
• Interior Salish

Bibliography

• Montler, Timothy. (2004–2005). (Handouts on Salishan Language Family).

External links

• Nuxalk Nation Website
• First Nations Languages of British Columbia Nuxalk page
• Nuxalk bibliography
• Template:Languagegeek
• UCLA Archive for Bella Coola
• Bella Coola (Intercontinental Dictionary Series)