Chinookan languages
| Chinook | |
|---|---|
| Tsinúk | |
| Ethnicity: | Chinook |
| Geographic distribution: |
Columbia River Valley |
| Linguistic classification: |
Penutian ?
|
| Subdivisions: |
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| Glottolog: | chin1490 |
Pre-contact distribution of Chinookan languages
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Chinookan is a small family of languages spoken in Oregon and Washington along the Columbia River by Chinook peoples.
Chinookan consists 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.
Consonants
The glides [j], [w] are analyzed as allophones of the high vowels.
Vowels
As in many North American Languages, verbs constitute complete clauses in themselves. Nominal 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 contain an initial tense or aspect prefix, ergative pronominal prefix, obligatory assaultive prefixed, dative prefix, reflexive/reciprocal/middle, adverbial, directional, 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 agent of a transitive verb, the absolutive to patient of a transitive or single argument of an intransitive, the dative to 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.
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