Sahaptin language
| Sahaptin | |
|---|---|
| Native to | United States |
| Region | Washington, Oregon, and Idaho |
| Ethnicity | 10,000 Sahaptins (1977) |
|
Native speakers
|
100–125 (2007) |
|
Plateau Penutian
|
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | Variously: uma – Umatilla waa – Walla Walla yak – Yakima tqn – Tenino |
|
Linguist list
|
qot Sahaptin |
| Glottolog | saha1240 |
Sahaptin (also Shahaptin), Sħáptənəxw, is a Plateau Penutian language of the Sahaptian branch spoken in a section of the northwestern plateau along the Columbia River and its tributaries in southern Washington, northern Oregon, and southwestern Idaho, in the United States. Many of the tribes that surrounded the land were skilled with horses and trading with one another.
The Yakama tribal cultural resources program has been promoting the use of the traditional name of the language, Ichishkíin Sɨ́nwit, instead of Sahaptin, which means "stranger in the land."
Sahaptin has four dialects in a dialect cluster :
There are published grammars, a recent dictionary, and a corpus of published texts. Sahaptin has a split ergative syntax, with direct-inverse voicing and several applicative constructions.
The ergative case inflects third-person nominals only when the direct object is first- or second-person (the examples below are from the Umatilla dialect):
The direct-inverse contrast can be elicited with examples such as the following. In the inverse, the transitive direct object is coreferential with the subject in the preceding clause.
Direct:
Inverse:
The inverse (marked by the verbal prefix pá-) retains its transitive status, and a patient nominal is case marked accusative.
A semantic inverse is also marked by the same verbal prefix pá-.
Direct:
Inverse:
In Speech Act Participant (SAP) and third-person transitive involvement, direction marking is as follows:
Direct:
Inverse:
The charts of consonants and vowels below are used in the Yakima Sahaptin (Ichishkiin) language:
Vowels can also be accented (e.g. /á/).
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Wikipedia