Chilcotin (also Tsilhqot’in, Tzilkotin) is a Northern Athabaskan language spoken in British Columbia and Washington. Motto: Splendor Sine Occasu (Splendour without diminishment) Other Canadian provinces and territories Capital Victoria Largest city Vancouver Lieutenant Governor Iona Campagnolo Premier Gordon Campbell (BC Liberal) Area 944,735 km² (5th) Land 925,186 km² Water 19,549 km² (2. ... Current distribution of Human Language Families Most languages are known to belong to language families (families hereforth). ... Na-Dené (also Na-Dene, Nadene) is a Native American language family which includes the Athabaskan languages, Eyak, and Tlingit. ... Areas in which Athabaskan languages and Eyak and Tlingit are traditionally spoken Athabaskan or Athabascan (also Athapascan or Athapaskan) is the name of a large group of distantly related Native American peoples, also known as the Athabasca Indians or Athapaskes, located in two main Southern and Northern groups in western... ISO 639 is one of several international standards that lists short codes for language names. ... SIL International is a non-profit, Christian, scientific organization with the main purpose to study, develop and document lesser-known languages for the purpose of expanding linguistic knowledge, promoting world literacy and aiding minority language development. ... This list of languages is alphabetical by English name. ... Areas in which Athabaskan languages and Eyak and Tlingit are traditionally spoken Athabaskan or Athabascan (also Athapascan or Athapaskan) is the name of a large group of distantly related Native American peoples, also known as the Athabasca Indians or Athapaskes, located in two main Southern and Northern groups in western... Motto: Splendor Sine Occasu (Splendour without diminishment) Other Canadian provinces and territories Capital Victoria Largest city Vancouver Lieutenant Governor Iona Campagnolo Premier Gordon Campbell (BC Liberal) Area 944,735 km² (5th) Land 925,186 km² Water 19,549 km² (2. ... State nickname: The Evergreen State Other U.S. States Capital Olympia Largest city Seattle Governor Christine Gregoire (D) Official languages None Area 184,824 km² (18th)  - Land 172,587 km²  - Water 12,237 km² (6. ...

The name Chilcotin is derived from the Chilcotin name for themselves: ĉinƚqut’in.

Sounds

Consonants

The 47 consonants of Chilcotin:

• Like many Athabaskan languages, Chilcotin does not have a contrast between fricatives and approximants.
• The alveolar series is pharyngealized.
• Dentals and alveolars:
  • Both Krauss (1975) and Cook (1993) describe the dental and alveolar as being essentially identical in articulation—postdental—with the only differentiating factor being their different behaviours in the vowel flattening processes (described below).
  • Gafos (1999, personal communication with Cook) describes the dental series as apico-laminal denti-alveolar and the alveolar series as lamino-postalveolar.

In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. ... Dentals are consonants articulated with either the lower or the upper teeth, or both. ... Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli (the sockets) of the superior teeth. ... Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the middle or back part of the tongue raised against the hard palate (the middle part of the roof of the mouth). ... Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate (the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum). ... Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. ... Glottal consonants are consonants articulated with the glottis. ... A central or medial consonant is a consonant sound that is produced when air flows across the center of the mouth over the tongue. ... Laterals are L-like consonants pronounced with an occlusion made somewhere along the axis of the tongue, while air from the lungs escapes at one side or both sides of the tongue. ... Labialisation is a secondary articulatory feature of phonemes in a language, most usually used to refer to consonants. ... Labialisation is a secondary articulatory feature of phonemes in a language, most usually used to refer to consonants. ... A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. ... In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies the release of some obstruents. ... In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies the release of some obstruents. ... Ejective consonants are a class of consonants which may contrast with aspirated or unaspirated consonants in a language. ... An affricate is a consonant that begins like a stop (most often an alveovelar, such as [t] or [d]) and that doesnt have a release of its own, but opens directly into a fricative (or, in one language, into a trill). ... In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies the release of some obstruents. ... In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies the release of some obstruents. ... Ejective consonants are a class of consonants which may contrast with aspirated or unaspirated consonants in a language. ... A continuant is a sound produced with an incomplete closure of the vocal tract. ... In phonetics, a voiceless consonant is a consonant that doesnt have voicing. ... A voiced consonant is a sound made as the vocal cords vibrate, as opposed to a voiceless consonant, where the vocal cords are relaxed. ... A nasal consonant is produced when the velum—that fleshy part of the palate near the back—is lowered, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. ... Areas in which Athabaskan languages and Eyak and Tlingit are traditionally spoken Athabaskan or Athabascan (also Athapascan or Athapaskan) is the name of a large group of distantly related Native American peoples, also known as the Athabasca Indians or Athapaskes, located in two main Southern and Northern groups in western... Note: This page contains phonetic information presented in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) using Unicode. ... Approximants are speech sounds that could be regarded as intermediate between vowels and typical consonants. ... Pharyngealisation is a secondary feature of phonemes in a language. ...

Vowels

Chilcotin has 6 vowels: Listen to this article · (info) This audio file was created from the revision dated 2005-07-18, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. ...

• Chilcotin has both tense and lax vowel phonemes. Additionally, tense vowels may become lax due a vowel laxing process (see below).

Every given Chilcotin vowel will have a number of different phonetic realizations due to complex phonological processes (e.g. nasalization, laxing, flattening). For instance, the vowel /i/ can be realized variously as [i, ĩ, ɪ, e, ᵊi, ᵊĩ, ᵊɪ]. A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. ... A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. ... A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. ... An open vowel is a vowel sound of a type used in most spoken languages. ...

Tone

Chilcotin is a tonal language with two tones: Tone refers to the use of pitch in language to distinguish words. ...

• high tone
• low tone

Phonological processes

Chilcotin has a number of interesting phonological processes, namely vowel flattening and consonant harmony. Consonant harmony (i.e. sibilant) 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, St'át'imcets, and Thompson River Salish (and thus was probably borrowed into Chilcotin). This type of harmony is an areal feature common in this region of North America. The Chilcotin processes, however, are much more complicated. Phonology (Greek phone = voice/sound and logos = word/speech), is a subfield of linguistics closely associated with phonetics. ... A language is said to possess consonant harmony when it has a phonological rule requiring some types of consonants in a word to belong to the same class. ... A sibilant is a type of fricative, made by speeding up air through a narrow channel and directing it over the sharp edge of the teeth. ... The Salishan (also Salish) languages are a group of languages of western Canada and the Pacific Northwest of the United States. ... Statimcets (also Lillooet, Lilloet) is an interior Salishan language spoken in southern British Columbia, Canada around the middle Fraser and Lillooet rivers by the Statimc people. ... The Thompson River Salish (also Thompson, Thompson Salish, Thompson River) are an Interior Salishan people in southern British Columbia and northern Washington. ...

Vowel nasalization and laxing

Vowel nasalization is a phonological process where the phoneme /n/ is realized as nasalization on the preceding vowel. This process occurs when the vowel + /n/ sequence is followed by a (tautosyllabic) continuant consonant (e.ɡ. /ɬ, sˤ, zˤ, ç, j, χ/). In phonetics, nasalization is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that air escapes partially or wholly through the nose during the production of the sound. ... A continuant is a sound produced with an incomplete closure of the vocal tract. ...

Vowel laxing is a process where tense vowels (i.e. /i, u, æ/) become lax when followed by a syllable-final /h/ (i.e. the tense and lax distinction is neutralized).

Vowel flattening

Chilcotin has a type of Retraced Tongue Root harmony (or post-velar harmony) called Vowel Flattening. Generally, "flat" consonants lower vowels in both directions, i.e. the assimilation is both progressive and regressive. Listen to this article · (info) This audio file was created from the revision dated 2005-07-18, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. ... In linguistics, a language is said to possess vowel harmony (also metaphony) when it has a phonological rule that requires all vowels in a word to belong to a single class. ... Assimilation is a regular sound change process by which a phoneme changes to match an adjacent phoneme in a word. ...

Chilcotin consonants can be grouped into three categories: Neutral, Sharp, and Flat.

• Flat consonants trigger vowel flattening.
• Sharp consonants block vowel flattening.
• Neutral consonants do not affect vowel flattening in any way.

The flat consonants can be further divided into two types:

1. a sˤ-series (i.e. /ʦˤ/, /ʦʰˤ/, /ʦ’ˤ/, etc.), and
2. a q-series (i.e. /q/, /qʷ/, /qʰ/, etc.).

The sˤ-series is stronger than the q-series in that the sˤ-series affects vowels for a greater distance across the word.

The table below shows both unaffected vowels and flattened vowels.

The vowel /i/ surfaces as [ᵊi] if preceded by a flat consonant and as [e] if followed by a flat consonant:

Below the progressive and regressive flattening processes are described in separate sections.

Progressive flattening

In the progressive (left-to-right) flattening, the q-series consonants affect only the immediately following vowel:

Like the q-series, the stronger sˤ-series consonants affects the immediately following vowel. However, this series additionally affects the vowel in the following syllable, if the syllable containinɡ the sˤ-series consonant also contains a lax vowel. (Otherwise, the vowel of the following syllable is not affected.)

As can be seen above, the neutral consonants are transparent in the flattening process. In the first word /sˤɛɬ.tʰin/ 'he's comatose', /sˤ/ flattens the /ɛ/ of the first syllable to [ə] and the /i/ of the second syllable to [ᵊi]. In the word /sˤi.tʰin/ 'I'm sleeping', /sˤ/ flattens /i/ to [ᵊi]. But since the vowel of the first syllable is /i/ which is a tense vowel, the /sˤ/ cannot flatten the /i/ of the second syllable.

The sharp consonants, however, block the progressive flattening caused by the sˤ-series:

Regressive flattening

The regressive (right-to-left) harmony is stronger than the progressive harmony. In regressive harmony, the q-series flattens the preceding vowel.

However, the stronger sˤ-series flattens all preceding vowels in a word:

Both progressive and regressive flattening processes occur in Chilcotin words:

Consonant harmony

Links

• The Chilcotin Language (YDLI)
• Bibliography of Materials on the Chilcotin Language (YDLI)

Bibliography

• Andrews, Christina. (1988). Lexical phonology of Chilcotin. (Unpublished M.A. thesis, University of British Columbia).
• Campbell, Lyle. (1997). American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509427-1.
• Clements, G. N. (1991). A note on Chilcotin flattening. (Unpublished manuscript).
• Cook, Eung-Do. (1976). A phonological study of Chilcotin and Carrier. A report to the National Museums of Canada. (Unpublished manuscript).
• Cook, Eung-Do. (1983). Chilcotin flattening. Canadian Journal of Linguistics, 28 (2), 123-132.
• Cook, Eung-Do. (1986). Ambisyllabicity and nasalization in Chilcotin. In Working papers for the 21st International Conference on Salish and Neighboring Languages (pp. 1-6). Seattle: University of Washington.
• Cook, Eung-Do. (1989). Articulatory and acoustic correlates of pharyngealization: Evidence from Athapaskan. In D. Gerdts & K. Michelson (Eds.), Theorectical perspectives on native American languages (pp. 133-145). Albany: State University of New York Press.
• 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).
• Hansson, Gunnar O. (2000). Chilcotin vowel flattening and sibilant harmony: Diachronic cues to a synchronic puzzle. (Paper presented at the Athabaskan Language Conference, Moricetown, British Columbia, June 10).
• 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.