Talk:Salishan languages

Untitled
I've converted the SAMPA to IPA, but wasn't sure about the ' symbol. It is supposed to represent palatalisation in SAMPA (or X-SAMPA), so I've shown it as, but I've sometimes seen it used in Sampa as a stress marker (strict SAMPA " ).


 * Well, this is wrong. I will be removing it. There is another oft quoted word that is much more impressive anyway. &mdash; ishwar  (S PEAK )  19:51, 2005 Mar 26 (UTC)

Good directory, could use more text/history maybe
Basically only a directory of links; could use more text/history maybe; list of languages linked here should eventually wind up in this list; I've added Klallam, Lushootseed etc today; others such as Twana need a separate article to be started; in that case Twana redirects to Skokomish (tribe); haven't explored all the links on Salishan languages yet but I suspect it'll be people/language combinations all in need of division, and generally linguistics articles on the sublanguages are lacking, or maybe unnecessary (e.g. with Halkomeylem its three main subdialects do not get separate articles; but with "Kwakiutl" there are separate Kwak'wala, Oowekyala and Heiltsuk articles for languages that probably aren't much different than the Halkomeylem subdialects (Upriver, Downriver and Cowichan/Nanaimo basically). NB existence of Coast Salish article but no Interior Salish. Skookum1 (6 May 06)

Features
What is a "generalized sound system"?--Al Bargit

Proto-Salish and a few reconstructed items?
Hello everyone, I'd like to add a few examples from Kuipers's SED, maybe even some regular correspondences, but I have no information on personal pronominal morphemes. Could possibly someone supply it? Many thanks in advance! --Pe t 'usek [ petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com ] 09:23, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

I've been cumulating massive evidence for some sort of relationship between Salishan and Yahgan (see Wiki article on misspelled Yaghan Language), found in Tierra del Fuego, thousands of miles to the south, including candidate etymological cognate forms from normal Salishan roots, the lexical affixes, derivational and inflectional forms. Still a number of things point to a creole on the Yahgan side, or language mixture. This is unpublished research (except online, by me, which usually doesn't count here, which is why I'm not posting to the main article). I had been looking at Salishan for years as part of a study on sound symbolism, and had built up my own 'dictionary' before Kuipers' was published (fewer languages, but all the forms from the sources, rather than just roots/bases and a few derivations). Then much later I started working on Yahgan for other reasons. Something in the back of my head clicked when I began to notice things like ProtoSalish (7a)mut 'sit' Yahgan mu:tu: 'sit', ProtoSalishan 7ats'q 'go out', Yahgan atsikv(ri) 'go out' PS suffix -(ala)txw 'roof' Yahgan lateka(n) 'roof'. There are just too many similar forms for accidental relationship, or for a deep one. 67.81.236.32 (talk) 00:15, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Syntax section needs editing
Quoting: In Central Salish languages like Tillamook and Shuswap....

Neither of these is 'central' in any sense of the word. Shuswap is a Northern Interior Salish language, and Tillamook, depending on who you read, is an outlier Coast Salish language or an independent branch of the Salishan family. 69.121.117.192 (talk) 20:39, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Transitivity
Hello! I'll be adding a bit about transitivity to the syntax section over the next few weeks for a school project. Let me know if there's anything in particular you'd like me to add, or if I miss anything that ought to be added. SalmonberryPJ (talk) 22:18, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Nounlessness
The section on nounlessness should be modified or removed. No contemporary Salishanists thinks that Salish languages lack nouns. (1) There's a morphological distinction (noun roots can take possessive suffixes that verb roots cannot, etc), (2) there's a syntactic distinction (certain items cannot be relativized), and (3) there's a semantic distinction (noun-like and verb-like roots). Salish languages are likely more similar to Classical Nahuatl: lexical distinctions can be unidirectionally neutralized in the predicate position. Nearly all modern experts agree that nounlessness is a myth.

Instead, it may be worthwhile to include a section titled "nounlessness debate," which discusses the myth and its debunking. However, Beck shouldn't be the central citation -- Kinkade, Jelinek, Kuipers, Thompson, Van Eijk, Davis, and Matthewson were/are all much more involved in the debate and/or modern Salish linguistics. Lukewarm Cabbage (talk) 16:18, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

Noteslist
In my 600 edits, this was my first time making a noteslist and it appears to be broken. Anyone know the proper wikitext to fix it? TheAwesomeAtom (talk) 16:45, 26 October 2023 (UTC)


 * Fixed. For future reference, when making notelists, you can name them with the parameter |name= and then use to copy the same note :) PersusjCP (talk) 19:28, 27 October 2023 (UTC)


 * Thanks! I'm better at text than wikitext. TheAwesomeAtom (talk) 16:04, 31 October 2023 (UTC)