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Nuxalk , also known as Bella Coola , is a Salishan language spoken by the
Nuxalk The Nuxalk people ( Nuxalk: ''Nuxalkmc''; pronounced )'','' also referred to as the Bella Coola, Bellacoola or Bilchula, are an Indigenous First Nation of the Pacific Northwest Coast, centred in the area in and around Bella Coola, British Co ...
people. Today, it is an endangered language with only 3 fluent speakers in the vicinity of the Canadian town of Bella Coola,
British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, for ...
. 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, Acwsalcta, 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 nuxalk (or ''nuχalk)'', referring to the " Bella Coola Valley". "Bella Coola" is a rendering of the
Heiltsuk The Heiltsuk or Haíɫzaqv , sometimes historically referred to as ''Bella Bella'', are an Indigenous people of the Central Coast region in British Columbia, centred on the island community of Bella Bella. The government of the Heiltsuk people ...
''bḷ́xʷlá'', meaning "stranger".Nater 1984, p. xvii


Geographical distribution

Nowadays, Nuxalk is spoken only in Bella Coola, British Columbia, surrounded by
Wakashan Wakashan is a family of languages spoken in British Columbia around and on Vancouver Island, and in the northwestern corner of the Olympic Peninsula of Washington state, on the south side of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. As is typical of the Nor ...
- and
Athabascan Athabaskan (also spelled ''Athabascan'', ''Athapaskan'' or ''Athapascan'', and also known as Dene) is a large family of indigenous languages of North America, located in western North America in three areal language groups: Northern, Pacific ...
-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.


Classification

Nuxalk forms its own subgroup of the Salish language family. Its lexicon is equidistant from
Coast The coast, also known as the coastline or seashore, is defined as the area where land meets the ocean, or as a line that forms the boundary between the land and the coastline. The Earth has around of coastline. Coasts are important zones in n ...
and
Interior Salish The Interior Salish languages are one of the two main branches of the Salishan language family, the other being Coast Salish. It can be further divided into Northern and Southern subbranches. The first Salishan people encountered by American exp ...
, but it shares phonological and morphological features with Coast Salish (for example, the absence of
pharyngeals A pharyngeal consonant is a consonant that is articulated primarily in the pharynx. Some phoneticians distinguish upper pharyngeal consonants, or "high" pharyngeals, pronounced by retracting the root of the tongue in the mid to upper pharynx, ...
and the presence of marked gender). Nuxalk also borrows many words from contiguous North Wakashan languages (especially
Heiltsuk The Heiltsuk or Haíɫzaqv , sometimes historically referred to as ''Bella Bella'', are an Indigenous people of the Central Coast region in British Columbia, centred on the island community of Bella Bella. The government of the Heiltsuk people ...
), as well as some from neighbouring
Athabascan languages Athabaskan (also spelled ''Athabascan'', ''Athapaskan'' or ''Athapascan'', and also known as Dene) is a large family of indigenous languages of North America, located in western North America in three areal language groups: Northern, Pacific ...
and
Tsimshian The Tsimshian (; tsi, Ts’msyan or Tsm'syen) are an Indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast. Their communities are mostly in coastal British Columbia in Terrace and Prince Rupert, and Metlakatla, Alaska on Annette Island, the only r ...
.


Phonology


Consonants

Nuxalk has 29 consonants depicted below in IPA and the Americanist orthography of Davis & Saunders when it differs from the IPA. What are transcribed in the orthography as 'plain' velar consonants are actually palatals, and the sibilants ' palatalize to ' before '.


Vowels


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 * elsewhere


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 Acwsalcta for Nuxalk language learning, as well as in Nuxalk documents and names. The orthographic variants are summarized below.


Syllables

The notion of
syllable A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological ...
is challenged by Nuxalk in that it allows long strings of
consonants In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wit ...
without any intervening vowel or other
sonorant In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant or resonant is a speech sound that is produced with continuous, non-turbulent airflow in the vocal tract; these are the manners of articulation that are most often voiced in the world's languages. Vowels ar ...
.
Salishan languages The Salishan (also Salish) languages are a family of languages of the Pacific Northwest in North America (the Canadian province of British Columbia and the American states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana). They are characterised by a ...
, and especially Nuxalk, are famous for this. For instance, the following word contains only
obstruent An obstruent () is a speech sound such as , , or that is formed by ''obstructing'' airflow. Obstruents contrast with sonorants, which have no such obstruction and so resonate. All obstruents are consonants, but sonorants include vowels as well as ...
s: : clhp'xwlhtlhplhhskwts' : : :/xɬ-pʼχʷɬt-ɬp-ɬɬ-s=kʷt͡sʼ/ :possess-bunchberry-plant-PAST.PERFECT-3sSUB/3sOBJ=then : 'then he had had in his possession a bunchberry plant.' :     (Nater 1984, cited in Bagemihl 1991: 16) 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' (Nater 1984, p. 5) 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. This syllabic structure may be compared with that of Miyako. The linguist Hank Nater has postulated the existence of a phonemic contrast between
syllabic Syllabic may refer to: *Syllable, a unit of speech sound, considered the building block of words **Syllabic consonant, a consonant that forms the nucleus of a syllable *Syllabary, writing system using symbols for syllables *Abugida, writing system ...
and non-syllabic sonorants: , spelled ''ṃ, ṇ, ḷ''. (The vowel phonemes would then be the syllabic counterparts of .) Words claimed to have unpredictable syllables include ''sṃnṃnṃuuc'' 'mute', ''smṇmṇcaw'' '(the fact) that they are children'.


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. E.g. ''ƛ̓ikm-Ø ti-wac̓-tx'' '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 ''qāχla'' 'drink' becomes ''qāχla-ł'' 'we drink', ''qāχla-nap'' 'you (pl.) drink', ''qāχla-naw'' 'they drink', but ''nuyamł'' 'sing' becomes ''nuyamł-ił'' 'we're singing', ''nuyamł-ap'' 'you (pl.) are singing', nuyamł-aw 'they're singing'. However, the choice of the 3ps marker -Ø or -s is conditioned by semantics rather than phonetics. For example, the sentences ''tix-s ti-ʔimlk-tx'' and ''tix-Ø ti-ʔimlk-tx'' 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. 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 ''-cut-'' followed by the appropriate intransitive suffix: E.g. ''sp̓-is ti-ʔimlk-tx ti-stn-tx'' 'the man struck the tree'. Whether a word can serve as an event isn't determined lexically, e.g. ''ʔimmllkī-Ø ti-nusʔūlχ-tx'' 'the thief is a boy', ''nusʔūlχ-Ø ti-q̓s-tx'' 'the one who is ill is a thief'. There is a further causative paradigm whose suffixes may be used instead: This has a passive counterpart: This may also have a benefactive gloss when used with events involving less activity of their participant (e.g. ''nuyamł-tus ti-ʔimlk-tx ti-ʔimmllkī-tx'' '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''-lx-'' (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 ''ʔuł-'', which marks the experience. Some events are inherently transitive or intransitive, but some may accept multiple valencies (e.g. ''ʔanayk'' 'to be needy'/'to want omething). 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 A passive voice construction is a grammatical voice construction that is found in many languages. In a clause with passive voice, the grammatical subject expresses the ''theme'' or '' patient'' of the main verb – that is, the person or thing ...
- 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 ''-a-'' before personal markers, and the experiencer is marked with a preposition The affix ''-amk-'' (''-yamk-'' after the antipassive marker ''-a-'') allows an implement to have its preposition removed and to be focused. For example: * ''nuyamł-Ø ti-man-tx ʔuł-ti-mna-s-tx x-ti-syut-tx'' 'the father sang the song to his son' * ''nuyamł-amk-is ti-man-tx ti-syut-tx ʔuł-ti-mna-s-tx'' 'the father sang the song to his son'


Prepositions

There are four prepositions which have broad usage in Nuxalk:


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 ''wac̓-Ø ti-ƛ̓ikm-tx'' and ''ti-wac̓-Ø ti-ƛ̓ikm-tx'', 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. 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: 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: ''tu-'' is used in earlier varieties and some types of narratives, except for middle non-demonstrative, and the variant ''ʔił-'' 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 ''mus-is ti-ʔimmllkī-tx ta-q̓lsxʷ-t̓aχ'' '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 ''k̓x'' 'to see'. 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.Nater, H.F. 1984. ''The Bella Coola Language''. Ottawa: National Museums of Canada. Cited in Bhat, D.N.S. 2004. Pronouns. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 26


Particles


See also

* Coast Salish languages *
Interior Salish The Interior Salish languages are one of the two main branches of the Salishan language family, the other being Coast Salish. It can be further divided into Northern and Southern subbranches. The first Salishan people encountered by American exp ...


References


Bibliography

* * * Bruce Bagemihl (1998). Maximality in Bella Coola (Nuxalk). In E. Czaykowska-Higgins & M. D. Kinkade (Eds.), ''Salish Languages and Linguistics: Theoretical and Descriptive Perspectives'' (pp. 71–98). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. * Laurie Bauer, 2007, ''The Linguistics Student’s Handbook'', Edinburgh. * * * * Philip W. Davis & Ross Saunders (1978). Bella Coola Syntax. In E.-D. Cook & J. Kaye (Eds.), ''Linguistic Studies of Native Canada'' (pp. 37–66). Vancouver: University of British Columbia. * * Philip W. Davis & Ross Saunders (1980). ''Bella Coola Texts''. British Columbia Provincial Museum Heritage Record (No. 10). Victoria: British Columbia Provincial Museum. . * Philip W. Davis & Ross Saunders (1997). ''A Grammar of Bella Coola''. University of Montana Occasional Papers in Linguistics (No. 13). Missoula, MT: University of Montana. . * Forrest, Linda. (1994). The de-transitive clauses in Bella Coola: Passive vs. inverse. In T. Givón (Ed.), ''Voice and Inversion'' (pp. 147–168). Amsterdam: Benjamins. * Mithun, Marianne. (1999). ''The Languages of Native North America''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (hbk); . * Montler, Timothy. (2004–2005). (Handouts on Salishan Language Family). * Nater, Hank F. (1977). ''Stem List of the Bella Coola language''. Lisse: Peter de Ridder. * Nater, Hank F. (1984). ''The Bella Coola Language''. Mercury Series; Canadian Ethnology Service (No. 92). Ottawa: National Museums of Canada. * Nater, Hank F. (1990). ''A Concise Nuxalk–English Dictionary''. Mercury Series; Canadian Ethnology Service (No. 115). Hull, Quebec: Canadian Museum of Civilization. . * Newman, Stanley. (1947). Bella Coola I: Phonology. ''International Journal of American Linguistics'', ''13'', 129-134. * Newman, Stanley. (1969). Bella Coola Grammatical Processes and Form Classes. ''International Journal of American Linguistics'', ''35'', 175-179. * Newman, Stanley. (1969). Bella Coola Paradigms. ''International Journal of American Linguistics'', ''37'', 299-306. * Newman, Stanley. (1971). Bella Coola Reduplication. ''International Journal of American Linguistics'', ''37'', 34-38. * Newman, Stanley. (1974). Language Retention and Diffusion in Bella Coola. ''Language in Society'', ''3'', 201-214. * Newman, Stanley. (1976). Salish and Bella Coola Prefixes. ''International Journal of American Linguistics'', ''42'', 228-242. * Newman, Stanley. (1989). Lexical Morphemes in Bella Coola. In M. R. Key & H. Hoenigswald (Eds.), ''General and Amerindian Ethnolinguistics: In Remembrance of Stanley Newman'' (pp. 289–301). Contributions to the Sociology of Language (No. 55). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. .


External links


Nuxalk Nation Website




*


Bella Coola
(
Intercontinental Dictionary Series The Intercontinental Dictionary Series (commonly abbreviated as IDS) is a large database of topical vocabulary lists in various world languages. The general editor of the database is Bernard Comrie of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary A ...
) {{DEFAULTSORT:Nuxalk Language Salishan languages Agglutinative languages Indigenous languages of the Pacific Northwest Coast First Nations languages in Canada