Molala (Molele, Molalla) is the extinct and poorly attested

Plateau Penutian Plateau Penutian (also Shahapwailutan, Lepitan) is a family of languages spoken in northern California, reaching through central-western Oregon to northern Washington and central-northern Idaho. Family division Plateau Penutian consists of four ...

language of the Molala people of

Oregon Oregon () is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of its eastern boundary with Idaho. T ...

and

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

. It is first attested along the Deschutes River, and later moved to the Molalla and Santiam rivers, and to the headwaters of the Umpqua and Rogue rivers. It was once thought to be close to Cayuse.

Dialects

There were three known dialects: *Northern Molala, spoken in southern Oregon in the Cascade Range *Upper Santiam Molala, spoken along the upper

Santiam River The Santiam River is a tributary of the Willamette River, about long, in western Oregon in the United States. Through its two principal tributaries, the North Santiam and the South Santiam rivers, it drains a large area of the Cascade Range a ...

in the Cascades in central Oregon. *Southern Molala, spoken in southern Oregon in the Cascade Range

Phonology

The phonology of the Molala language:

Consonants

Vowels

/i/ and /a/ can also shift to /ə/.

Grammar

Molala is a verb-heavy

polysynthetic language In linguistic typology, polysynthetic languages, formerly holophrastic languages, are highly synthetic languages, i.e. languages in which words are composed of many morphemes (word parts that have independent meaning but may or may not be able ...

Case

Molala nouns have seven cases: nominative,

accusative The accusative case (abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘th ...

, genitive,

instrumental An instrumental is a recording normally without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through semantic widening, a broader sense of the word song may refer to inst ...

, locative,

allative In grammar, the allative case (; abbreviated ; from Latin ''allāt-'', ''afferre'' "to bring to") is a type of locative grammatical case. The term allative is generally used for the lative case in the majority of languages that do not make finer ...

, and

ablative In grammar, the ablative case (pronounced ; sometimes abbreviated ) is a grammatical case for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives in the grammars of various languages; it is sometimes used to express motion away from something, among other uses. ...

References

External links

Molale (Molalla)OLAC resources in and about the Molale language
{{North American languages Indigenous languages of Oregon Extinct languages of North America Indigenous languages of the North American Plateau Plateau Penutian languages Languages extinct in the 1950s 1958 disestablishments in the United States Language isolates of North America