The Thompson language, properly known as Nlaka'pamuctsin, also known as the Nlaka'pamux ('Nthlakampx') language, is an Interior Salishan language spoken in the

Fraser Canyon The Fraser Canyon is a major landform of the Fraser River where it descends rapidly through narrow rock gorges in the Coast Mountains en route from the Interior Plateau of British Columbia to the Fraser Valley. Colloquially, the term "Fraser C ...

, Thompson Canyon,

Nicola Country The Nicola Country, also known as the Nicola Valley and often referred to simply as The Nicola, and originally Nicolas' Country or Nicholas' Country, adapted to Nicola's Country and simplified since, is a region in the Southern Interior of British ...

of the

Canadian province Within the geographical areas of Canada, the ten provinces and three territories are sub-national administrative divisions under the jurisdiction of the Canadian Constitution. In the 1867 Canadian Confederation, three provinces of British Nort ...

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include ...

, and formerly in the

North Cascades The North Cascades are a section of the Cascade Range of western North America. They span the border between the Canadian province of British Columbia and the U.S. state of Washington and are officially named in the U.S. and Canada as the C ...

region of Whatcom and Chelan counties of the state of Washington in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

. A dialect distinctive to the Nicola Valley is called Scw'exmx, which is the name of the subgroup of the Nlaka'pamux who live there.

Phonology

Nlaka'pamuctsin is a

consonant 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 ...

-heavy language. The consonants can be divided into two subgroups:

obstruents 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 ...

, which restrict airflow, and

sonorants 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 are ...

or resonants, which do not. The sonorants are often syllabic consonants, which can form syllables on their own without

vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (l ...

Consonants

Vowels

Stress is used with an acute accent; á.

Morphology and syntax

Researchers working in the

Generative Generative may refer to: * Generative actor, a person who instigates social change * Generative art, art that has been created using an autonomous system that is frequently, but not necessarily, implemented using a computer * Generative music, ...

tradition have speculated that Salishan languages lack

lexical categories In grammar, a part of speech or part-of-speech ( abbreviated as POS or PoS, also known as word class or grammatical category) is a category of words (or, more generally, of lexical items) that have similar grammatical properties. Words that are a ...

such as nouns and verbs. Evidence for such an absence of contrast between parts of speech in Nlaka'pamuctsin come from a lack of clear morphological markers (e.g.

morpheme A morpheme is the smallest meaningful constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. In English, morphemes are often but not necessarily words. Morphemes that stand alone ar ...

s) that differentiate nouns and verbs. Instead, generative linguists discuss morphology and syntax in Salishan based on a framework of predicates and particles. However, more contemporary work suggests a changing understanding of Salishan grammar. Some Salishanists believe that functional categories are not prescriptive of lexical categories. Work in Functional linguistics suggests that other factors beyond morphological evidence code lexical categories in languages. In Salishan, the distinction would be less overt than in some other languages.

Lexical suffixes

One morphological feature of Nlaka'pamuctsin is lexical suffixes. These are words that add nuance to predicates and can be affixed to the ends of root words to add their general meaning to that word. Thompson and Thompson assert that as a result of English language influence, speakers are using these more complex predicates less and less in favor of simpler predicates with complements and adjuncts, resulting in “a general decline in the exploitation of the rich synthetic resources of the language.”

References

External links

Native.Languages.org entry
(archive of SchoolNet page)

{{Authority control Interior Salish languages First Nations languages in Canada Languages of the United States Indigenous languages of the North American Plateau