Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T05:43:22.015Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Chilcotin Flattening*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

Eung-Do Cook
Eung-Do Cook*
Affiliation:
The University of Calgary
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In Chilcotin, an Athapaskan language of northern British Columbia, surface alternations of vowels are determined by a process called “flattening” (Krauss 1975, Cook 1976a). So far, the process of flattening, and indeed almost all other aspects of Chilcotin phonology, remain virtually unknown to phonologists in general. In this article, I provide a descriptive introduction to Chilcotin flattening. The first two sections describe the vowel and consonant systems, respectively, in terms of autonomous phonology, and the third section describes the flattening process and introduces some of the theoretical issues associated with it.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , Fall 1983 , pp. 123 - 132
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association 1983

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

I wish to express my thanks to many Chilcotin people, especially Bella Alphonse, Maria Myers, and Stanley Stump for their continued work that has provided me with the material in this article, to Michael Krauss and Quindel King for many hours of discussion, to Alan Haig-Brown for his kind logistic support and endless enthusiasm which has brought Chikotin to many classrooms, and to Jack Chambers who helped me to make this paper more readable. Any remaining errors are my own. This work has been supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

References

Anderson, Stephen R. (1981) “Why phonology isn’t ‘natural’.” Linguistic Inquiry 12:493–539.Google Scholar
Cook, Eung-Do (1976a) “A phonological study of Chilcotin and Carrier.” Report to the National Museum of Man, Ottawa.Google Scholar
Cook, Eung-Do (1976b) “Flattening and rounding in Chilcotin velars,” in The Victoria Conference on Northwestern Languages, ed. Efrat, Barbara S.. Heritage Record No. 4. British Columbia Provincial Museum: Victoria, 15–32.Google Scholar
Howard, Irwin (1972) “A directional theory of rule application in phonology.” Ph.D. dissertation. Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Google Scholar
Jakobson, Roman (1957) “Mufaxxama—The ‘emphatic’ phonemes in Arabic,” in Studies Presented to Joshua Whatmough, ed. Pulgram, Ernst. Mouton: The Hague, 105–115.Google Scholar
King, Quindel (1979/1968) “Chilcotin phonology and vocabulary,” in Contribution to Canadian Linguistics, Hamp, Eric P. et al. Canadian Ethnology Service Paper No. 50. National Museum of Man Mercury Series. National Museums of Canada: Ottawa, 41–66.Google Scholar
Krauss, Michael E. (1975) “Chilcotin phonology: a descriptive and historical report with recommendations for a Chilcotin orthography.” Unpublished.Google Scholar
Krauss, Michael E., and Leer, Jeff (1981) Athapaskan, Eyak, and Tlingit Sonorants. Alaska Native Language Center Research Paper 5. University of Alaska: Fairbanks.Google Scholar
Kuipers, Aert H. (1972) The Shuswap Language. Mouton: The Hague.Google Scholar
Latimer, Richard M. (1978) “A study of Chilcotin phonology.” M.A. thesis. The University of Calgary.Google Scholar
Thompson, Laurence C., and Thompson, Terry M. (in press) The Thompson Language. The British Columbia Provincial Museum: Victoria.Google Scholar