Comparative Wakashan Dictionary
Michael Fortescue, Department of Linguistics,
University of Copenhagen
This
on-going project is aimed at producing in the near future a comprehensive comparative
dictionary of the Wakashan family, with reconstructions of both stems and
suffixes/clitics at the Proto-Wakashan (PW), Proto-Nootkan (PN), and
Proto-Kwakiutlan (PK) stages. The data has gradually been gathered from all
available published sources plus the extensive manuscript material left by
Sapir and Swadesh and Haas in the library of the American Philosophical
Society. The dictionary is parallel to those of Fortescue, Jacobson and Kaplan (1994,
Alaska Native Language Center) for the Eskimo-Aleut family and Fortescue (2005,
Mouton de Gruyter) for the Chukotko-Kamchatkan family. All forms are presented
in a ‘reader-friendly’ format, with separate lines for each of the languages
concerned, and are written in a common phonemic orthography, and with all
sources indicated.
At present
my files contain 435 PW stems and 117 suffixes/clitics; 599 PK stems and 159
suffixes/clitics; and 455 PN stems and 194 suffixes/clitics. A good deal still
remains to be done (including the elicitation in the field of additional
Ditidaht forms), but given the deep historical divide between the two branches
of the family and the strict criteria for setting up cognate sets, these
figures are not likely to escalate radically. To set up a PK or PN proto-set
there must be regular cognates attested in at least two of the relevant
contemporary languages, namely Kwakwala, Oowekyala, Heiltsuk and Haisla on the
one hand and Nuuchahnulth, Ditidaht and Makah on the other. To count as
Proto-Wakashan, a set must have cognates in at least one Kwakiutlan (Northern
Wakashan) and one Nootkan (Southern Wakashan) language. The default dialects
for Kwakwala and Nuuchahnulth are, respectively Kwakiutl (Kwaguł) and Tseshaht, in which Boas and Sapir did
their seminal work, but forms attested in other dialects are added where
relevant.
The field
of comparative Wakashan is fortunate in that work of high quality was produced
on these languages in the early years of the last century by some of the world’s most prestigious descriptive linguistics, namely Franz Boas, Edward
Sapir, Morris Swadesh and Mary Haas. This produced a solid basis on which
others have built, providing broader lexical coverage (the comparative North
Wakashan comparative root list by Neville Lincoln and John Rath represents a particularly
conspicuous landmark). As a result of these efforts the situation has been
reached today where a comparative dictionary of the present sort, covering all
the languages of the family, can be undertaken. The reconstructed
Proto-Wakashan sound system I employ reflects by and large that found in
Sapir’s work, but differs on certain points from his as regards the original
vowels and diphthongs.
The
archaeological record on the central west coast of Vancouver Island, the
Wakashan homeland, has been continuous since at least 2800 BC, with finds
indicative of marine mammal hunting (including whaling with toggling harpoons)
that go back to the earliest period. It is reasonable to suppose that the
language spoken by the people who left these traces was Proto-Wakashan. The
question of the deeper genetic relations of the family has aroused much
controversy, with the Sapir/Swadesh “Mosan” hypothesis, relating Wakashan,
Salishan and Chemakuan, in the forefront. Other suggestions for distant
relations include Eskimo-Aleut (Swadesh) and Nivkh/Gilyak (Austerlitz). The
present dictionary is neutral on such matters, confining itself to
reconstructing Proto-Wakashan. This is an essential step in the broader
undertaking of sorting out the role of the various families that have
contributed to the complex mix of the Northwest Coast linguistic area.