What is it about?
In this brief report, I examine language samples as recorded by the Scottish explorer Alexander Mackenzie, who established contact with local people in the Shuswap–Carrier–Bella Coola macro-region in 1793. The first short word list presented in his log affords proof of drag chain sound shifts in Carrier and lexical changes in a northwestern Shuswap dialect, while the second list appears to confirm a *…ən#/an# >…a# shift in Bella Coola. Together with Mackenzie’s data, Daniel Harmon’s 1820 Carrier word list provides a time line for completion of certain sound shifts in Carrier.
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Why is it important?
This article details phonemic shifts in both Bella Coola and Southern Carrier Athabascan that have hitherto not been detected and described as such. It also touches on the disappearance of one unknown older Interior Salish (Shuswap or pre-Shuswap) dialect.
Perspectives
This paper discusses diachronic aspects of one Athabascan and two Salish languages. It is the author's hope that, in view of the fact that virtually all Salish languages have by now become non-viable (dying, dead, extinct), more attention will be paid to the histories and prehistories of Salish than has been the case to date.
Hank Nater
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Old Records of Three Contiguous Pacific Northwest Languages: Bella Coola, Carrier, Shuswap, Anthropological Linguistics, January 2020, Project Muse,
DOI: 10.1353/anl.2020.0006.
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