2023/11/30 by Sarah G. Thomason · 1 voice
Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #Linguistic Variation and Morphology #Historical Linguistics and Language Studies #Linguistics and language evolution
paper · doi:10.1093/oso/9780192845818.003.0012
openalex publication_date 2023/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
Abstract This paper analyzes sound-symbolic words in Séliš-Ql’ispé (a.k.a. Montana Salish), with a special focus on words with the shape C1VC2C2C2C2. The great majority of the language’s sound-symbolic constructions are onomatopoetic noise words (‘snap’, ‘crackle’, ‘pop’, ‘gurgle’, etc.), but a few represent now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t sights, e.g. ‘twinkle’. Examples are c’ossss ‘the sound of a rattlesnake rattling’, mal’l’l’l’ ‘a gurgling noise’, hiiiip ‘the sound of a ruffed grouse drumming’, and p’aqqqq’ ‘a bunch of little moving lights, like the sequins on a jingle-dress’. Formally, Séliš-Ql’ispé sound-symbolic words fall into four general categories that display varying degrees of embeddedness in the language’s morphological and syntactic structure and varying degrees of conventionalization. Functionally, all these expressive lexical items reflect the two tribes’ ecology in important ways, from local flora and fauna (e.g. ruffed grouse drumming) to cultural phenomena like the elaborate jingle-dresses worn at powwow celebrations. Finally, although it isn’t possible to trace the history of the language’s sound-symbolic formations definitively, the paper includes some tentative historical conclusions.