In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. Affixes may be derivational, like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed. They are bound morphemes by definition; prefixes and suffixes may be separable affixes. Affixation is the linguistic process that speakers use to form different words by adding morphemes at the beginning (prefixation), the middle (infixation) or the end (suffixation) of words.
Salishan oral narratives consist of the body of traditional narratives of the speakers of the Salishan languages, who inhabit British Columbia, Canada and in Washington, Idaho and Montana in the United States. Each of the many peoples in these groups have their own stories and each storyteller may interpret them in their own ways, but many of the stories of the Salish peoples are similar and share themes and characters, and share their historical origins in the proto-Salishan culture long ago. The earliest descriptions of the oral traditions of Salishan peoples were the collections of Nuxalk mythology by anthropologist Franz Boas.
The Salishan languages are a family of languages of the Pacific Northwest in North America. They are characterised by agglutinativity and syllabic consonants. For instance the Nuxalk word clhp’xwlhtlhplhhskwts’, meaning "he had had [in his possession] a bunchberry plant", has thirteen obstruent consonants in a row with no phonetic or phonemic vowels.
Nuxalk, also known as Bella Coola, is a Salishan language spoken by the Nuxalk people. Today, it is an endangered language with only 3 fluent speakers in the vicinity of the Canadian town of Bella Coola, British Columbia. While the language is still sometimes called Bella Coola by linguists, the native name Nuxalk is preferred by some, notably by the Nuxalk Nation's government.
Lushootseed, also Puget Salish, Puget Sound Salish or Skagit-Nisqually, is a language made up of a dialect continuum of several Salish tribes of modern-day Washington state. Lushootseed is one of the Coast Salish languages. The latter is one of two main divisions of the Salishan language family.
Klallam,Clallam, Ns'Klallam or S'klallam, is a Straits Salishan language that was traditionally spoken by the Klallam peoples at Becher Bay on Vancouver Island in British Columbia and across the Strait of Juan de Fuca on the north coast of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington. The last speaker of Klallam as a first language died in 2014, but there is a growing group of speakers of Klallam as a second language.
In linguistics, especially within generative grammar, phi features are the morphological expression of a semantic process in which a word or morpheme varies with the form of another word or phrase in the same sentence. This variation can include person, number, gender, and case, as encoded in pronominal agreement with nouns and pronouns. Several other features are included in the set of phi-features, such as the categorical features ±N (nominal) and ±V (verbal), which can be used to describe lexical categories and case features.
Lillooet, known in the language itself as St̓át̓imcets / Sƛ’aƛ’imxǝc, is the language of the St’át’imc, a Salishan language of the Interior branch spoken in southern British Columbia, Canada, around the middle Fraser and Lillooet Rivers. The language of the Lower Lillooet people uses the name Ucwalmícwts, because St̓át̓imcets means "the language of the people of Sat̓", i.e. the Upper Lillooet of the Fraser River.
The Kutenai language, also Kootenai, Kootenay, Ktunaxa, and Ksanka, is the native language of the Kutenai people of Montana and Idaho in the United States and British Columbia in Canada. It is typically considered a language isolate, unrelated to the Salishan family of languages spoken by neighboring tribes on the coast and in the interior Plateau. The Kutenai also speak ʔa·qanⱡiⱡⱡitnam, Ktunaxa Sign Language.
Comox or Éyɂáɂjuuthem is a Coast Salish language historically spoken in the northern Georgia Strait region, spanning the east coast of Vancouver Island and the northern Sunshine Coast and adjoining inlets and islands. More specifically, ʔayajuθəm was traditionally spoken in Bute Inlet, in Squirrel Cove, and in Sliammon, located in the area now known as Powell River.
Saanich is the language of the First Nations Saanich people in the Pacific Northwest region of northwestern North America. Saanich is a Coast Salishan language in the Northern Straits dialect continuum, the varieties of which are closely related to the Klallam language.
The Interior Salish languages are one of the two main branches of the Salishan language family, the other being Coast Salish. It can be further divided into Northern and Southern subbranches. The first Salishan people encountered by American explorers were the Flathead people, among the most easternly of the group.
Okanagan, or Colville-Okanagan, or Nsyilxcən, is a Salish language which arose among the indigenous peoples of the southern Interior Plateau region based primarily in the Okanagan River Basin and the Columbia River Basin in precolonial times in Canada and the United States. Following British, American, and Canadian colonization during the 1800s and the subsequent assimilation of all Salishan tribes, the use of Colville-Okanagan declined drastically.
The Shackan Indian Band is a Nlaka'pamux First Nations government located in the Nicola Country of the Southern Interior region of the Canadian province of British Columbia. It is a member of the Scw’exmx Tribal Council, which is one of three tribal councils of the Nlaka'pamux people. Other Nlaka'pamux governments belong either to the Fraser Canyon Indian Administration or the Nlaka'pamux Nation Tribal Council.
Squamish is a Coast Salish language spoken by the Squamish people of the Pacific Northwest. It is spoken in the area that is now called southwestern British Columbia, Canada, centred on their reserve communities in Squamish, North Vancouver, and West Vancouver. An archaic historical rendering of the native Sḵwx̱wú7mesh is Sko-ko-mish but this should not be confused with the name of the Skokomish people of Washington state. Squamish is most closely related to the Sechelt, Halkomelem, and Nooksack languages.
Annie Zixtkwu York was a distinguished elder of the Nlaka'pamux people of the Spuzzum First Nation of Spuzzum, in Fraser Canyon located in the lower region of British Columbia, Canada. York was raised by her Nlaka'pamux family where she came to be bilingual speaking English and Nlaka'pamuctsin.She dedicated herself to the Christian religion and the beliefs of the Nlaka'pamux people, Nle'kepmx. York's family members educated her about the history of Spuzzum as well as the origin of its name, Spuzzum chiefs, and the ethnobotany of the region. York was known to be a storyteller, always recording and sharing stories.
The Salish or Séliš language, also known as Kalispel–Pend d'oreille, Kalispel–Spokane–Flathead, or Montana Salish to distinguish it from other Salishan languages, is a Salishan language spoken by about 64 elders of the Flathead Nation in north central Montana and of the Kalispel Indian Reservation in northeastern Washington state, and by another 50 elders of the Spokane Indian Reservation of Washington. As of 2012, Salish is "critically endangered" in Montana and Idaho according to UNESCO.
The Nlaka'pamux or Nlakapamuk, also previously known as the Thompson, Thompson River Salish, Thompson Salish, Thompson River Indians or Thompson River people, and historically as the Klackarpun, Haukamaugh, Knife Indians, and Couteau Indians, are an Indigenous First Nations people of the Interior Salish language group in southern British Columbia. Their traditional territory includes parts of the North Cascades region of Washington.
The indigenous languages of the Americas form various linguistic areas or Sprachbunds that share various common (areal) traits.
Thompson River is the largest tributary of the Fraser River, flowing through the south-central portion of British Columbia, Canada.
