Talk:Lillooet language

A fact from Lillooet language appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 21 July 2005. The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that the St'at'imcets language, an endangered language of British Columbia, is similar to Semitic languages in that it also has pharyngeal consonants?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2005/July.

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Untitled[edit]

Very interesting. Does it have a script? If so, is that written right to left too? -- Sundar ^{\talk \contribs} 06:03, July 20, 2005 (UTC)

We'll have to get a image sample with a transliteration and translation below. It'd also be interesting to show the alphabet. --Oldak Quill 17:51, 20 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

And necesary (to show the alphabet) because St'at'imcets doesn't use the Latin characters to mean the same things they do in English; a prime example is St'at'imc itself, spelled Stl'atl'imx in more "ordinary" spelling (although [x]={h} is not found in English at all). The St'at'imcets usage of [t'] to mean the palatal fricative (?) [tl/kl]] sound is only one of the variations from standard Latin usage (even as used by neighbouring languages such as Secwepemc or Nlaka'pamux). It should therefore be a given that the page should describe the IPA, the St'at'imcets spelling, the "traditional" Latin/English spelling, as well as a non-IPA prononciation guide. At present, the list of placenames on the St'at'imc page is given in St'at'imcets spelling - but it's not useful at all unless you're already schooled in St'atimcets orthography. Not that I could ever pronounce Tli'tl'kt anyway (T'it'qet I think it is now)Skookum1 09:59, 19 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Further comment answering first post above - "does it have a script"? The Duployan shorthand was adapted by Fr. Lejeune of the Oblates for use with the Chinook Jargon by the Diocese of Kamloops. While it was mostly used for Chinook Jargon, the Diocese's publication Kamloops Wawa (Talk/News from Kamloops) had the occasional prayer or hymn in Secwepemc, Nlaka'pamux, Halkemeylem - and St'at'imcets. Not that the Duployan had any great ability at conveying complex gutturals, the palatal fricative, or even a decent range of vowels . . . Skookum1 10:03, 19 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

/h/[edit]

The 1997 Van Eijk book states that [1] /h/ and /ʔ/ are classed as "resonants" (which I'm assuming is the same as sonorants) because they don't occur between or after consonants. Even after reading section 1.7 (which it directs me to), I'm not convinced that this is any compelling reason to classify /h/ as an approximant. I haven't read the entire book, but I'd imagine that there would be no part that will counter the notion that glottal approximants are physically impossible. /h/ should be classified as a fricative. Although, granted, it isn't technically either a fricative or an approximant, the overwhelming linguistic convention is to put it in the fricatives row of a consonant chart. AEuSoes1 05:34, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. Yes, sonorants = resonants. Here resonant (R) means a resonant consonant (i.e. excluding vowels). An approximant (in Ladefoged's sense) is a non-nasal resonant, or in other words, it is a higher level grouping of glides and liquids. Van Eijk himself does not use the term (many dont like it, perhaps because it has different definitions), using instead glide and liquid. But, this really doesnt matter much.

No language in the world contrasts a "glottal" approximant and a "glottal" fricative. So, whether you call them fricatives or approximants is irrelevant. Actually, h is really a voiceless vowel and has no significant amount of constriction which by definition excludes them from a fricative grouping phonetically. It was originally thought that h was articulated by a constriction at the glottis; however, it is now known that the fricative sound you hear when you say h is turbulence that is present throughout the entire vocal cavity (which means, of course, that h is not glottal but rather placeless). "Glottal" approximants are not impossible and seem to be the norm. All voiceless approximants have a small noise source often caused by a higher volume of airflow — this is also true with h. (It seems that there is finally a brief statement at Approximant consonant#Approximants vs. fricatives probably thankfully written by Kwamikagami.)

As there is no distinction between a "glottal" approximant & fricative, then phonological criteria can be used to classify the segment (and, in fact, phonological criteria are often used for classification even if the phonological analysis is at odds in certain places with the phonetics). Here van Eijk clearly presents an argument showing that h patterns with other resonants in reduplication processes where certain resulting sequences of consonant+resonant+consonant and word-final consonant+resonant must be separated by an epenthetic schwa.

The chart with h as an approximant is exactly where van Eijk places it in his chart on page 2. So, there is no controversy here, at all. I would classify h myself no differently. If you disagree with van Eijk's analysis, then you should publish your analysis in a peer-reviewed journal so that we can cite the disagreement in the article. If you insistent on disputing this, then I suggest you invite User:Angr to the discussion, he knows quite about phonology. Thanks – ishwar (speak) 08:38, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ahh, well if Kwami put that then I suppose I can accept as such. He's a smart fella. You've put a lot of good work into this page. Keep it up. AEuSoes1 12:18, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ucwalmicwts vs. St'at'imcets[edit]

Just wondering about adding a mention of the word Ucwalmicwts , which is how St'at'imcets is referred to while you're speaking it; or is there a lexical difference, other than "the language of the nation" vs the "language of the St'at'imc"?Skookum1 08:24, 28 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Title is redundant[edit]

In light of other article name-changes to reflect most-common-usage, e.g. Thompson language, Okanagan language, Squamish language, Shuswap language, shouldn't this article be "Lillooet language"? Especially because "St'at'imcets" means "language of the St'at'imc"; ergo the title really says "language of the St'at'imc language"? Also the /t'/ character is not an English romanization, it's specifically a character in this language signifying [tl], right? In ethnographic literature the most common usage, especially in other languages, seems to still be "Lillooet language"....Skookum1 (talk) 15:03, 24 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Errors in phoneme chart[edit]

Why exactly are [z], [ɣ], and so forth placed in the approximants section? The citation for van Eijk (1997) seems incorrect, because in van Eijk (2011), they are placed in the resonants section, that is, sonorants, which include more than just approximants. See https://books.google.com/books?id=ZYHc2ShJFFkC&lpg=PR7&ots=jAMyOnuGp-&dq=phonology%20of%20lillooet&lr&pg=PA2#v=onepage&q&f=false, which is an updated version of the source cited. Furthermore, what is cited is not in the original source: https://books.google.com/books?id=eCsDVvzdcPAC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA2#v=onepage&q&f=false. There appear to be a few more inaccuracies, such as [j] not appearing in the source given. I currently do not have the time to fix this; could somebody sort this out by correcting this phoneme table? Thank you. 50.90.74.156 (talk) 01:28, 5 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Approximants are resonants. Specifically, they include both glides & liquids (but not nasals). Since /z, ɣ/ aren't nasals, approximant is correct.

[j] is the same thing as [y]. The IPA uses [j] while [y] is the Americanist phonetic notation. On Wikipedia, there is a bias toward using IPA over other phonetic transcriptions.

I'll note one thing about /z, ɣ/: the characterization of them as approximant/resonant is based on phonological patterning while their phonetics is actually fricative-like (at least most of the time). Also, he may have been influenced by the historical facts for /z/ since it's derived from Proto-Salish *y. – ishwar (speak) 01:56, 5 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your reply, I understand now. The table however displays {{IPA|k}} or whichever phoneme is used, making the mouse-over say that the phoneme is represented in IPA. Should not this be changed so that the article just uses the symbol instead of the IPA markup? 50.90.74.156 (talk) 00:33, 19 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure actually. As I recall, this {{IPA| }} thing was used in order to make non-ASCII text to be displayed with a font that contained the IPA characters. The MS Internet Explorer I think did not display the characters even if the computer had an appropriate font that contained the IPA characters. I don't know if modern browsers have any problem with this nowadays. Maybe it's not needed anymore. – ishwar (speak) 17:15, 19 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]