Southern Wakashan: Descriptive and Theoretical Perspectives

Abstract

This special volume of CJL/RCL is the first collection of papers devoted specifically to the Southern Wakashan languages Makah, Ditidaht (also known as Nitinat), and Nuu-chah-nulth (also known as Nootka). These three closely related languages form a continuum stretching from the northwest tip of Washington State to northwest Vancouver Island in British Columbia. The Southern Wakashan languages are remarkable for the typologically unusual traits they exhibit in virtually all areas of their grammars. These properties were first illuminated by Edward Sapir in his foundational work on Nuu-chah-nulth (1911, 1915, 1921; Sapir and Swadesh 1939), which helped thrust Wakashan to the forefront of early Amerindian scholarship. The papers brought together in this volume reflect a recent resurgence of interest in Southern Wakashan, and highlight the potential of lesser-studied languages to contribute to linguistic theory, as well as the range of insights that theoretically informed perspectives can bring to the grammatical description of these languages.