Salishan-Wakashan relation?

[David Robertson]

LaXayEm, kanawi-Laksta, pi Lush pulakli,

The hypothesis of a Salishan-Wakashan relationship is fairly old; in one
form, and including the Chemakuan family of languages as well, it's called
the Mosan hypothesis.

But no relation's ever been shown.  Nor has one been made to look
plausible.  David Beck has written recently a very extensive and very good
paper looking at the NW Coast "Sprachbund" -- a term meaning essentially
an "alliance" of languages rather than a family.  Most a propos, and quite
a bit more demonstrable as a phenomenon.

To wit:  These languages and families of languages do show many features
in common, and this is quite striking, in the same way that it's quite
striking how Hungarian, Basque, and Indo-European share sounds and
grammatical strategies in common.  It's what my university linguistics
mentor Robert Austerlitz loved to talk about:  "areal features".

However, nope, no relation between these languages, except a social
acquaintance.  :-)

I have been getting very interested in the *chance* similarities between
random lexical items in CJ and those having the same meanings in languages
of this region.  But I've found nothing to suggest that these are anything
less than fortuitous, and non-patterned, resemblances.

Best wishes,
Dave

PS -- If you want a contentious bunch of theorizers talking about possible
relationships among the proven language families of this planet, check out
the NOSTRATIC list.  Oof!

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