si7am & SayEm related? (more)

[David Robertson]

Lhush san!

[summarizing a note sent off-list by Dell Hymes:  Are these two words a
pair differing by vowels only?]

Thank you for more food for thought, Dell.  I'll toss out some reasons why
I suspect there's not a likely connection of any kind between the two:

1)	The /s/ at the beginning of Coast Salish /si7am/ is perhaps the
	typical Salishan "nominalizer" prefix, meaning that the root of
	the word would then be something like /y'am/ -- I guess only,
	having no handy copy of the Hess, Hilbert & Bates Lushootseed
	dictionary.  Conversely, the Chinookan / Kalapuyan form is not
	known to nor suspected by me to have a root shape other than
	/sVyVm/, extrapolating as I am from items like /aSayum/,
	/guSdusayum/, and /gusaSayum/ in the Kalapuya texts and ~ /iSayEm/
	in the Chinookan.

2)	I read the Salishan form as having two distinct vowels
	consistently separated by a glottal stop, and that's also how I've
	heard the cognates pronounced in Lushootseed and Squamish, the few
	times I've heard folks speak those languages.  By contrast, the
	Chinookan et al. item has, as you point out, a diphthong.

3)	The stress pattern is completely distinct in the one of these
	words from that of the other.  /si7am/ has ultimate stress,
	/SayEm/ to my knowledge initial.

So I am much more skeptical of a relation existing between these two words
than I am of one between say Nootkan ~ /malh7ni/ and Chinookan /malhni/!
(Both of these at least share semantic content as well as a phonological
similarity.)

So much for my views, though.  Thank you for letting me talk about an
issue that may not have any resolution in the form of proof.

Alta na lhatEwa!
Dave



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