"sewellel" redux; "Cenaqua"

[Liland Brajant Ros']

>From: "Alan H. Hartley" ahartley at d.umn.edu
>Subject: Re: "sewellel" redux; "Cenaqua"
>Date: Sat, 9 Feb 2002 17:51:49 -0600

lilEnd: I haven't looked at the entries in question (will do tonight if I
don't forget to), but while it's possible that

>[t]he existence of 3 variants might suggest the Lush. word is a borrowing

it is just as likely that they are dialectal variants; the dictionary treats
Lushootseed as a single language, but there are marked differences in
vocabulary from local form to local form, with the divergence most
noticeable between NL (Northern Lushootseed, aka Skagit) and SL (Southern
Lushootseed, aka Nisqually-Puyallup), with Snohomish often forming a third
center between the two poles. Sometimes the differences have to do with
entirely different roots (like English pail vs. bucket, hotcake vs.
flapjack), sometimes with variations in consonants (like British vs.
American initial sounds in "schedule"), but very frequently they are matters
of word stress, with one dialect group preferring initial stress and the
other final, or of vowel realization with one group giving full force to a
vowel that becomes schwa in the speech of the other. The three forms cited
look to me to be similar enough not to require explanation outside
Lushootseed dialect dynamics, but I'm not really competent to assess the
issue. The dictionary generally gives pride of place to the NL forms, partly
because they are better attested, partly because the lexicographers had
worked mainly in Salish, and partly because there are more speakers of those
forms than of the Southern Lushootseed varieties.

Incidentally, this (Puget Sound Salish dialectology) is another area where
the Ethnologue's information is deficient and misleading, if not downright
incorrect.

Liland

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