- Kwak'wala
Infobox Language
nativename=Kwak'wala
name=Kwakiutl
region=NorthernVancouver Island ,Canada
speakers=~250
familycolor=American
fam1=Wakashan
fam2=Northern
iso2=nai
iso3=kwkKwak'wala (also Kwagiutl or Kwakiutl) is the Indigenous language spoken by the
Kwakwaka'wakw . It belongs to theWakashan language family. There are about 250 Kwak'wala speakers today, which amounts to 5% of the Kwakwaka'wakw population. Because of the small number of speakers, and the fact that very few children learn Kwak'wala as a first language, its long-term viability is in question. However, interest from many Kwakwaka'wakw in preserving their language and a number of revitalization projects are countervailing pressures which may extend the viability of the language.Dialects
The
ethnonym Kwakwaka'wakw literally means "speakers of Kwak'wala", effectively defining an ethnic connection by reference to a shared language. However, the Kwak'wala spoken by each of the surviving tribes with Kwak'wala speakers exhibits dialectical differences from that spoken by other tribes. There are four major dialects which are unambiguously dialects of Kwak'wala: Kwak̓wala, ’Nak̓wala, G̱uc̓ala and T̓łat̓łasik̓wala. [ [http://www.languagegeek.com/wakashan/kwakwakawakw_communities.html Kwakwa̱ka̱'wakw/Kʷakʷəkəw̓akʷ Communities ] ]In addition to these dialects, there are also Kwakwaka'wakw tribes that speak
Liq'wala . Liq'wala has sometimes been considered to be a dialect of Kwak'wala, and sometimes a separate language. The standard orthography for Liq'wala is quite different from the most widely-used orthography for Kwak'wala, which tends to widen the apparent differences between Liq'wala and Kwak'wala.tructure
"Nominal inflection":
An entity can be present in a sentence in one of three ways: as a full overt noun; as a pronoun; or without any overt exponent. In each case, the entity will also be represented by an agreement clitic: if the entity takes the form of a noun or pronoun, the clitic will be from the prenominal set; if the entity has no overt exponent, then a pronominal clitic will be used. Clitics always precede the nominal with which they agree, which violates the generalization that Kwak'wala affixes are always suffixing. However, the clitic always forms a phonological word the preceding word rather than the nominal, with the result that the suffixing generalization is always true as far as the phonology is concerned.
Verbal suffixes are shown in the following table:
Another set of suffixes is used to simultaneously indicate the subject and object/instrument, as shown in the following tables. (Note that when the extension of the subject and object/instrument overlap, no suffix is available. Another construction must be used to express this kind of reflexive relation.)
Genitive suffixes with a third-person possessor are shown in the following table:
A number of
clitic s are used to mark agreement with nouns, including clitics fordefiniteness /deixis and case (including accusative andinstrumental case ). Clitics are positioned at the left edge of the noun they agree with, but lean phonologically to their left. The result is a systematic mismatch between syntactic and phonological constituent structure, such that on the surface, each prenominal word appears to be inflected to agree with the following noun.This can be seen in the preceding example: the sentence-initial predicate "IPA|kʷixideda" includes a clitic /"-ida"/ which belongs together with the nominal "IPA|bəgʷanəmaχa" in terms of syntactical constituency. That nominal in turns includes a clitic /"-χa"/ which is syntactically connected to the following noun, and so on.
Orthography
Word lists and some documentation of Kwak'wala were created from the early period of contact with Europeans in the 18th century, but a systematic attempt to record the language did not occur before the work of
Franz Boas in the late 19th and early 20th century.Fact|date=July 2007 Over time, Boas developed a systematic orthography for documentation of Kwak'wala, which captured almost all of the important distinctions in the language (although some features, such as vowel length and stress, were not recorded systematically).Although the Boasian orthography was able to capture almost all of the important features of Kwak'wala, it was difficult for Kwak'wala speakers to use: it was impossible to write with a standard typewriter, due to its abundant use of special symbols; and it used some standard letters very differently than English orthography, which was familiar to many Kwakwaka'wakw. A practical orthography, developed by the Kwakwaka'wakw linguist
David Grubb , became the standard system for writing Kwak'wala.Practical writing of Kwak'wala today is typically done in the orthography promoted by the
U'mista Cultural Society , which largely resembles the Grubb orthography. Variants of this orthography allow for easier computer typesetting. For example, instead of marking ejective consonants with an apostrophe printed above the consonant, the apostrophe may be printed as a separate character following the consonant. Linguistic works on Kwak'wala typically use an IPA or Americanist transcription.The following table compares different orthographic representations of some Kwak'wala words.
(NB: "g." in the Boasian transcription should be an underdotted "g" rather than a digraph. "ḵ’", etc., in the U'mista transcription should be overstricken rather than written as digraphs.)
History and current status
The use of Kwak'wala declined significantly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, mainly due to the
assimilationist policies of the Canadian government, and above all the mandatory attendance of Kwakwa'wakw children atresidential school s. Although Kwak'wala and Kwakwaka'wakw culture have been well-studied by linguists and anthropologists, these efforts did not reverse the trends leading to language loss. According to Guy Buchholtzer, "The anthropological discourse had too often become a long monologue, in which the Kwakwaka'wakw had nothing to say." [ [http://www.sfu.ca/sfunews/sfu_news/archives/sfunews07070512.shtml SFU News Online - Native language centre planned - July 07, 2005 ] ] As a result of these pressures, there are relatively few Kwak'wala speakers today, and most remaining speakers are past the age of child-raising, which is considered crucial for language transmission. As with many other indigenous languages, there are significant barriers to language revitalization. [ [http://www.ncela.gwu.edu/pubs/stabilize/conclusion.htm Stabilizing Indigenous Languages: Conclusion ] ]However, a number of revitalization efforts have recently attempted to reverse language loss for Kwak'wala. A proposal to build a Kwakwaka'wakw First Nations Centre for Language Culture has gained wide support. [ [http://www.sfu.ca/sfunews/sfu_news/archives/sfunews07070512.shtml SFU News Online - Native language centre planned - July 07, 2005 ] ] A review of revitalization efforts in the 1990s shows that the potential to fully revitalize Kwak'wala still remains, but serious hurdles also exist. [http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/%7Ejar/RIL_4.html Reversing Language Shift: Can Kwak'wala Be Revived?]
References
Bibliography
*cite journal |last=Anderson |first=Stephen |authorlink=Stephen Anderson |year=1984 |title=Kwakwala syntax and the government-binding theory |journal=Syntax and Semantics |volume=16
*cite journal |last=Bach |first=Emmon |authorlink=Emmon Bach |year=1975 |title=Long vowels and stress in Kwakiutl |journal=Texas Linguistic Forum |volume=2 |pages=9–19
*cite journal |last=Boas |first=Franz |authorlink=Franz Boas |year=1893 |title=Vocabulary of the Kwakiutl language |journal=Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society |volume=31 |issue=140 |pages=34–82
*cite journal |last=Boas |first=Franz |authorlink=Franz Boas |year=1900 |title=Sketch of the Kwakiutl language |journal=American Anthropologist |volume=2 |issue=4 |pages=708–721 |doi=10.1525/aa.1900.2.4.02a00080
*cite journal |last=Boas |first=Franz |authorlink=Franz Boas |year=1924 |title=A revised list of Kwakiutl suffixes |journal=International Journal of American Linguistics |volume=3 |issue=1 |pages=117–131 |doi=10.1086/463753
*cite journal |last=Boas |first=Franz |authorlink=Franz Boas |year=1931 |title=Notes on the Kwakiutl vocabulary |journal=International Journal of American Linguistics |volume=6 |issue=3/4 |pages=163–178 |doi=10.1086/463790
*cite journal |last=Boas |first=Franz |authorlink=Franz Boas |year=1932 |title=Notes on some recent changes in the Kwakiutl language |journal=International Journal of American Linguistics |volume=7 |issue=1/2 |pages=90–93 |doi=10.1086/463797
*cite journal |last=Boas |first=Franz |authorlink=Franz Boas |year=1947 |title=Grammar of Kwakiutl (With a Glossary of the Suffixes) |journal=Transactions of the American Philosophical Society |volume=37 |issue=3 |pages=201–377 |doi=10.2307/1005538
*cite book |last=Davenport |first=Tristan |authorlink=Tristan Davenport |year=2006 |title=Alternations in Place and Laryngeality: On the Coda Condition of Kwakw’ala |publisher=University of California, Santa Cruz |location=Manuscript
*cite book |last=Grubb |first=David |authorlink=David Grubb |year=1969 |title=A Kwakiutl phonology |publisher=University of Victoria |location=MA thesis
*cite book |last=Grubb |first=David |authorlink=David Grubb |year=1977 |title=A Practical Writing System and Short Dictionary of Kwakw'ala (Kwakiutl) |publisher=National Museum of Man |location=Ottawa
*
*cite journal |last=Wilson |first=Stephen |authorlink=Stephen Wilson (linguist) |year=1986 |title=Metrical structure in Wakashan phonology |journal=Proceedings of the Twelfth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society |pages=283–291
*cite book |last=Zec |first=Draga |authorlink=Draga Zec |year=1994 |title=Sonority constraints on prosodic structure |publisher=Garland PublishingLinks
* [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=kwk Ethnologue report for language code:kwk]
* [http://www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/ks/5030_e.html Kwak'wala lessons for kids]
* [http://www.languagegeek.com/nwc/nwc_keyboards.html Northwest Coast keyboard maps]
* [http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/%7Ejar/RIL_4.html Reversing Language Shift: Can Kwak'wala Be Revived?]
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