Lillooet language

Consonants

Like other languages of the American Northwest language area, including all Salishan languages, Lillooet has a large consonant inventory with extensive phonemic glottalization. Lillooet has 44 consonants distinguished at six places of articulation. Every non-fricative consonant can be glottalized; only the glottalized lateral affricate /t͡ɬʼ/ lacks a plain counterpart, although the glottalized counterpart of /t/ has a sibilant release /t͡sʼ/, and the uvular glottalized consonants are affricated. Lillooet's consonant inventory is unusual in lacking a hissing sibilant fricative /s/, hence ⟨s⟩ is used to represent /ʃ/ in the practical orthography.

• Glottalized stops are pronounced as ejective consonants. Glottalized sonorants are pronounced with creaky voice. /nˀ/ = /nʼ/ = [n̰] are all essentially equivalent notation which are often used interchangeably in descriptions of Lillooet.
• The glottalized consonants of Lillooet contrast not only with plain consonants, but also with sequences of consonants and glottal stops. For example, /tisqlawˀa/ "the beaver, the money" (with /wˀ/) contrasts with /tiqʷlawʔa/ "the onion" (with /wʔ/).
• The dental glides /z, zˀ/ are phonetically lax (lenited) fricatives varying between pure dental [z̪᫛, z̪᫛ˀ] and interdental [ð̪̞͆, ð̪̞͆ˀ], depending on the dialect. It is unclear if these sounds are truly dental sibilants, as van Eijk notes the usage of ⟨z⟩ as a simplified transcription, while comparing the dental lax fricative to a fronted English z and the interdental to a lax English voiced th.
• The velar and pharyngeal glides, /ɣ, ɣˀ/ and /ʕ, ʕˀ, ʕʷ, ʕˀʷ/, are phonetically lax, [ɣ᫛, ɣ᫛ˀ] and [ʕ̞, ʕ̞ˀ, ʕ̞ʷ, ʕ̞ˀʷ], like their dental counterparts. Phonologically, van Eijk considers the velar glides /ɣ, ɣˀ/ as "velarized counterparts" of /j, jˀ/, and the pharyngeal glides /ʕ, ʕˀ, ʕʷ, ʕˀʷ/ as "uvularized counterparts" of /h, ʔ, w, wˀ/.
• There are four pairs of "retracted" and nonretracted consonants (which alternate morphophonemically). "Retraction" on consonants is essentially velarization with accompanying tenseness.
  • /t͡ʃ/ – /t͡ʂ/
  • /ʃ/ – /ʂ/
  • /l/ – /ɫ/
  • /lˀ/ – /ɫˀ/

Vowels

Lillooet has 8 vowels:

The primary phonetic realizations of the phonemes are indicated in brackets to the right, though many position-dependent allophones exist; the realization of /i/ ranges from [i~ɛ], that of /u/ from [u~ɔ], that of /a/ from [a~ɛ], and that of /ə/ from [ə~ɪ~ʌ~ɔ̆~ʊ].

Phonological processes

• Some sequences give rise to an epenthetic /ə/.

Post-velar Harmony (retraction):

• Within roots, all consonant and vowel retracted-nonretracted pairs must be of the same type. That is, a root may not contain both a retracted and a nonretracted vowel or consonant. This is a type of retracted tongue root harmony (also called "pharyngeal harmony") involving both vowels and consonants, an areal feature of this region of North America shared by other Interior Salishan and non-Salishan languages (for example see Chilcotin vowel flattening).
• In addition to the root harmony restriction, some suffixes harmonize with the root to which they are attached. For instance, the inchoative suffix /-wílˀx/ -wil’c:

ama "good"	/ʔáma/	+ /-wílˀx/	→	/ʔamawílˀx/ [ʔɛmɛwélˀx]	amawíl’c "to get better"
qvl "bad"	/qə̠ḻ/	+ /-wílˀx/	→	/qə̠ḻwíḻˀx/ [qaɫwɛ́ɫˀx]	qvḻwíiḻʼc "to get spoiled"

Reduplication

Lillooet, as is typical of the Salishan family, has several types of reduplication (and triplication) that have a range of functions such as expressing plural, diminutive, aspect, etc.

A more complicated type of reduplication is the internal reduplication used to express the diminutive. In this case the consonant before a stressed vowel is reduplicated after the stressed vowel and usually the vowel then changes to e (IPA: [ə]). Examples are below:

More than one reduplicative process can occur in a given word:

Lillooet has several other variants of the above types. Reduplication is further complicated by consonant glottalization (see van Eijk (1997) for details).

Mood and modality

The subjunctive mood appears in nine distinct environments, with a range of semantic effects, including:

• weakening an imperative to a polite request,
• turning a question into an uncertainty statement,
• creating an ignorance free relative.

Unlike Indo-European equivalents, the Lillooet subjunctive is not selected by attitude verbs.

Lillooet has a complex system of subject and object agreement. There are different subject agreement paradigms for transitive vs. intransitive predicates. For intransitive predicates, there are three distinct subject paradigms, one of which is glossed as 'subjunctive' by van Eijk (1997) and Davis (2006)