Salish Etymological Dictionary (review)

Aert Kuipers’s Salish etymological dictionary is the culmination of nearly forty years of research into the comparative phonology and lexicon of the Salish languages from the leader of the great Dutch tradition in Salish linguistics. The bulk of the work is dedicated to the dictionary itself (12–231), which further subdivides into a number of coherent sections. This is preceded by a brief introduction (1–11) and followed by a list of non-Salish elements in the dictionary (232–33) and a partially categorized bibliography (234–40).

The introduction summarizes the results of years’ worth of work in comparative Salish phonology by the author (as well as others) and offers justification for the sound correspondences that form the basis of the reconstructed Proto-Salish forms offered. K’s presentation also offers an explicit assessment of what specific elements or correspondences merit inclusion into proposed Proto-Salish forms (i.e. they must be found in both Coast Salish and Interior Salish, with proper sound correspondence).

The dictionary section itself is subdivided into several sections of uneven length. It begins with a brief but clear and concise overview on how to use the dictionary (12–15), providing the order of languages presented, the alphabetization used, and the like. The largest section of the dictionary is an alphabetical listing of Proto-Salish forms (15–135). The list of common Proto-Salish items found in the dictionary is followed by lists of roots that can only be reconstructed back either to Coast Salish (136–57)—in a broad understanding of this genetic unit, including Bella Coola and Tsamosan languages—or to Proto-Interior Salish alone (158–202). Given both the relatively shallow nature of Interior Salish in terms of time-depth with respect to Coast Salish, and the thorny issue regarding the position of the Tsamosan languages and Bella Coola with respect to the core ‘Central Salish’ group of Coast Salish languages, it comes as no surprise that the Interior Salish group of cognates is significantly larger.

The core dictionary part of the volume is followed by a section devoted to the reconstruction of the characteristic system of lexical suffixes (203–14) found in the Salish languages (i.e. bound elements with content semantics used in a range of word-building formations). This section uses the subdivisions seen in the dictionary section, consisting of lists of Proto-Salish lexical suffixes (203–11), Coast Salish suffixes (212), and Interior Salish lexical suffixes (213–14).

K follows these two sections with two other important cognate sets found in particular subsets of Salish languages. The first of these includes lexical items found only in Central (or core Coast) Salish languages (215–18). The second set includes a group of words that are shared by various groups of Coast Salish languages and the Interior Salish languages Lillooet and/or Thompson (219–30). This is an important area of Salish language and cultural interaction cross-cutting genetic boundaries.

This dictionary is a landmark achievement in Salish comparative linguistics that will stimulate further research for generations. Its primary audience is of course specialists in Salish linguistics, but anyone interested in comparative linguistics could use it with ease and learn much from it. On the negative side, there is no real discussion of what the reconstructed Proto-Salish vocabulary contained in the volume means for Salish prehistory, for example, what kinds of cultural practices or proto-homeland it sheds light on, and so on. In addition, there is no use or even mention of the commonly used modern names of various languages, such as St’at’imcets for [sƛ’ έƛ’ əmxc] for Lillooet. Overall though the volume is highly recommended.