Ichishkíin Sínwit: Yakama/Yakima Sahaptin Dictionary (review)

This attractive book represents the collaboration of a native speaker (the first author) who has long been committed to the documentation and revitalization of her language and an academic linguist (the second author). As a substantial and accurate dictionary of Sahaptin—especially one including a large number of example sentences and accompanied by sound files for most words and examples—it is an important addition to the literature on that language and on languages of the Northwest in general.

A bit of potential confusion surrounds the title. Contrary to what the Library of Congress cataloging-in-publication information on page iv might suggest, the Sahaptin version of the title is simply Ichishkíin Sínwit; the words "Yakama/Yakima" are part of the English title of the dictionary. (The typography of the title page makes this clearer. Thanks to Sharon Hargus for confirming this [p.c. 2011].) As is noted by Bruce Rigsby in his essays on the etymology and history of the English names "Sahaptin" and "Yakima"/"Yakama" (pp. xviii-xxxiv), there is disagreement as to the best spelling of the latter term; he follows the Yakama Tribal Council's preference for the older spelling "Yakama" when the language and people are referred to (p. xxxiv), but presumably both spellings needed to be included in the dictionary title.

A practical orthography is employed (explained on pp. xi-xiv), which uses some English conventions (ch and sh for alveopalatals, for instance) but also some special characters (e.g., ɬ for the voiceless lateral, i for a schwalike central vowel, x for the voiceless velar fricative, and underlined k x for uvulars). Potentially confusing for users who are not linguists is the fact that digraphs and trigraphs such as ch, ts, aa, kw, ts' are treated as units for purposes of alphabetization; so, for example, the entries átway, át'i-, atɬtɬíix, áts, and áak appear in that order. It is helpful, therefore, that a footer showing the alphabetical order appears throughout the Sahaptin-to-English section; one wishes that more dictionaries of American languages followed this sensible practice.

The English-to-Sahaptin section (pp. 335-467) is basically a word list and index to the Sahaptin entries. For information on the grammar and usage of Sahaptin forms, one needs to turn to the Sahaptin-to-English section (pp. 3-331).

In a language with complex stem structure, especially structure that includes productive prefixation, deciding how to organize entries and what to treat as headwords can be something of a problem; any choice is likely to entail some disadvantages. Aoki's dictionary of Sahaptin's close relative Nez Perce (1994) takes morphemes as headwords; complex verb stems appear as subentries within the entry for the verb root. This organization has the advantage that stems formed from the same root appear together, and also makes it somewhat easier to figure out something of the structure and meaning of a complex stem that is not itself included in the dictionary (as long as its components are listed); on the other hand, it has the disadvantage—a serious one for many non-linguist users—that looking up a complex verb, especially one whose stem includes prefixes, requires first analyzing the stem into its morphological components and then looking up the root. (Aoki's entries for many prefixes, though not for the most frequent ones, do contain cross-references to the root entries in which the prefix in question appears.)

Beavert and Hargus, on the other hand, largely organize the Sahaptin-to-English portion of their dictionary alphabetically by the initial elements of stems. Complex stems and compounds often appear as subentries within the entry for one of their components (usually the initial element, except for compounds); when this is the case, there is also a short separate entry for the related stem, containing a brief gloss and a cross-reference to...