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Palaihnihan and Shasta III: Dorsal stops

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2026

D. L. Olmsted
D. L. Olmsted*
Affiliation:
University of California, Davis
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Extract

Since the publication of the last paper in this series, Hokan study has been enriched by a major new source of data, William Bright's The Karok language (UCPL 13; Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1957). As one of the objectives of this series is to test the Shastan hypothesis (i.e. the notion that Achumawi and Atsugewi have a closer relationship to Shasta than they have to any other Hokan languages except each other and are therefore to be classified with Shasta in a Shastan subgroup of Hokan), comparisons outside the ‘Shastan subgroup’ are mandatory. For though comparison of Palaihnihan (Achumawi and Atsugewi) with Shasta can show, as PS I and PS II do fairly conclusively, that the Palaihnihan languages are more closely related to each other than either is to Shasta, they do not rule out the possibility of Palaihnihan being a subgroup within Shastan. To rule out this possibility and to test the Shastan hypothesis, it is necessary to have reference to non-‘Shastan’ Hokan languages. Unfortunately for the purposes of the present paper, Karok has only two dorsal phonemes—the stop /k/ and the spirant /x/, in contrast with Achumawi . The consequences of these differences in phonemic diversity are discussed below, after presentation of the Palaihnihan materials basic to this series.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 35 , Issue 4: October-December , December 1959, pp. 637 - 644
Copyright
Copyright © 1959 by the Linguistic Society of America

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References

1 Palaihnihan and Shasta II: Apical stops, Lg. 33.136-8 (1957), hereafter referred to as PS II. The acknowledgments in fn. 1, PS II, are hereby renewed, and appreciation is extended to the Social Science Research Council, whose Faculty Research Fellowship made possible field trips to the Tequistlatec during 1957 and to the Atsugewi and Achumawi during 1958.

To the earlier bibliographies (Lg. 32.73 and 33.136) the following items are added: William H. Jacobsen Jr., Washo and Karok: An approach to comparative Hokan, IJAL 24.195-212 (1958). A. L. Kroeber, An Atsugewi word list, IJAL 24.213-4 (1958). A. L. Kroeber, The Washo language of East Central California and Nevada, UCPAAE 4 (1907). D. L. Olmsted, Atsugewi phonology, IJAL 24.215-220 (1958). C. H. Merriam, The classification and distribution of the Pit River Indian tribes of California (Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 78.3, 1926).

2 Sources: Karok, Bright 1958; Achumawi and Atsugewi, PS I; Shasta, Bright, personal communication, and my own analysis, unpublished; Washo, Jacobsen 1958.

3 Diegeño, Comecrudo, and Cotonarne forms from Sapir 1920.

4 Tequistlatec data from my own field notes.

5 PNH *K here is not the same as PP *K (which gives Aj. /t/, At. /k/). PNH *K must be assumed to become Kon. /k/, Pal. /j/, Shasta /t/.

6 Datum collected by Paul Radin, now in the files of the Survey of California Languages, Department of Linguistics, Berkeley. It is not clear what dialect is represented, but it is probably ‘middle-river’ (Fall River or Big Valley).

7 Datum from de Angulo files, representing an ‘up-river’ dialect, perhaps Qosalektawi.

8 This form is from the Curtin ms., cf. bibliography in Olmsted 1958.

9 This is the word given by Merriam (1926).