| Tsimshianic | |
|---|---|
| Tsmksian | |
| Geographic distribution | British Columbia,Alaska |
| Linguistic classification | Penutian ?
|
| Subdivisions | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
| Glottolog | tsim1258 |
 Pre-contact distribution of Tsimshianic languages | |
TheTsimshianic languages are afamily of languages spoken in northwesternBritish Columbia and in SoutheastAlaska onAnnette Island andKetchikan. All Tsimshianic languages are endangered, some with only around 400 speakers. Only around 2,170 people of the ethnic Tsimshian/ˈsɪmʃiən/ population in Canada still speak a Tsimshian language;[1] about 50 of the 1,300 Tsimshian people living in Alaska still speakCoast Tsimshian.[2][3] Tsimshianic languages are considered by most linguists to be an independent language family, with four main languages: Coast Tsimshian, Southern Tsimshian, Nisg̱a’a, and Gitksan.[4]
The Tsimshianic languages were included byEdward Sapir in hisPenutian hypothesis, which is currently not widely accepted, at least in its full form. The Penutian connections of Tsimshianic have been reevaluated byMarie-Lucie Tarpent, who finds the idea probable,[5] though others hold that the Tsimshianic family is not closely related to any other North American language.[6][7]
Tsimshianic consists of 4lects:
Coast Tsimshian is spoken along the lowerSkeena River in NorthwesternBritish Columbia, on some neighbouring islands, and to the north atNew Metlakatla, Alaska. Southern Tsimshian was spoken on an island quite far south of the Skeena River in the village ofKlemtu; however, it became extinct in 2013 with the death of the last speaker. Nisga’a is spoken along theNass River. Gitksan is spoken along the Upper Skeena River aroundHazelton and other areas.
Nisga’a and Gitksan are very closely related and are usually considereddialects of the same language by linguists. However, speakers from both groups consider themselves ethnically separate from each other and from the Tsimshian and thus consider Nisga’a and Gitksan to be separate languages. Coast and Southern Tsimshian are also often regarded as dialects of the same language.
As of 2023, Tsimshian courses are available at theUniversity of Alaska Southeast.[8]
Consonantal inventory of Proto-Tsimshian:[9]
| Labial | Dental | Palatal | Velar | Labio- velar | Uvular | Labio- uvular | Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Non-continuous obstruent | simple | *p | *t | *ts | *k | *kʷ | *q | *qʷ | *ʔ,*ʔʷ | |
| glottalized | *pʼ | *tʼ | *tsʼ | *kʼ | *kʷʼ | *qʼ | *qʷʼ | |||
| Fricative | *s,*ɬ | *x | *χ | *χʷ | *h,*hʷ | |||||
| Approximant | simple | *l | *j | *w | ||||||
| glottalized | *lˀ | *jˀ | *wˀ | |||||||
| Nasal | simple | *m | *n | |||||||
| glottalized | *mˀ | *nˀ | ||||||||
Though Tsimshianic is unmistakably part of the central northwest coastal Sprachbund (Beck 2002), no convincing evidence has been forthcoming for a genetic relationship between it and any other language family, in spite of persistent attempts to lump the family into the hypothetical Penutian stock, whose other members are found far to the south in Oregon and California (see for example Sapir 1921 and Tarpent 1997).
While the Tsimshianic language family is considered by some to be an isolate, others have considered it to be a member of a much larger stock. In particular, Sapir (1921) classified Tsimshianic as a part of the Penutian stock. More recently, DeLancey et al. (1988) and Tarpent (1996, 1997) have re-argued this point, suggesting that Tsimshianic is indeed a Penutian language. These authors point to morphological, phonemic, and lexical correspondences to make this claim. However, the major problems that have been expressed in the literature about the Penutian stock, as well as the problems with Tsimshianic as a part of that stock (see the discussion in Rigsby 1986, as well as Campbell 1997 for a general overview) cast doubt on this relationship. I take the conservative position that the Tsimshianic family is an isolate, and not related to the Penutian stock, or any other hypothesized stocks, though nothing in this work hinges on that position.
