Lushootseed (Dxʷləšucid)

mosan

  • Puget Sound area of Washington State
  • member of the Coast branch of the Salishan family
  • roughly divided into two dialects, Northern and Southern
  • currently only spoken as a native language by a few elderly speakers
  • maintained as a heritage language in some communities
  • well-documented through audio recordings of Elders, dictionaries, and pedagogical materials

Typological features:

  • rigid VSO, mildly polysynthetic
  • little inflectional morphology
  • bare patient-oriented radicals
  • derivational affixes regulate transitivity
  • clause structure determined by Information Structure rather than syntax
  • 37 consonants, ejective and labialized series, glottalized resonants
  • tolerates clusters of up to 5 obstruents

Links

Tulalip Tribes
Lushootseed Research