• well-established language family of the Pacific Northwest of North America
• 23 languages in B.C., Washington State, Oregon, Idaho, and western Montana
• most languages in the family are severely endangered
• well-known for large consonantal inventories and complex clusters of obstruents
• also known for a weak distinction between nouns and verbs
• most languages in the family have few or no bare transitive verbs and make use of a large inventory of valency-regulating affixes
• languages also make use of a variety of lexical suffixes—bound morphemes refering to bodyparts, plants, animals, materials, and implements

Further reading:

Czaykowska-Higgins, Ewa, and M. Dale Kinkade (1998) Salish languages and linguistics. In Salish Languages and Linguistics: Theoretical and Descriptive Perspectives, Ewa Czaykowska-Higgins and M. Dale Kinkade (eds.), 1–68. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Kroeber, Paul D. (1999) The Salishan Language Family: Reconstructing Syntax. Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press.