Wailaki, also known as Eel River, is an extinct Athabaskan language spoken by the people of the Round Valley Reservation of northern California, one of four languages belonging to the California Athabaskan cluster of the Pacific Coast Athabaskan languages. Dialect clusters reflect the four Wailaki-speaking peoples, the Sinkyone, Wailaki, Nongatl, and Lassik, of the Eel River confederation.
Phonology
The sounds in Wailaki:
Consonants
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | sibilant | lateral | plain | pal. | |||||
| Nasal | m[a] | n | ŋ | ||||||
| Plosive | plain | p | t | ts[a] | tʃ | k | kʲ | ʔ | |
| aspirated | tʰ | tʃʰ | kʰ | kʲʰ | |||||
| ejective | tʼ | tsʼ | tʃʼ | kʼ | kʲʼ | ||||
| Fricative | s | ɬ | ʃ | ɣ | h | ||||
| Approximant | l | j | w[a] | ||||||
Vowels
Vowels in Wailaki are /i e a o/, and with length as /iː eː aː oː/.
References
- ^ Wailaki at Ethnologue (19th ed., 2016)
- Goddard, Pliny E. (1923). "Wailaki Texts". International Journal of American Linguistics. 2 (3/4): 77–135. doi:10.1086/463738. JSTOR 1263274. S2CID 224806395.
- Seaburg, William R. (1977). "A Wailaki (Athapaskan) Text with Comparative Notes". International Journal of American Linguistics. 43 (4): 327–332. doi:10.1086/465503. S2CID 144969995.
- Begay, Kayla Rae (2017). Wailaki Grammar (Ph.D. thesis). University of California Berkeley.
External links
- Wailaki language overview at the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages
- Wailaki Language (Sinkyone, Lassik, Nongatl, Eel River Athabaskan)
- OLAC resources in and about the Wailaki language
- Wailaki at the California Language Archive
Italics indicate extinct languages | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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