Molala_language
Molala language
Extinct language of US Pacific Northwest
Molala is an extinct language once spoken by the Molala people of Oregon. Currently it is included among the Plateau Penutian language family, with Klamath and Sahaptin being considered the closest related.[2][3]
| Molala | |
|---|---|
| Molalla | |
| Native to | United States |
| Region | Cascade Mountains of Oregon |
| Ethnicity | Molala people |
| Extinct | 1958, with the death of Fred Yelkes (1885–1958)[1] |
Penutian?
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | mbe |
| Glottolog | mola1238 |
There were three known dialects:
- Northern Molala, spoken in the Molalla River watershed.
- Upper Santiam Molala, spoken along the upper Santiam River.
- Southern Molala, spoken along the headwaters of the Umpqua and Rogue rivers.
The first written vocabulary of the Molala language was published by Horatio Hale in 1846. As a member of the United States Exploring Expedition, he had visited the Pacific Northwest in 1841. Missionary Marcus Whitman was credited for providing "much valuable information" about the Cayuse people and other natives nearby Waiilatpu.[4] Hale also recorded a Cayuse language vocabulary with Whitman's assistance. In his Waiilatpuan language family, Hale put Cayuse and Molala as the sole members.[5]
In 1910 or 1911, Stephens Savage, a Molala speaker, had told Leo Frachtenberg that the following five words were identical in both Cayuse and Molala:[6]
sorrel horse qasqasi tasiwitkwi spotted horse yuꞏk tasiwitkwi black horse múkimuki tasiwitkwi comb taꞏsps spoon ƚúꞏpinc
In 1929 Edward Sapir grouped Cayuse with Molala as part of the Waiilatpuan branch of the Plateau Penutian languages.[7]
Bruce Rigsby reexamined the Cayuse-Molala lexical pairs provided by Hale and found only a tenth to be potentially related terms. Whitman was credited as the origin of the Waiilatpuan linguistic family. Upon his review of extant Molala and Cayuse linguistic data, Rigsby concluded "I do not see how the two languages could have possibly been mutually intelligible."[8]
The phonology of the Molala language:
Consonants
Vowels
Molala is a verb-heavy polysynthetic language.
Case
Molala nouns have seven cases:
This is a (unofficial) Salish-Based Orthography for the Molala Language:
| a | aa | c | c̓ | e | f | h | i | ii | k | kʰ | k̓ | l | ɬ | ƛ | m | n | ŋ | p | pʰ | p̓ | q | qʰ | q̓ | s | t | tʰ | t̓ | u | uu | w | x | y | ʔ |
| a | aː | ts | tsʼ | e~ə | ɸ | h | i | iː | k | kʰ | k’ | l | ɬ | tɬ | m | n | ŋ | p | pʰ | p’ | q | qʰ | q’ | s | t | tʰ | t’ | u | uː | w | x | y | ʔ |
- Wurm, Mühlhäusler & Tryon 1996, p. 1148.
- Pharris 2006, pp. 358–359.
- Rigsby 1969, pp. 82–83.
- Berman 1996, pp. 3–5.
Bibliography
- Berman, Howard (1996). "The Position of Molala in Plateau Penutian". International Journal of American Linguistics. 62 (1). Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 1–30. doi:10.1086/466273.
- Hale, Horatio (1846). Ethnography and Philology. Philadelphia: C. Sherman.
- NLA (2005). "Molale (Molalla)". Native Languages of the Americas. Archived from the original on 2023-01-22. Retrieved 2024-02-17.
- Pharris, Nicholas J. (2006). Winuunsi Tm Talapaas: A Grammar of the Molalla Language (PDF) (PhD thesis). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan. hdl:2027.42/125859. Archived from the original (PDF) on July 14, 2022.
- Rigsby, Bruce (Spring 1969). Sprague, Roderick; Goss, James A. (eds.). "The Waiilatpuan Problem: More on Cayuse-Molala Relatability". Journal of Northwest Anthropology. 3 (1): 68–146 – via Google Books.
- Sapir, Edward (1929). "Central and South American Languages". Encyclopedia Britannica. Vol. 5 (14th ed.). pp. 138–141.
- Wurm, Stephen A.; Mühlhäusler, Peter; Tryon, Darrell T. (1996). Atlas of Languages of Intercultural Communication in the Pacific, Asia, and the Americas. ISBN 9783110134179.
