Publication Date

8-6-1970

Abstract

The phonological component of a grammar comprises several sub­components. Chapter one discusses the theoretico-formal postulates about these sub-components, about the phonological component as a whole and about its place in a grammar. Chapter two gives some historical and ethnographic background for the Coast Tsimshian group. Discussion here involves the development of recent dialects as the result of major population movements in the nineteenth century, the subsequent destruction of the boundaries of these dialects by the efflorescence of idiosyncratic linguistic behavior, the extinction of the Coast Tsimshian as a speech community and the imminent extinction of the language itself. Also included in the second chapter is a brief survey of previous linquistic work in Coast Tsimshian with special emphasis on Edward Sapir's Penutian Hypothesis. Chapter three includes an inventory of Coast Tsimshian phonemes with their distinctive feature specifications, their sequence structure, segment structure and full feature descriptions. Chapter four deals with the rules for the assignment of stress. Chapter five includes a discussion of stem reduplication, vowel morphophonemics and the noncyclical phonological processes. Appendices I and II, in summary, include an ordered list of the morpheme structure conditions and phonological rules discussed in the text as well as selected examples of rule applications.

Project Sponsors

The National Museum of Canada, the American Philosophical Society

Document Type

Dissertation

Language

English

Degree Name

Anthropology

Level of Degree

Doctoral

Department Name

Anthropology

First Committee Member (Chair)

Bruce Joseph Rigsby

Second Committee Member

Harry Wetherald Basehart

Third Committee Member

Stanley Stewart Newman

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