Quileute

QUILEUTE (Pacific side of Olympic Peninsula in Washington; Chimakuan)	For more information about metathesis in this language, click on the following links:
Summary: Diachronic Proto-Chimakuan root-initial and root-final consonants underwent metathesis across an intervening vowel in Quileute.	Examples Conditions Motivation Related processes Comments References

Examples:
(See Comments for key to special characters used.)

Proto-Chimakuan	Quileute
*l'ay-	ya?l-	'near, toward'
*m'as-	si?b-	'to smell, nose'

Conditions:

No information currently available.

Motivation:

Borrowing (Mielke & Hume 2000): Quileute roots that are reported to have undergone metathesis have corresponding roots in Salish languages. This may suggest that the existence of apparently metathesized forms in the language results from multiple borrowings rather than metathesis.

Related processes:

Proto-Chimakuan *m' corresponds to b or ?b in Quileute.

Proto-Chimakuan	Quileute
*m'as-	-bas	'to lift, heavy'
*m'aL-	Li?b-	'to sleep'

Comments:

Special Symbols:
? = glottal stop
l' = glottalized lateral
m' = glottalized bilabial nasal
L = voiceless lateral

Last updated: 3/19/2002

References:

Mielke, Jeff & Elizabeth Hume. 2001. Consequences of Word Recognition for Metathesis. In Hume, Elizabeth, Norval Smith and Jeroen van de Weijer (eds.), Surface Syllable Structure and Segment Sequencing. Leiden: HIL.

Powell, J. V. 1985. An occurrence of metathesis in Chumakuan. In Acson, Veneeta Z., & R. Leed. eds., For Gordon H. Fairbanks. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.(*12 point font, left aligned)