SENĆOŦEN: A Grammar of the Saanich Language Main Menu Contents Preface PART 1 Introduction The organization of this grammar The Place of SENĆOŦEN in the Salishan Language Family Basics of the SENĆOŦEN word Useful phrases PART 2 The SENĆOŦEN Alphabet and Sounds Consonants Vowels and Diphthongs Notes on Pronunciation PART 3 SENĆOŦEN Grammatical Patterns 1 Transitive and Intransitive Verbs 2 Past and Future Tense 3 Basic Speech Acts 4 Nouns and Articles 5 Possessive Pronouns 6 Adjectives 7 Basic Word Order 8 The Preposition 9 Serial Verbs 10 Auxiliaries 11 Conjunction: ‘And/with’ and ‘but/without’ 12 No and Not 13 Self and Each Other 14 More Negative Words 15 Questions: ‘Who?,’ ‘What?,’ ‘Someone,’ ‘Something’ 16 Questions: ‘Do what?,’ ‘Say what?,’ and ‘Which one?’ 17 Subordinate Subjects in Questions 18 Questions: ‘Whose?’ 19 Every, All, Any, and Some 20 Comparison 21 Questions: ‘When?’ 22 Numbers 23 Time Expressions 24 Time Prefixes 25 Questions: ‘Where?’ 26 Location Expressions 27 Paths 28 Questions: ‘How?’ and ‘How much?’ 29 Adverbial Expressions 30 Conditional Clauses 31 Should, Must, Ought to, Want to 32 Object Pronouns 33 Passive 34 Strong, Weak, and Zero Stems 35 Participant Roles and Middle Voice 36 Recipient, Beneficiary, and Other Participants 37 Lexical Suffixes 38 Questions: ‘Why?’ 39 Because 40 Cause 41 Collective Plural 42 The Actual Aspect 43 State, Result, and Duration 44 Activity Suffixes 45 Reflexive, Inchoative, and Noncontrol Middle 46 Ȼ Clauses 47 Relative Clauses 48 Speech Act Modifiers 49 Possessed Verbs 50 Summary of Particles with Ȼ 51 So Then ... 52 Reporting Verbs and Direct Quotes 53 Indirect Quotes 54 Verbal Prefixes 55 Nominalizing Prefixes 56 Adverbial Prefixes 57 More Demonstrative Articles 58 Objects of Intent and Emotion 59 More Reduplication Patterns 60 Interjections 61 Politeness Expressions 62 Rare Prefixes and Suffixes 63 A Fully Annotated Text 64 Texts to Annotate Appendix A: Technical Description of SENĆOŦEN Sounds Appendix B: SENĆOŦEN Pronouns Appendix C: Demonstrative Articles Appendix D: SENĆOŦEN Kin Terms Appendix E: Index to Technical Linguistic Topics Appendix F: Vocabulary Bibliography SENĆOŦEN Dictionary Basic SENĆOŦEN Dictionary without root and affix indexes

Acknowledgments

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    All of the SENĆOŦEN speaking elders who contributed to the SENĆOŦEN dictionary also contributed directly or indirectly to the development of this grammar. Their names are listed here, but see the dictionary for pictures and more about each elder: Anne Jimmy, Belinda Claxton, Baptiste Jimmy, Cecelia Jim, Christopher Paul, Dave Elliott, Sr., Elsie Claxton, Esther Harry, Ernie Olsen, Earl Claxton, Sr., Gabriel Bartleman, Helen Jack, Irvin Jimmy, Ivan Morris, Jane Tate, Lavina Charles, Louis Claxton, Mary Jack, Manson Pelkey, Norman Williams, Philip Pelkey, Richard Harry, Raymond Sam, Stella Wright, Victor Joseph, and Violet Williams.
    Some of these speakers contributed through recorded narratives and conversations where grammatical patterns were determined by observation of natural usage. A few of the elders contributed through direct elicitation of their native speaker intuitions about what is and is not grammatical. The most important among this latter group was the late Elsie Claxton. Mrs. Claxton was the last monolingual speaker of SENĆOŦEN. She could understand English to a limited extent, but was not comfortable speaking English. She and Violet Williams worked together to provide many thoughtful judgements of the grammaticality of elicited sentences. Other speakers who provided grammaticality judgements were Earl Claxton, Manson Pelkey, Ernie Olsen, Helen Jack, Lavina Charles, Belinda Claxton, and Louis Claxton. In working through the recorded narratives, Louis Claxton has been especially helpful in clarifying grammaticality and usage.
    The author’s research on the grammar of SENĆOŦEN was begun in 1980. The work has been funded by grants from the Phillips Fund of the American Philosophical Society, the Jacobs Funds of the Whatcom Museum, the University of North Texas, and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). This grammar is the immediate product of a Documenting Endangered Languages (DEL) grant from NEH. However, any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities. The National Research Council Canada provided elder speaker funds through the W̱SÁNEĆ School Board for the second half of this project.
    Without the support of the W̱SÁNEĆ people and the W̱SÁNEĆ School Board this grammar would not have been written. I thank especially the SENĆOŦEN language teachers John Elliott, Linda Elliott, Jim Elliott, David Underwood, Renee Sampson, Elisha Elliott, and PENÁ Elliott for their encouragement and friendship. I thank also Kevin Paul for his friendship, encouragement, and dedication to this project. Great thanks are due to Tye Swallow, who encouraged the project and helped coordinate space and payments for work with the L1 elders. Belinda Claxton deserves a special thank you. Beyond helping to translate recorded narrative, she helped coordinate work with her brother Lou and visits to W̱SÁNEĆ territories on the islands. Her many stories of her mother and uncles helped make sense of many of the recorded SENĆOŦEN. Her warm friendship made visits to W̱SÁNEĆ territory like coming home.
    Janet Leonard provided useful feedback on an early draft of the grammar, and Marion Caldecott used earlier drafts in her class at the University of Victoria and gave much helpful feedback from her students. I again thank Randy Bouchard, Dorothy Kennedy, and the late Thom Hess. The recordings of SENĆOŦEN narratives they provided are treasure troves of indirect information on the grammar.
    I give a huge HÍ SW̱ KE to Aiden Pine and the folks at Mother Tongues, who are responsible for the amazing ReadAlong Studio, which is used in §63 and §64.
    At the University of North Texas, I thank dean’s office personnel Art Goven, David Holdeman, Catherine Cullivan, and Christine Paswan for their help and support. The Technical Communication Department faculty and staff were welcoming and supportive: Chair Kim Campbell, her assistant Lucero Carranza, IT master Brad Davis all provided critical support.
    Ivy Doak provided expert linguistic advice and wise council on everything.
 

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