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Origins of Salishan Lexical Suffixes
Academic Work
Lexical suffix: definition. Lexical suffixes are a group of suffixes found in Salish, Chemakuan, and Wakashan which have semantic content analogous to specific nouns, but lack phonological similarity ot them. In this sense, they are unlike what is usually perceived as derivational affixes, which more often have little concrete meaning, rather serving to identify lexical classes. Lexical suffixes have gone by several names: Sapir described them, rather than naming them, and called them "verbal affixes that refer to nouns" (1911:251/1989 [1990]:28); Reichard called them "nominal suffixes" (1938:601), Vogt used the term "field suffixes" (1940:58), and Kuipers divided them into "somatic suffixes" (1967:120) and "non-somatic suffixes" (1967:125). The usage "lexical suffixes" was first used by Kinkade (1963:352), adopted from Vogt, who used this term, rather, for "a group of suffixes which modify the verb, by changing its syntactical functions or by adding various shades of meaning, as iteration, reciprocity, reflexity etc." (1940:56). Kinkade made the change because of semantic similarity between the suffixes and usual lexical items (i.e. nouns). The term is now in general use in discussing this class of affix in Salish, Chemakuan, and Wakashan studies. A small number of prefixes found in some Salishan languages are often referred to as "lexical prefixes", probably developed by analogy with lexical suffixes; I will not deal with these prefixes here.
AW.00103
1998
Language and Linguistics
UBC Working Papers in Linguistics
International Conference on Salish Languages Papers, 33,
International Conference on Salish Languages Papers, 33,
lexical suffix, Salishan languages
Working Papers
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