Talk:Southern Tsimshian dialect

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Does anyone have a source for the Ski:xs name there? I'm the guy in two of the sources on the page, and I've never heard of that spelling or pronunciation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.102.205.51 (talk) 02:03, 10 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Ski:xs - what is this?

Does anyone have a source for that pronunciation? As an L2 speaker and the guy who did most of the research on the language, I've never heard of it, or found a source, and I'd like to know where it's coming from and if it's legit just something I didn't learn. ~~muskwatch~~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.102.205.51 (talk) 02:04, 10 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I found a source that /skiːxs/ is the native pronunciation (now in the article). So it seems that it was just the IPA reanalyzed as a name for the language. AquitaneHungerForce (talk) 12:49, 23 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

In looking around for sources I found Cataloguing the World's Endangered Languages^[1] using this spelling. I would still guess that it is probably a result of trying to normalize the IPA, but it does seem to be in use. AquitaneHungerForce (talk) 21:29, 23 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ Cataloguing the World's Endangered Languages. Taylor & Francis. 2 February 2018. ISBN 9781317413899.

Suspicious IPA

Earlier I added an IPA pronunciation guide for Sgüüx̣s based on one of the sources already cited in the article.^[1] I am now suspicious of this for a couple of reasons.

1. The source does not explicitly say that it is IPA. It is heavily implied but not explicitly stated.

2. The source uses ⟨:⟩ instead of ⟨ː⟩. This happens all the time but it is a flag that the writer prefers ascii characters.

3. While I can't find a phonemic inventory for Sgüüx̣s, the phonemic inventory for Coast Tsimshian, which should be very similar, does not have /x/.

3b. Coast Tsimshian uses ⟨üü⟩ to represent /ɯː/. So if we translate the commonly used Sgüüxs to IPA according to Coast Tsimshian orthography, we get /sgɯːχs/, which is significantly different (I do not think that the difference between /g/ and /k/ is notable since it is next to a voiceless /s/). If we were to try an write /skiːxs/ in the Coast Tsimshian orthography skiixs or sgiixs.

4. When looking through references I found The Oxford Handbook of Evidentiality spells the language Sgüüxs and furthermore they state:^[2]

Examples are from fieldwork, and given in the Gitksan practical orthography: k = [q]; g = [ɢ]; x = [χ]. South Tsimshian (Sgüüxs) is now considered likely to be dormant - is not shown on this map.

The use of the Gitksan practical orthography elsewhere implies, although does not outright state that the use of ⟨x⟩ in Sgüüxs is meant to represent [χ] rather than [x] (/χ/ is present in Gitksan and the standard orthography transcribes it as ⟨x⟩). It is rather difficult for me to come up with any other reason to use ⟨x⟩ instead of ⟨x⟩ if the sound represented is [x]. The only way I might be able to reconcile the given IPA transcription with this is that /x ~ χ/ and that the phone is [χ] while the phoneme is /x/.

4b. As noted in the article other sources spell the same name differently, and the biggest point of variation is the ⟨x⟩. In addition to ⟨x⟩, it is also rendered as ⟨X⟩, ⟨x̣⟩ and ⟨x⟩. If this were meant to represent /x/ I would not expect this sort of variation.

Looking at the evidence it seems to me that this transcription is probably: a very broad transcription with a strong preference for ASCII or in some unstated phonetic alphabet other than the IPA. However this conclusion is certainly WP:OR on my part. I have no citation that says the name is pronounced any other way. I would just like to let it be known that this transcription is suspicious, in hopes that we can find a better pronunciation with a citation, or even a citation for a full phonemic inventory. AquitaneHungerForce (talk) 23:11, 23 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ "The South Tsimshian Language". yldi.org. Retrieved 23 September 2021.
^ Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, ed. (18 January 2018). The Oxford Handbook of Evidentiality. OUP Oxford. ISBN 9780191077401.

[1] Cataloguing the World's Endangered Languages. Taylor & Francis. 2 February 2018. ISBN 9781317413899.

[2] "The South Tsimshian Language". yldi.org. Retrieved 23 September 2021.

[3] Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, ed. (18 January 2018). The Oxford Handbook of Evidentiality. OUP Oxford. ISBN 9780191077401.

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