A Grammatical Sketch of Comox

Abstract

Comox is a Salish language spoken on both sides of the Gulf of Georgia on the west coast of British Columbia, Canada. Before white contact, it was spoken on Vancouver Island from the Salmon River in the north to the present day town of Comox in the south. It was also spoken on Quadra Island and other islands in the Strait and at sites on the mainland.

It presently exists in two distinct dialects whose most striking difference is an s-theta correspondence and an aveolar-interdental affricate correspondence. The mainland dialect is spoken at three sites by about 500 people. The island dialect is spoken by two people at a reserve near the town of Comox half way up the east coast of Vancouver Island.

The phonology of the mainland dialect was described in a master's thesis by John Davis at the University of Victoria, 1970. The only published description of island Comox is an article by Sapir on noun reduplication. Since the island dialect is about to die out and has not been extensively studied, this dissertation attempts it description before the dialect is lost.

The data used were gathered in two summers of fieldwork in 1970 and 1971 at the Comox Reserve. The data presented in Sapir's article are also used as well as some data gathered by Boas in 1889 and presently in the Smithsonian Institution.

The syntactic model of analysis is a transformational case grammer and the phonology, a generative model using the features of Chomsky and Halle. After a brief discussion of the model of analysis and the data available, an overview of the cultural and linguistic context of Comox is presented. The material for this overview is taken from secondary sources and does not represent original work.

The majority of the dissertation is taken up with an exposition of the syntax and phonology of the language. Syntactically Comox is a VSO language. The order of cases following the verb is: Agent Dative Benefactive Object Instrument Locative and Time. Agreement transformations add suffixes to the predicate corresponding to the first two cases present. There are three object suffix paradigms: (1) a transitive, (2) a detransitive which indicates the agent caused the object to do the predicate. "He made me dig," where "dig" is the verb, "he" the subject and "me" the object. And finally (3) the unintentional transitive object. The three subject suffix paradigms are: (1) the intransitive, (2) the transitive and (3) the embedded. There are three tenses (present, past and future) and five aspects (perfect, imperfect, stative, inceptive and continuative). Nominals are reduplicated for the plural and diminutive as are verbal stems for the imperfect. A set of phrase structure rules is formulated and possible transformations discussed.

The phonology consists of thirty-eight rules, seven of which are precyclic. Three of the pre-cyclic rules are spelling rules for reduplication. Among the more unusual phonological rules is the metathesis of glottal stops and resonants. Underlying "y" and "w" become "j" and "g" respectively. Nasals become voiced stops under circumstances that are not completely clear. The underlying segment inventory includes glottalized resonants, stops, and affricates. There are five vowels.

Aspects of the historical development of Comox are discussed briefly in connection with various features of the syntax and phonology.