论文信息 - Two Phonological Innovations in Ritwan

Two Phonological Innovations in Ritwan

0. The Algonquian-Ritwan language family consists of the Algonquian languages, spoken over a large portion of eastern North America from the Great Plains to the Atlantic coast, and the Ritwan languages, Wiyot and Yurok, two small languages spoken in adjacent territory in northwest California. Given such a distribution one might expect that Wiyot and Yurok form a genetic subgroup, but the evidence presented so far is inconclusive (Haas 1966).1 In this article I describe two phonological innovations shared by Wiyot and Yurok which suggest that they had a period of common development after the end of Algonquian-Ritwan unity. These two innovations are the loss of distinctive vowel length and the merger of inherited *k and *t.2

Howard Berman | H. Berman

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