How to Understand an Entry

The English side of the dictionary is intended to give you a brief overview of a word. To learn more about a Cowlitz Coast Salish word that results from an English search, click the blue Cowlitz Coast Salish word and follow the search bar to the Cowlitz-side entry for that word. We’ve worked to ensure that the Cowlitz- and English-side entries contain roughly the same information, but the English-side entry for a word is sometimes less thorough; if something about an English-side entry is ambiguous or unclear, we recommend looking at the Cowlitz Coast Salish side. Clicking on any blue, bolded headword listed in an English-side entry will take you directly to the Cowlitz-side entry for that word.

, or name of the entry. That means that everything under the entry is in some way related to this word either in form or in meaning.

Many blue, bolded words in this dictionary have next to them. Clicking the speaker icon allows you to hear the adjacent word or phrase.

Below the headword and , in square brackets, is the . This includes all of the parts (morphemes) that make up the word. Some words will only have one part, such as x̣áx house, which has a breakdown of [ x̣áx 'house'], while cílksɬqʷ five days is a bit more complicated, with a breakdown of [ cílks- 'five' -ɬ- 'linking letter' -aqʷ 'day' ]. You can click any part of the breakdown to see other entries that use the same parts.

. While we try to include as many translations as possible in each entry, you may find that some words have different translations in other officially printed materials. This typically happens when a Cowlitz Coast Salish word has multiple senses, or nuanced senses, that can’t be captured in a single dictionary entry. Even if a Cowlitz Coast Salish word is translated in this dictionary as a specific English word, phrase, or set of words, that Cowlitz Coast Salish word may have more nuanced senses that are hard to pin down in a single written definition.

A root is the core of a word. It cannot be broken down or analyzed any further. Some roots are also full words, but most roots need additional parts (called morphemes) added on to be used as full words.

Ex:	x̣áx	house	root = √x̣áx
	ʔís	he came	root = √ʔís-
	ʔísn	he's coming	root = √ʔís-
	cʼə́kɬ	it ran out	root = √cʼə́k-

Note: The √ symbol is used to indicate a root.

You may also see the word stem in some entries. A stem consists of a root plus any morphemes and form changes (see next section) that allow it to take on new meanings and additional grammatical information. Stems, like roots, often need more morphemes added to them to be used as full words. In shorter, simpler Cowlitz Coast Salish words, the stem and root are the same, so the stem will not be explicitly named as shown above.

Ex:

cʼakálnutšn

she gave up on it

root = √cʼə́k- stem = √cʼak-ál=inwat-

A form is a shape that a word has - the number and arrangement of consonants and vowels, and where the stress (the acute accent) is placed. Sometimes, changing a root or stem’s form changes its meaning (see spun → spinning, below); other times, adding an affix triggers a form change (see bag → his/her bag, below). Sometimes, both processes occur.

The forms of headwords in this dictionary are rather arbitrary, since there is no “base form” of a word. The headwords’ forms were chosen for the sake of consistency, not for holding any one form as being more “basic” than the others. For nouns, the default headword form is the singular unpossessed form, and for verbs the default form is usually either a perfective intransitive form or perfective transitive form, depending on its meaning. The following list includes example forms for the noun ‘bag’ and the verb ‘spin.’ Note that none of the verb forms listed translate as just ‘spin.’

Ex:	cʼalə́pɬ	it spun (perfective intransitive form)	√cʼalə́p-ɬ
	cʼalə́pɬ kn	I spun	√cʼalə́p-ɬ+kn
	cʼə́lpawn	it's spinning (imperfective intransitive form)	√cʼə́lp[a]-w-n
	cʼə́lpawanx	I'm spinning	√cʼə́lp[a]-w-anx
	tálʼičn	bag (singular unpossessed form)	√tálʼ=ičn
	ntálʼičn	my bag (1st-person-singular possessed singular form)	n+√tálʼ=ičn
	tálʼkni	his/her bag (3rd-person-singular possessed singular form)	√tálʼ=kn-i

Each list of Usable Forms includes many different forms that only differ in one way from each other. Most commonly, forms in these lists differ by “person,” that is, I, you, he, she, we, etc., for any given combination of grammatical qualities. For example, a noun can be singular or plural, and can additionally be possessed or unpossessed, so an entry for a noun that has both a singular and a plural form will typically have one Usable Forms list for possession of the singular form and a second list for possession of the plural form. See examples at the end of this section for a list of possessed singular nouns and a list of possessed plural nouns.

Core forms are simply the usable forms that are unpredictable or that can only be predicted with a deep level of understanding of Cowlitz Coast Salish. We've put them all in one place so that new learners can see them right away to start learning the important forms, and so that advanced learners don't need to look through longer lists to find what they’re looking for. For nouns, the core forms are usually the unpossessed singular form, 3rd-person-singular possessed singular form, unpossessed plural form, and 3rd-person-singular possessed plural form. With only those 4 forms, you can make any form in the usable form list if you know a little bit about the grammar already!

Notice that for this entire list there are actually only 4 stems being used to create every form. Those 4 stems are: cə́np, canúp-, cə́napumx, and cə́napumiš-.

These are the 4 words included in the core forms list: cə́np, canúpi, cə́napumx, and cə́napumiši.

Ex:	ncə́np	my bed
	ʔacə́np	your bed
	canúpi	his bed
	cəńpkɬ	our bed
	canúpilp	you all's bed
	canúpɬ	their bed
	ncə́napumx	my beds
	ʔacə́napumx	your beds
	cə́napumiši	its beds
	cə́napumxkɬ	our beds
	cə́napumišilp	you all's beds
	cə́napumišɬ	their beds

Some entries include lists titled “Words Derived from ____.” These lists contain words that are related in some way to the headword’s root. For example, the word x̣áx house is used to derive the word ʔáɬx̣x home. Other derived forms include words made with a lexical suffix. For example, a couple of lexical suffixes mean ‘house’ but don't look anything like the word x̣áx. Each lexical suffix gets its own Words Derived from ___ list so that, for instance, if you were looking for "build a house" and you went to the entry x̣áx house, you'd see kakáltxʷ build a house in a list of words derived from =txʷ house. This should help reduce the burden on new learners to be familiar with the quirks of Cowlitz Coast Salish.

A reconstruction is a word or form that we don't have direct evidence for - as in, that wasn’t recorded by məsímx, scayídut, or historical sources (see next section) - but that we believe does exist in the language. We use all the internal workings of Cowlitz Coast Salish to put a reconstruction back together. Occasionally we look at words in closely related languages to fill in the gaps. You can think of reconstructions as testable, very educated and informed guesses. The most common circumstance for reconstruction is when a verb is only attested in one aspect. Verbs can be either perfective (completed) or imperfective (ongoing). When a verb is only recorded in one aspect, we reconstruct the complementary aspect to create a fuller view of the language.

Sometimes, you’ll also see the word “reconstruction” next to a word whose spelling has been updated from historical source spellings to match the current writing system. This is a different kind of reconstruction from the one discussed above, but is equally researched and informed by our knowledge of Cowlitz Coast Salish and its related or highly influential languages. You’ll also find the label “uncertain reconstruction” next to some entry headwords, which means there isn’t enough evidence to be one hundred percent certain about the spelling given.

A historical form is any spelling taken from other sources. They're called "historical" because many of them were created at a time when there was no standard for writing Salishan or Indigenous languages, so the writer just wrote down the word how it sounded to them. For the word x̣áx, we are certain that our spelling adequately captures the meaningful sounds of the word, but there are other ways to spell it that would look similar enough to how it sounds to seem satisfactory. Compare all the spellings:

x̣ax̯ (Franz Boas)
xax (Horatio Hale)
khakh (Gallatin)
ḣass͡h (Edward Curtis)
hagh (FR)
hách, hágh (George Gibbs)

First sound written as: x̣, x, kh, ḣ, h
Last sound written as: x̯, x, kh, ss͡h, gh, ch

In this word, Gallatin and Hale could not distinguish x̣ (a rough, throat clearing sound) from x (a wispy sound, sounds slightly more harder than an h).

It's clear that these people all heard the same word, and it’s equally clear that without a standardized spelling system it’s very difficult to see and communicate the important sounds of Cowlitz Coast Salish. We've included historical spellings in this dictionary to keep a thorough record of our language. We also use these historical spellings to make educated guesses for words that were not attested (recorded) by scayídut or məsímx.