Lushootseed puzzles

Lushootseed (aka Puget Salish, with Northern and Southern dialects) is (or was) a Salishan language spoken in the river valleys and Eastern coast of Puget Sound, between Mt. Vernon and Tacoma.

These puzzles were compiled from data I elicited in field methods courses during my graduate study at the University of Washington, 1965-67. Mrs. Louise George, a native speaker of the Skagit dialect of Northern Lushootseed, was our language consultant, and Prof. Laurence Thompson was our faculty director.

I made up a number of puzzle problems from my data over the years. This is the lot. Note: These are not beginners' puzzles, and the first 4 or 5 should be solved in order, since concepts developed in the solutions from earlier puzzles become important in solving later ones.

• Notes on Lushootseed, and Lushootseed Phonemes
• Lushootseed #1, basic concepts     (Solution)
• Lushootseed #2, intermediate concepts     (Solution)
• Lushootseed #3, personal pronoun systems
• Lushootseed #4, complex sentences
• Lushootseed #5, negation     (Earlier versions:   #5a     #5b)
• Lushootseed #6, kinds of reduplication
• Lushootseed #7, a take-home midterm exam from my graduate Morphology class: 127 glossed Skagit sentences, in 5 pages:
  • Page 1   Page 2   Page 3   Page 4   Page 5 (with notes)