Thompson language

Thompson is a consonant-heavy language. The consonants can be divided into two subgroups: obstruents (oral occlusives & voiceless continuants), which restrict airflow, and sonorants (nasal occlusives & voiced and glottalic continuants), which do not. The sonorants are often syllabic consonants, which can form syllables on their own without vowels.

Consonants

Vowels

Stress is transcribed with an acute accent, such as ⟨á⟩.

One of the writing systems used for Thompson uses the North American Phonetic Alphabet (NAPA) writing system.

The above consonant chart is based on the one found in "The Thompson Language" by Laurence C. Thompson & M. Terry Thompson.

Researchers working in the Generative tradition have speculated that Salishan languages lack lexical categories such as nouns and verbs. Evidence for such an absence of contrast between parts of speech in Thompson come from a lack of clear morphological markers (e.g., morphemes) that differentiate nouns and verbs. Instead, generative linguists discuss morphology and syntax in Salishan based on a framework of predicates and particles. However, more contemporary work suggests a changing understanding of Salishan grammar. Some Salishanists believe that functional categories are not prescriptive of lexical categories. Work in Functional linguistics suggests that other factors beyond morphological evidence code lexical categories in languages. In Salishan, the distinction would be less overt than in some other languages.

Lexical suffixes

One morphological feature of Thompson is lexical suffixes. These are words that add nuance to predicates and can be affixed to the ends of root words to add their general meaning to that word. Thompson and Thompson assert that as a result of English language influence, speakers are using these more complex predicates less and less in favor of simpler predicates with complements and adjuncts, resulting in “a general decline in the exploitation of the rich synthetic resources of the language.”