Molala language

Molala is an extinct language once spoken by the Molala people of Oregon. Currently it is included among the Plateau Penutian language family, with Klamath and Sahaptin being considered the closest related.

Classification

Waiilatpuan family

The first written vocabulary of the Molala language was published by Horatio Hale in 1846. As a member of the United States [Exploring Expedition], he had visited the Pacific Northwest in 1841. Missionary Marcus Whitman was credited for providing "much valuable information" about the Cayuse people and other natives nearby Waiilatpu. Hale also recorded a Cayuse language vocabulary with Whitman's assistance. In his Waiilatpuan language family, Hale put Cayuse and Molala as the sole members.
In 1910 or 1911, Stephens Savage, a Molala speaker, had told Leo Frachtenberg that the following five words were identical in both Cayuse and Molala:
In 1929 Edward Sapir grouped Cayuse with Molala as part of the Waiilatpuan branch of the Plateau [Penutian languages].
Bruce Rigsby reexamined the Cayuse-Molala lexical pairs provided by Hale and found only a tenth to be potentially related terms. Whitman was credited as the origin of the Waiilatpuan linguistic family. Upon his review of extant Molala and Cayuse linguistic data, Rigsby concluded "I do not see how the two languages could have possibly been mutually intelligible."

Dialects

There were three known dialects:

Northern Molala, spoken in the Molalla River watershed.
Upper Santiam Molala, spoken along the upper Santiam River.
Southern Molala, spoken along the headwaters of the Umpqua and Rogue rivers.
Phonology

Consonants

Vowels

/i/ and /a/ can also shift to.

Orthography

This is an Salish-based orthography for the Molala language:

c̓

kʰ

k̓

pʰ

p̓

qʰ

q̓

tʰ

t̓

aː

tsʼ

e~ə

iː

kʰ

k’

tɬ

pʰ

p’

qʰ

q’

tʰ

t’

uː

Grammar

Molala is a verb-heavy polysynthetic language.

Case

Molala nouns have seven cases: