Proto-Salish language
Proto-Salish is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Salishan languages.
Evolution
The first scholar to suggest a homeland for Proto-Salish was Franz Boas in the 19th century. Boas suggested that the Salishan languages originated on the interior, and the ancestors of the speakers of Coast Salish migrated to the coast. Boas' origin hypothesis was first challenged by Wayne Suttles and William W. Elmendorf, who argued in the 20th century for a coastal origin of the Salishan languages based on ethnographic and linguistic evidence. Kinkade furthered this hypothesis based on linguistic evidence; reconstructed Proto-Salish terms for flora and fauna suggest a coastal origin for Proto-Salish.Proto-Salish is estimated to have been spoken between five and as many as seven thousand years ago. The magnitude of the time depth makes establishing a genetic relationship between the Salishan languages and any other family difficult, as shared features may be due to language contact rather than a common ancestor.
Phonology
| Front | Central | Back | |
| Close | * | * | |
| Mid | * | ||
| Open | * |
The appearance of schwa in Salishan languages is complicated and varies widely within the family. It is closely tied to stress; in some languages, such as Lushootseed, stress is easily predictable. In most Interior Salish languages, morphemes can be strong, weak, or variable in stress assignment. Upper Chehalis, a Tsamosan language, has a modification of this system, but stress tends towards the root. Kinkade argued that the stress system of Proto-Salish resembled the stress system of the Interior Salish languages. Kinkade argued that schwa should not be reconstructed in Proto-Salish as a stressed consonant, but only as an epenthetic vowel, which is how it occurs in all Salishan languages.
Morphology
Proto-Salish likely had subject enclitics attached to the predicate or preceding auxiliary in order to mark transitivity.Proto-Salish likely had at least two categories for marking, that being feminine and unmarked as well as marked absent and marked present. A third system, marking near vs. remote, may have been present as well.
Proto-Salish may have had a complex system for negation, using several negatives that each had different force.
Lexicon
Kinkade reconstructed a number of Proto-Salish terms for fauna in the Proto-Salish area. Below are a sample:| English | Proto-Salish |
| beaver | |
| bobcat | |
| chipmunk | |
| coyote | |
| dog | |
| mountain goat | |
| marmot | |
| mink | |
| muskrat | |
| sea otter |