Sahaptin is a Sahaptian language spoken in Washington and Oregon, U.S.A. Rigsby & Rude (1996) divide Sahaptin into three broad dialect areas: Northwest, Northeast, and Columbia River. This Illustration of the IPA reflects the Yakama (also spelled Yakima) subdialect (ykm) of Northwest Sahaptin. Sahaptin has fifty or fewer native speakers (Beavert & Jansen 2012). The second author is a native speaker of this dialect. Her voice is on the accompanying recordings.

In the Yakima dialect of Sahaptin, the smallest forms of words are CCV and CVC, as established by a study of lexical patterns and the obligatory augmentation of subminimal roots. We argue that CCV words cannot be considered a type of disyllable, nor do the initial consonants in CCV words exhibit properties (apart from minimality) that would allow them to be classified as moraic. We therefore propose that Yakima Sahaptin represents a previously unrecognised type of minimality, biconsonantal minimality. This kind of minimality requires a theoretical framework in which consonants can be distinguished from vowels, as do other phonological phenomena.

Athabaskan languages display a remarkable cross-language similarity, yet at the same time the languages of this family differ from each other in restricted ways. This unity and variety provide a useful laboratory for phonological and morphological research. In this paper, we suggest that a certain case of unity which has been analysed as phonologically and morphologically motivated requires a purely morphological analysis.

The case in question is the well-known verbal disyllabic minimality requirement, which has been variously analysed as satisfaction of a disyllabic verb template (Slave; Rice 1990), satisfaction of a monosyllabic prefix-based portmanteau ‘stem’ (Navajo; McDonough 1990, 1996) or the result of stray consonant syllabification in the Minimal Word domain in verbs (Ahtna; Causley 1994). However, when data from other languages of the family are brought into the picture, a different, family-wide analysis suggests itself.

Results of an acoustic study of root-initial /t th t'/ for eleven speakers of Witsuwit'en (Athabaskan) are presented. Values averaged across speaker means suggest that Witsuwit'en ejectives have a brief period of creaky voice and slow rise time at vowel onset relative to the voiceless unaspirated stops. However, there is considerable inter-speaker variation in VOT and f0 perturbation, with negligible correlation between these measures, contrary to the predictions of the ejective typologies proposed by Lindau (1984) and Kingston (1985). Results of a perception study indicate that the ejective-voiceless unaspirated contrast is more difficult than the other laryngeal contrasts even for native listeners. Implications of the Witsuwit'en data for the categorization of ejectives are discussed.