xxiv, 505 p. : ill. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / Yakima Ichishkíin/Sahaptin is spoken in the Yakama Nation, located in the Pacific Northwest of the United States in what is now south central Washington State. The Ichishkíin and Nez Perce languages comprise the Sahaptian Family, classified as a member of the Plateau branch of Penutian. Ichishkíin speakers of a number of related dialects, including Yakima, live in the southern plateau region along Nch'iwána , the Columbia River, and its tributaries. The dialects are mutually intelligible, with slight differences in phonology, morphology, lexical items and orthographic representation. The fieldwork supporting this work was done in and around Toppenish, Washington with elders of the Yakama Nation. There are few fluent speakers, but there is great interest in language learning, teaching, and revitalization. Sahaptin is a synthetic to polysynthetic language with rich verbal morphology. The phonemic inventory is similar to other Pacific Northwest languages and consists of a large set of consonants and small set of vowels. Stops and affricates are voiceless with a plain and glottalized series. Grammatical relations are indicated with case-marking, verb agreement, and second position enclitics. Syntactic alignment is primarily nominative-accusative but there are also ergative and absolutive patterns. Word order is flexible, serving discourse/pragmatic functions. The language has a direct/inverse alternation in which the coding of participants depends on person and topicality hierarchies. Verbs are morphologically complex. A verb stem can be fully composed of bound morphemes that include lexical prefixes, motion prefixes, and stems that indicate a change of state or a location or direction. This dissertation is intended to support speech community members and scholars in language preservation and academic goals. The second and third chapters, covering the sound system and an overview of the grammar, constitute a condensed pedagogical grammar. Subsequent chapters offer more in-depth information about major aspects of the language Appendices include texts and classroom materials as well as a case study of a college-level Ichishkíin course that uses materials collected in a language documentation project as teaching tools. This dissertation includes previously published and unpublished co-authored material. / Committee in charge: Scott DeLancey, Chairperson, Linguistics; Eric Pederson, Member, Linguistics; Spike Gildea, Member, Linguistics; Janne Underriner, Member, Linguistics; Robert Davis, Outside Member, Romance Languages

I do two things in my dissertation. One is to tell the history of academic research on my language from the perspective of a Native person who has been involved in this work as an assistant to non-Native researchers. The other is to explain more about my culture and language and how it works from the perspective of a Yakima person who has spoken and used the language her whole life. My most important task in this dissertation is to explain at more length some of the most basic vocabulary about our ancient culture and way of life. I do this by writing about different important parts of traditional life - life circles, sweathouse, ceremonies, horses, and foods - and explaining the words we use to talk about these and how those words explain the deeper meaning of what we do. I write this dissertation for the Ichishkíin speaking communities in hope that by documenting our lost traditions they will have a resource from which to learn our ancestors' ways and language. Detailing the traditional practices offers a much needed historical and social accounting of each. I include various dialects and practices shared by other Ichishkíin speaking communities. I incorporate texts, songs, descriptions of dances, and practices in Ichishkíin. This dissertation contributes also to the fields of sociolinguistics and theoretical linguistics, as well as historical and cultural anthropology. Despite the best efforts of some anthropologists and linguists, all the work done on Yakima Ichishkíin is by researchers from outside the community and is inevitably seen and presented through the lens of the English language, Euro-American culture, and the Western tradition of "objective" scholarship. I am in a unique position to present the research on my language as a contribution to academic scholarship but from a very different perspective, that of a Native speaker and scholar. Implicit in my view of scholarship is the way researchers should work with Native people; therefore, I address how linguists can better work with community members. I discuss the protocols and etiquette expected by Native people in working with non-Natives.