Volume 4, Issue 2 (2010) Pp. 1–110.

Lawrence Nicodemus's Snchitsu'umshtsn File Card Collection in Dictionary Format

by John Lyon

This volume is an analysis of a recently uncovered collection of file cards from the late Lawrence Nicodemus, one of the last fluent speakers of Snchitsu’umshtsn (Coeur d’Alene Salish). The inference is that these hand-written file cards were used during the compilation of what would become Nicodemus’s 1975 Coeur d’Alene-English dictionary Snchitsu’umshtsn. I transcribe Coeur d’Alene material into Northwest (NW) orthography, complete a morphological analysis, and arrange entries by lexical root. Multiple transcriptions on the original cards, including strikethroughs, are retained in the new document. There are a total of 4986 cards in the collection, most of them with Coeur d’Alene material written on one side, and an English transcription on the other. 3843 (77%) of the cards have matches in the published dictionary. 1143 (23%) of the cards do not and many of these may be otherwise unattested.

Keywords: Salish, Southern Interior Salish, morphology, lexicon, dictionary, orthography change

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