An Overlooked Key Element in North Wakashan Morphophonemics

Investigated is a morphophonemic entity that manifests itself in a rich variety of ways including doubling or glottalization of a resonant; the phonemes /a/, /i/, /u/; the morpheme boundary marker /ə/ and, in the variety of North Wakashan made famous by Franz Boas, an opposition type unknown in the other varieties. It is a byproduct of some of the complex processes triggered by attaching certain types of suffix to a stem but occurs also as a constituent of morphemes and as a device to turn bound roots into free forms. It has never before been identified and is a warning that we are nowhere near understanding the history of North Wakashan, let alone its possible relationships to neighbouring languages. No North Wakashan expertise is necessary to follow the discussion which is preceded by essential comparative phonemic and morphophonemic information.