Ute language
Encyclopedia
Colorado River Numic of the Numic branch
of the Uto-Aztecan
language family, is a dialect chain that stretches from southeastern California to Colorado. Individual dialects are Chemehuevi, which is in danger of extinction, Southern Paiute (of which San Juan and Kaibab are subdialects), and Ute (in northern and southern dialects). According to the Ethnologue
, there were a little less than two thousand speakers of Colorado River in 1990, or ca. 40% out of an ethnic population of 5,000.
The Southern Paiute dialect has had a significant role in linguistics
, as the background for a famous article by linguist Edward Sapir
and his collaborator Tony Tillohash
on the nature of the phoneme
.
s strung together.
Numic languages
Numic is a branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family. It includes seven languages spoken by Native American peoples traditionally living in the Great Basin, Colorado River basin, and southern Great Plains. The word Numic comes from the cognate word in all Numic languages for "person." For...
of the Uto-Aztecan
Uto-Aztecan languages
Uto-Aztecan or Uto-Aztekan is a Native American language family consisting of over 30 languages. Uto-Aztecan languages are found from the Great Basin of the Western United States , through western, central and southern Mexico Uto-Aztecan or Uto-Aztekan is a Native American language family...
language family, is a dialect chain that stretches from southeastern California to Colorado. Individual dialects are Chemehuevi, which is in danger of extinction, Southern Paiute (of which San Juan and Kaibab are subdialects), and Ute (in northern and southern dialects). According to the Ethnologue
Ethnologue
Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International , a Christian linguistic service organization, which studies lesser-known languages, to provide the speakers with Bibles in their native language and support their efforts in language development.The Ethnologue...
, there were a little less than two thousand speakers of Colorado River in 1990, or ca. 40% out of an ethnic population of 5,000.
The Southern Paiute dialect has had a significant role in linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
, as the background for a famous article by linguist Edward Sapir
Edward Sapir
Edward Sapir was an American anthropologist-linguist, widely considered to be one of the most important figures in the early development of the discipline of linguistics....
and his collaborator Tony Tillohash
Tony Tillohash
Tony Tillohash was a Paiute Indian who worked with linguist Edward Sapir to describe the Southern Paiute language.In 1910, Tillohash was removed from his home in Utah to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania...
on the nature of the phoneme
Phoneme
In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....
.
Morphology
The Colorado River Numic language is an agglutinative language, in which words use suffix complexes for a variety of purposes with several morphemeMorpheme
In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest semantically meaningful unit in a language. The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone, whereas a word,...
s strung together.
External links
- A Preliminary Analysis of Southern Ute with a Special Focus on Noun Phrases - also contains phonology information
- Chemehuevi language overview at the Survey of California and Other Indian LanguagesSurvey of California and Other Indian LanguagesThe Survey of California and Other Indian Languages at the University of California at Berkeley documents, catalogs, and archives the indigenous languages of the Americas...
- A Chemehuevi Language Archive - 1970s Fieldwork and Analysis by Margaret L. Press