Yaghan language
Encyclopedia
Yagán also known as Yámana and Háusi Kúta, is one of the indigenous languages of Tierra del Fuego
, spoken by the Yagán
people. It is regarded as a language isolate
, although some linguists have attempted to relate it to Kawésqar
and Chon
.
Along with other Fuegian languages
, it was among the first South American languages to be recorded by European explorers and missionaries. Yahgan was also spoken briefly on Keppel Island
in the Falkland Islands
at a missionary settlement.
Following the death of 84 year old Emelinda Acuña (1921 – October 12, 2005), only one native speaker remains, Cristina Calderón
of Villa Ukika on Navarino Island, Chile
. Calderón (often referred to as simply Abuela) is the sister-in-law of Acuña.
system of Yahgan, which differ in many details from one another. The oldest analysis is from the 19th century (prephonological era), by Thomas Bridges (1894); from the middle of the 20th century Haudricourt (1952) and Holmer (1953); and towards the end of the 20th century, the last phonological studies were made on this moribund language by Guerra Eissmann (1990), Salas y Valencia (1990), and Aguilera (2000).
The alphabet
currently sanctioned officially in Chile is as follows: a, æ, ch, e, ö, f, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, r, š, t, u, w, x.
An orthographically
simplified variant of the old Bridges system was created for online use on the Waata Chis discussion list on Yahoo Groups and elsewhere. This alphabet consists of tense and lax vowels as well as voiced and voiceless consonants, among others. In this system tenseness
is marked by colon : following the vowel sign. a, a:, ai, au, e, e:, i, i:, iu:, o, o:, oi, u, u:, v (here schwa, not /v/), all correspond to unique graphemes in the Bridges orthography. Consonants are: b, d, ch, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, ng, p, r, s, sh, t, w, x, y, z, all corresponding to single Bridges graphemes, some of which are only found in restricted environments, and hm, hn, hl, hr, hw, hy, which are digraphs in earlier Bridges writings but single graphemes in later ones. Still later Bridges made further orthographic modifications: w, h, and y became superscripts- à is read as ya, á as ha, and ā as wa. Superscripts could combine to give hw, hy, etc. Because iu: could now be represented by u: plus y- superscript (ù:), and also because the original graphemes for u: and u were easily confused with each other (as well as with the now superscripted w), Bridges began using the now redundant grapheme for iu: (approximately ų) for u: in his renderings. All these changes took place in a very short time frame, and have led to a lot of confusion on the part of later scholars. In addition, Bridges' modifications of the 19th century phonetic alphabet of Alexander Ellis also included a number of signs meant for transliterations of foreign terms.
There are some ambiguities in Bridges' renderings. He himself notes that g/k, j/ch, d/t and p/f are in many instances interchangeable. In certain environments s and sh are hard to distinguish (as before high front vowels). Likewise ai versus e: and au versus o: Such ambiguities may go far to help explain the loss or lack of contrasts in the surviving dialect.
effects on consonant
s and vowel
s. For instance, the terminal -i of teki 'to see, recognize' when affix
ed by -vnnaka 'to have trouble/difficulty doing' becomes -e:- of teke:vnnaka 'have trouble recognizing/seeing'
In syllable
s reduced through morphophonetic
processes, terminal vowels (-a, -u:) of original bisyllables will often drop (except for -i, which tends to remain, leaving previous material unaffected), and resultant final stops will fricativize (r becomes sh). Aside from losing stress, any vowels preceding these shifted consonants will often shift from tense to lax. Ex. -a:gu: 'for self, with one's own' > -ax-. ata 'to take, convey' > vhr-, and so on. Present tense
usually results in the dropping of the final vowel of the infinitival
form of the verb
and associated changes as above, as does affixation by many, but not all, further derivational
and inflection
al suffix
es beginning with stops
, affricates, and other consonants. Ex. aiamaka 'to fight' aiamux-tvlli 'to fight confusedly'.
The sounds m, n, and l are particularly labile in some environments. atama 'to eat' atu:-yella 'to leave off eating' (not atamayella). n from -Vna 'state' is often reduced to -V: when one would expect -Vn-. l can disappear entirely before some consonants. vla 'to drink', vlnggu: or vnggu: 'to drink'. Initial h- in roots and affixes drops in many instances. Ex. kvna 'to float, be in boat'+ haina 'to walk, go' gives kvn-aina. ng (as in English 'hang') is purely morphophonetic, from terminal n before a velar consonant. Many instances of m before a labial consonant are similarly motivated. w after a passive/reflexive prefix m- often drops. w often vocalizes to u: or o: or drops (depending on preceding material): tu:- causative plus wvshta:gu: 'work' is tu:vshta:gu: 'make work'. y is also relatively labile- after reduced -ata-> -vhr- the suffix -yella 'to leave off' becomes -chella. In combination with preceding -a y often vocalizes: ki:pa 'woman' plus yamalim 'plural animates/people' becomes ki:paiamalim.
was felt to be nondistinctive
. However, in the mid-19th century Yahga Strait dialect (which is likely not the ancestor of the surviving one) word stress was distinctive at least at the level of the individual morpheme
, with stress shifting in regular patterns during word formation. Certain otherwise identical word roots
are distinguishable by different stress marking. No information is available about phrase or clause level stress phenomena from the Yahga dialect.
Some roots, particularly those with doubled consonants, exhibit stress on both vowels flanking the doublet. Diphthongs appear to attract stress when they are morphophonetic in origin, sometimes removing it from vowels on both sides that would otherwise be stressed. The first vowel -V- (influenced by the preceding terminal root vowel) in -Vna '(be) in a state' also appears to attract stress, while -ata 'attain' repels stress to the left. Thus the combination -Vnata 'get into a state' is harmonious. Diphthongal attraction often trumps -Vna, drawing stress further left, while two successive diphthongs often have the stress on the rightmost one (counterintuitively). Syllables reduced morphophonetically generally lose whatever stress they might have carried. The vast majority of 'irregular' stress renderings in Bridges' original dictionary manuscript seem to arise from just these five sources.
Interestingly, it may be that these effects help to preserve morpheme boundary and identity information. For instance given the importance of derivation of verbs from nouns and adjectives using -Vna- and -ata-, shifted stress allows one to differentiate these morphemes from lexical -ata- (common enough) and those -na-'s that are part of lexical roots (also relatively common). -Vna itself will often lose stress and reduce to a tense vowel before other suffixes, leaving the shifting as a hint of its underlying presence.
Stress can also differentiate otherwise identical voice morpheme strings: tú:mu:- causative reflexive (get someone else to do/make one) from tu:mú:-(1) the causative of making oneself seem, or pretend to be in some state, and tu:mú:-(2) the circumstantial (tu:- allomorph before m-) of same (i.e. to seem/pretend at any specified time or place, with any particular tools, for any reasons, etc.). Circumstantial T has different allomorphs- some having following stressable vowel, others not- this also complicates matters for the learner but may also help disentangle morpheme boundaries for the listener.
The historical sources of these patterns cannot be known for sure, but it may be possible that there was at one time a shape and texture classifier system of some sort behind them. Such systems are rather common in South American languages.
There is little direct onomatopoeia recorded by Bridges, despite descriptions of highly animated imitative behavior on the part of speakers being recorded in the late 19th century. Several bird names are perhaps reduplications of calls (or other nonvocal behavior), and there are a couple of imitative cries and sound words. Most words denoting sounds end in an unproductive verb-deriving suffix -sha (in at least one case -ra, and r is known to alternate with sh), which may be derived from the Yahgan root ha:sha 'voice, language, uttered words, speech, cry', or vra 'to cry'. Ex. gvlasha 'to rattle'.
In the Bridges dictionary of the language one may note several otherwise identical terms differing only in whether they are spelled with an s or a ch (for example asela/achela 'skin'). It is not known whether this was dialectal, dialect mixture, ideolectal, gender-based usage or a real grammatical variation such as might occur with augmentative/diminutive sound symbolic shifting.
Further analysis of the biblical texts is showing that the Yahga dialect allowed for semantic reordering of constituents. For instance if SVO is considered the default order for subject and object flanking the verb, then when O is left-shifted (SOV) there is often a sense that the object nominal has more say in his/her patient-hood than if kept to the right of the verb. Similarly, when the subject is right-shifted (VSO) its agent-hood appears often less than what one would expect. It will remain to be seen how pervasive this principle is in the language, and how intricately it interacts with Tense-Aspect-Mood and Polarity marking, topicalization, focus, etc.
The adverb kaia 'fast, quick(ly)' can be used lexically to modify predications, but in the three biblical texts it is also apparently used to mark the second component clause in 'if-then' types of constructions. There is no mention made of this in surviving grammars, nor in the dictionary glosses of kaia. The progressive verb suffix -gaiata may be related.
An example of this in Yahgan would be the change of posture verbs into aspectual markers. Yahgan has a system of verbs which denote the posture of an entity: 'stand' mvni, 'sit' mu:tu:, 'lie' (w)i:a and others (for instance a:gulu: 'fly/jump', kvna 'float' etc.). In normal lexical usage one could say
hai ha-mu:t-ude: 'I sat'. (hai full pronoun first person singular, ha- bound version unmarked for number, -ude: past tense).
sa sa-mvni-de: 'You stood'. (sa full pronoun second singular, sa- bound).
But with the same root in their grammaticalized forms added:
hai ha-mvni-mu:t-ude: 'I stood regularly, or as a rule'.
sa sa-muhr-mvni-de: 'You often sat, or were ready to sit'.
The semantic bases of such usage seems to the degree of bodily contact with the substratum, vigilance, engagement, etc. Flying/jumping means ceasing some activity of interest entirely and going off to do something else rather suddenly, standing implies readiness to do something else as needed but attending to the activity when one can. Sitting is regular involvement in the activity, though not to the exclusion of other things that need doing. Lying (not just on but also within) is deep involvement, almost to the exclusion of other activities (English 'immersed in', being 'wrapped up in', 'in a rut' 'be up to one's neck/ears in', 'in over one's head', 'buried in (as work)' etc. have similar import). Relative height is another way to look at it- we say we are 'over' with something to mean 'done with' (equivalent to the jump/fly term in Yahgan), with a hint of relative dominance implied as well. While English has a plethora of colorful expressions for denoting such circumstances, Yahgan has reduced the system to a well defined smallish set of terms from the domain of posture verbs. Such reduction is one symptom of grammaticalization.
Such contact/engagement-based semantic clines are relatively common crosslinguistically, and the phenomenon of posture verbs changing to aspect marking morphemes is well known among linguists, though it is not the only pathway to creating such terms.
A phonetically based cline (based on both oral articulatory position and manner) can be seen in prefixes y- a- u:- in Yahgan, and combinations ya- and u:a-.
y- denotes an activity begun or intended, but not completed. a- seems to imply continuation, and u:- removal of impediments to the completion of the activity. Combined forms ya- and u:a- appear to accentuate the continuous part of the activity.
In North America, languages of the Siouan and Chemakuan families have similarly structured basic systems (Siouan prefixal, Chemakuan suffixal), but mostly with spatial reference. i- is standing out, away from some surface, a- is surface contact, and u- is containment within a surface, though there are also processual and figure/ground senses involved. Note that standing away minimizes surface contact. Other language families have distance demonstratives which follow similar phonological clines. It is possible that there may be historical connections between the y- form and ki:pa 'woman' and u:- and u:a 'man', which when verbalized apparently refer to less and more forceful or determined attempts to achieve respectively. Verbs ya:na 'to intend, wish' and wa:na 'pass, surpass', as well as u:a- 'do fiercely, forcibly' may be related, with suffixal -na on the first forms.
Horizontal movement verbs commonly change, crosslinguistically, into tense markers. Yahgan shows evidence of such shifts as well.
Free/emphatic forms: Nominative Singular: 1 hai, 2 sa, 3 kvnjin.
Dual: 1 hipai, 2 sapai, 3 kvnde:(i) or kvnde:u:. Plural: 1 haian, 2 san, 3 kvndaian
Accusative Singular: 1 haia, 2 skaia, 3 kvnjima. Dual: 123. Plural: 1 haiananima, 2 sananima, 3 kvndaiananima.
Example: lvmbi 'dark, black', lvmbi:na 'be dark', lvmbi:nata 'become dark', lvmbi:nuhrka:taka 'incrementally become dark', tu:lvmbi:nuhrchella 'cause to leave off becoming dark'.
Adjectives in Yahgan generally have predicative value when following a noun, but are attributive when preceding. There are large numbers of adjective-noun compounds in the language. Examples of attributive adjectives preceding the noun: yaus-u:a 'a lying man, i.e. a liar', yaus-ki:pa 'a lying woman', yeka-kaiiu:ala 'a young child', hu:lu:-a:nan 'a large canoe'. Examples of predicative adjectives following a noun: lvn-tauwa 'tight-tongued i.e. tongue-tied', yvsh-duf 'weak-handed i.e. not dexterous'.
Some more commonly used suffixal forms creating adjectives are: -kuru: 'wishing, wanting to X', -pun 'having no ability to resist X'ing', -Vta 'disposed towards X(ing)', -vnnaka 'having difficulty Xing or unable to X', -a:ru:gata 'troubled doing X', -siu:wa:ta 'tired of X or Xing', -Vtas 'doing X well'. Examples: a:musha:kuru: 'liking to pray', u:ku:tu:mvra-siu:wa:ta 'tired of explaining', i:kama:natas 'good at writing'. As with other adjective roots, these suffixed forms may be further derived as in the lvmbi example above.
Yahgan emphasized interconnected parts over unanalyzed wholes (also reflected in their verb serialization). Body parts are finely differentiated, as are social relationships. The vocabulary contained a vast number of deverbalized nouns.
Personal names often derived from the name of the place of birth- for instance a man born in Ushuaia (meaning 'bay (waia) in the upper back (ushsha)') might be Ushuaia-njiz. Alternatively one might use the case form -ndaulum 'from' and u:a 'man' giving Ushuaia-ndaulum-u:a.
Subject nouns take no overt case marking (subject coreference is on the verb instead). Nouns can be marked for accusative, genitive, dative, locative, instrumental and other cases. Geographical information can be incorporated into the string, as can information about number, collectivity, definiteness, etc. Most of these marks are suffixal.
In the three biblical texts there are numerous complex noun phrases with very involved case relations. It is unknown whether this is characteristic of speaker usage or an invention of the missionary Bridges.
Verbs can be nominalized through a variety of means, particularly by the prefixation of circumstantial T (with its various allomorphs) and/or suffixation of participial morphemes: -shin 'past participle', -(k)un 'present participle', and -Vmvs 'future participle'. Examples: ts-ta:gu: 'to give at some particular time, in some stated place, using some tool', or 'a gift', teki-shin 'when X saw, or the one who saw', wvle:wa twi:amanana-shin 'The boy who lived', ts-ta:pvn-a:mvs 'the one who will die'.
("serialized
"). Bound subject pronouns (ha- 1st, sa- 2nd, kv- 3rd), unmarked for number, are prefixed, coming before voice prefixes (such as ma(m) -passive, tu:- causative, u:- permissive, T- circumstantial (with allomorphs t-, tv-, tu:-, ts-, chi:-, chi-, ch-), l- back, in response to, etc.). Aspect (such as progressive -gaiata-), tense (for instance -vde: simple past, -u:a simple future, with added increments -vde:aka 'further past', -u:ana 'further future), and mood (generally in that order), etc. are suffixal, along with the two 'benefactive' suffixes -a:gu: 'for self', -ya:gu: 'for another'. Number within the verb (number of subjects or acts) can be encoded by overt marking (once -ata, twice -a:pai/-pikin-, several times -a:misiu:, plural -isin-/-u:sin-, or even none -apisiu:) or the many different distinct plural verbs (for instance mvni 'sg. to stand', palana 'pl. to stand'; ata 'sg. to take, convey', tu:mi:na 'pl. to take, convey').
Ex. i:nan haian kvndaiananima ha-ts-tu:-uhr-gaiat-u:sin-de:-aka a:nan 'We (haian) were making them (kvndaiananima) take (uhr < ata 'take') the boat (a:nan) during (ts- circumstantial plus -n locative on) the winter (i:na) a while ago'.
A handful of verbs form doublets where one of the pair seems to have an unproductive reversative suffix possibly related to the form -a:gu: '(do) for oneself'. For instance ma:na 'to lend', ma:na:ku: 'to borrow'.
In addition to normal serialization Yahgan also exhibits complex verb stems of a type relatively common in western North America, where the main verb is flanked by instrument/body part manner of action prefixes and pathway/position suffixes. The prefixes are part of a larger, more open system of elements marking various kinds of causes or motivations, grading off into more grammaticalized voice marking. Many of the path/position suffixes (especially posture verbs) do double duty as sources for more grammaticalized aspectual morphology. Tense suffixes seem to derive historically from horizontal motion verbs, and together with the more vertical postural aspect forms, make an interesting Cartesian-style coordinate system for dealing with the temporal dimension.
Example stems are: -aku:-pung-kvna-, -aku:- 'by striking' (itself from aki 'strike' plus -u:- permissive/causative), -(a)pvna-'kill/die', -kvna 'in a boat or afloat', meaning 'to kill by striking while afloat'. -alagvnat-u:-tekil-uhr-man-a:tsikvri- 'to stand by watching (-alagvnat-) and let (-u:) step completely (-tekil-ata-) out (-man-a:tsikvri-) (say a person one does not like out of the house into the line of gunfire without warning or stopping him).
A small number of commonly used verb roots have irregular present tenses. Instead of dropping the final vowel (triggering reductive processes) these forms instead add -ata after the vowel is dropped. Examples: mu:tu: 'to sit'/'to be', present mu:ta (from mu:t-ata), wi:a 'to lie'/'to be', present wi:ata, kvna 'to float'/'to be', present ga:rata. In the last example note that this seemingly suppletive present may in fact hark back to the original historical form, and infinitival kvna may be the changed one.
The form mvra 'to hear' has grammaticalized into an evidential suffix -mush 'hearsay'. Ex. hauanchi isin wuru: yamanaiamalim ma:maia-mushun-de: 'They say that in this land many men died'. There are several other evidential suffixes, differentiating sensory mode (hearing, sight, etc.) as well as time. mvra also finds modal use in the clitic space that often follows the first substantive in the sentence: kvnjin MUSH yamana:mu:ta, kvndaian-da:gia kv-teki-sin-de: kvnjima hauanchi moala 'He MUST be alive, because they (the ones who told me about it) saw him today'. There are other modal verbs also found in this space.
There is little or no reduplication evident on the Yahgan verb, and sound symbolism of the augmentative/diminutive type appears to be largely lexicalized. On the other hand, Yahgan exhibits a good deal of remnant sound symbolism in the verb, similar to what one sees in English.
A good number of verbs seem to form small 'word families' which have slight semantic differences which may have been encoded using sound symbolism (as one often sees, for instance, in some languages of the Austroasiatic stock). For instance haina 'go, walk lightly' versus u:unna 'walk heavily, plod'. In such cases the original symmetry of form seems often to have been distorted by historical changes.
Tierra del Fuego
Tierra del Fuego is an archipelago off the southernmost tip of the South American mainland, across the Strait of Magellan. The archipelago consists of a main island Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego divided between Chile and Argentina with an area of , and a group of smaller islands including Cape...
, spoken by the Yagán
Yagan
Yagan was an Australian Aboriginal warrior from the Noongar tribe who played a key part in early indigenous Australian resistance to British settlement and rule in the area of Perth, Western Australia. After he led a series of burglaries and robberies across the countryside, in which white...
people. It is regarded as a language isolate
Language isolate
A language isolate, in the absolute sense, is a natural language with no demonstrable genealogical relationship with other languages; that is, one that has not been demonstrated to descend from an ancestor common with any other language. They are in effect language families consisting of a single...
, although some linguists have attempted to relate it to Kawésqar
Kawésqar language
Kawésqar is an Alacalufan language spoken in southern Chile by the Kawésqar people. Originally there were several distinct dialects...
and Chon
Chon languages
-External links:*Alain Fabre, 2005, Diccionario etnolingüístico y guía bibliográfica de los pueblos indígenas sudamericanos: CHON...
.
Along with other Fuegian languages
Fuegian languages
Fuegian languages refers to mainly to three languages spoken in Tierra del Fuego by native Americans; the Kawésqar language, the Ona language and the Yaghan language....
, it was among the first South American languages to be recorded by European explorers and missionaries. Yahgan was also spoken briefly on Keppel Island
Keppel Island
Keppel Island is one of the Falkland Islands, lying between Saunders Island and Pebble Island, and near Golding Island to the north of West Falkland on Keppel Sound. It has an area of and its highest point, Mt Keppel, is high. There is a wide, flat valley in the centre of the island with...
in the Falkland Islands
Falkland Islands
The Falkland Islands are an archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean, located about from the coast of mainland South America. The archipelago consists of East Falkland, West Falkland and 776 lesser islands. The capital, Stanley, is on East Falkland...
at a missionary settlement.
Following the death of 84 year old Emelinda Acuña (1921 – October 12, 2005), only one native speaker remains, Cristina Calderón
Cristina Calderón
Cristina Calderón of Robalo, Puerto Williams, on Navarino Island, Chile, is the last living full-blooded Yaghan person. By 2004, Calderón and her sister-in-law Emelinda Acuña were the only two remaining native speakers of the Yaghan language...
of Villa Ukika on Navarino Island, Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
. Calderón (often referred to as simply Abuela) is the sister-in-law of Acuña.
Vowels
There are three analyses of the phonologicalPhonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
system of Yahgan, which differ in many details from one another. The oldest analysis is from the 19th century (prephonological era), by Thomas Bridges (1894); from the middle of the 20th century Haudricourt (1952) and Holmer (1953); and towards the end of the 20th century, the last phonological studies were made on this moribund language by Guerra Eissmann (1990), Salas y Valencia (1990), and Aguilera (2000).
| Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also... |
Central Central vowel A central vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel... |
Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark... |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Close Close vowel A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.This term is prescribed by the... |
i | u | |
| Mid Mid vowel A mid vowel is a vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned mid-way between an open vowel and a close vowel... |
e | ə | o |
| Open Open vowel An open vowel is defined as a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels in reference to the low position of the tongue... |
æ | a |
Consonants
| Labial Labial consonant Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. This precludes linguolabials, in which the tip of the tongue reaches for the posterior side of the upper lip and which are considered coronals... |
Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth... |
Post- alveolar Postalveolar consonant Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate... |
Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate... |
Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum).... |
Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider... |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :... |
m | n | ||||
| Plosive | p | t | tʃ | k | ʔ | |
| Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or... |
f | s | ʃ | x | h | |
| Tap | ɾ | |||||
| Approximant Approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no... |
l | ɻ | j | w |
The alphabet
Alphabet
An alphabet is a standard set of letters—basic written symbols or graphemes—each of which represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or semantic...
currently sanctioned officially in Chile is as follows: a, æ, ch, e, ö, f, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, r, š, t, u, w, x.
An orthographically
Orthography
The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...
simplified variant of the old Bridges system was created for online use on the Waata Chis discussion list on Yahoo Groups and elsewhere. This alphabet consists of tense and lax vowels as well as voiced and voiceless consonants, among others. In this system tenseness
Tenseness
In phonology, tenseness is a particular vowel quality that is phonemically contrastive in many languages, including English. It has also occasionally been used to describe contrasts in consonants. Unlike most distinctive features, the feature [tense] can be interpreted only relatively, that is, in...
is marked by colon : following the vowel sign. a, a:, ai, au, e, e:, i, i:, iu:, o, o:, oi, u, u:, v (here schwa, not /v/), all correspond to unique graphemes in the Bridges orthography. Consonants are: b, d, ch, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, ng, p, r, s, sh, t, w, x, y, z, all corresponding to single Bridges graphemes, some of which are only found in restricted environments, and hm, hn, hl, hr, hw, hy, which are digraphs in earlier Bridges writings but single graphemes in later ones. Still later Bridges made further orthographic modifications: w, h, and y became superscripts- à is read as ya, á as ha, and ā as wa. Superscripts could combine to give hw, hy, etc. Because iu: could now be represented by u: plus y- superscript (ù:), and also because the original graphemes for u: and u were easily confused with each other (as well as with the now superscripted w), Bridges began using the now redundant grapheme for iu: (approximately ų) for u: in his renderings. All these changes took place in a very short time frame, and have led to a lot of confusion on the part of later scholars. In addition, Bridges' modifications of the 19th century phonetic alphabet of Alexander Ellis also included a number of signs meant for transliterations of foreign terms.
There are some ambiguities in Bridges' renderings. He himself notes that g/k, j/ch, d/t and p/f are in many instances interchangeable. In certain environments s and sh are hard to distinguish (as before high front vowels). Likewise ai versus e: and au versus o: Such ambiguities may go far to help explain the loss or lack of contrasts in the surviving dialect.
Morphophonology
Yaghan shows a number of sandhiSandhi
Sandhi is a cover term for a wide variety of phonological processes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries . Examples include the fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of sounds due to neighboring sounds or due to the grammatical function of adjacent words...
effects on consonant
Consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and ,...
s and vowel
Vowel
In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...
s. For instance, the terminal -i of teki 'to see, recognize' when affix
Affix
An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. Affixes may be derivational, like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed. They are bound morphemes by definition; prefixes and suffixes may be separable affixes...
ed by -vnnaka 'to have trouble/difficulty doing' becomes -e:- of teke:vnnaka 'have trouble recognizing/seeing'
In syllable
Syllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus with optional initial and final margins .Syllables are often considered the phonological "building...
s reduced through morphophonetic
Morphophonology
Morphophonology is a branch of linguistics which studies, in general, the interaction between morphological and phonetic processes. When a morpheme is attached to a word, it can alter the phonetic environments of other morphemes in that word. Morphophonemics attempts to describe this process...
processes, terminal vowels (-a, -u:) of original bisyllables will often drop (except for -i, which tends to remain, leaving previous material unaffected), and resultant final stops will fricativize (r becomes sh). Aside from losing stress, any vowels preceding these shifted consonants will often shift from tense to lax. Ex. -a:gu: 'for self, with one's own' > -ax-. ata 'to take, convey' > vhr-, and so on. Present tense
Present tense
The present tense is a grammatical tense that locates a situation or event in present time. This linguistic definition refers to a concept that indicates a feature of the meaning of a verb...
usually results in the dropping of the final vowel of the infinitival
Infinitive
In grammar, infinitive is the name for certain verb forms that exist in many languages. In the usual description of English, the infinitive of a verb is its basic form with or without the particle to: therefore, do and to do, be and to be, and so on are infinitives...
form of the verb
Verb
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...
and associated changes as above, as does affixation by many, but not all, further derivational
Derivation (linguistics)
In linguistics, derivation is the process of forming a new word on the basis of an existing word, e.g. happi-ness and un-happy from happy, or determination from determine...
and inflection
Inflection
In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case...
al suffix
Suffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs...
es beginning with stops
Stop consonant
In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &...
, affricates, and other consonants. Ex. aiamaka 'to fight' aiamux-tvlli 'to fight confusedly'.
The sounds m, n, and l are particularly labile in some environments. atama 'to eat' atu:-yella 'to leave off eating' (not atamayella). n from -Vna 'state' is often reduced to -V: when one would expect -Vn-. l can disappear entirely before some consonants. vla 'to drink', vlnggu: or vnggu: 'to drink'. Initial h- in roots and affixes drops in many instances. Ex. kvna 'to float, be in boat'+ haina 'to walk, go' gives kvn-aina. ng (as in English 'hang') is purely morphophonetic, from terminal n before a velar consonant. Many instances of m before a labial consonant are similarly motivated. w after a passive/reflexive prefix m- often drops. w often vocalizes to u: or o: or drops (depending on preceding material): tu:- causative plus wvshta:gu: 'work' is tu:vshta:gu: 'make work'. y is also relatively labile- after reduced -ata-> -vhr- the suffix -yella 'to leave off' becomes -chella. In combination with preceding -a y often vocalizes: ki:pa 'woman' plus yamalim 'plural animates/people' becomes ki:paiamalim.
Stress
In recent analyses of the speech of remaining speakers, word stressStress (linguistics)
In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word, or to certain words in a phrase or sentence. The term is also used for similar patterns of phonetic prominence inside syllables. The word accent is sometimes also used with this sense.The stress placed...
was felt to be nondistinctive
Minimal pair
In phonology, minimal pairs are pairs of words or phrases in a particular language, which differ in only one phonological element, such as a phone, phoneme, toneme or chroneme and have distinct meanings...
. However, in the mid-19th century Yahga Strait dialect (which is likely not the ancestor of the surviving one) word stress was distinctive at least at the level of the individual morpheme
Morpheme
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,...
, with stress shifting in regular patterns during word formation. Certain otherwise identical word roots
Root (linguistics)
The root word is the primary lexical unit of a word, and of a word family , which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents....
are distinguishable by different stress marking. No information is available about phrase or clause level stress phenomena from the Yahga dialect.
Some roots, particularly those with doubled consonants, exhibit stress on both vowels flanking the doublet. Diphthongs appear to attract stress when they are morphophonetic in origin, sometimes removing it from vowels on both sides that would otherwise be stressed. The first vowel -V- (influenced by the preceding terminal root vowel) in -Vna '(be) in a state' also appears to attract stress, while -ata 'attain' repels stress to the left. Thus the combination -Vnata 'get into a state' is harmonious. Diphthongal attraction often trumps -Vna, drawing stress further left, while two successive diphthongs often have the stress on the rightmost one (counterintuitively). Syllables reduced morphophonetically generally lose whatever stress they might have carried. The vast majority of 'irregular' stress renderings in Bridges' original dictionary manuscript seem to arise from just these five sources.
Interestingly, it may be that these effects help to preserve morpheme boundary and identity information. For instance given the importance of derivation of verbs from nouns and adjectives using -Vna- and -ata-, shifted stress allows one to differentiate these morphemes from lexical -ata- (common enough) and those -na-'s that are part of lexical roots (also relatively common). -Vna itself will often lose stress and reduce to a tense vowel before other suffixes, leaving the shifting as a hint of its underlying presence.
Stress can also differentiate otherwise identical voice morpheme strings: tú:mu:- causative reflexive (get someone else to do/make one) from tu:mú:-(1) the causative of making oneself seem, or pretend to be in some state, and tu:mú:-(2) the circumstantial (tu:- allomorph before m-) of same (i.e. to seem/pretend at any specified time or place, with any particular tools, for any reasons, etc.). Circumstantial T has different allomorphs- some having following stressable vowel, others not- this also complicates matters for the learner but may also help disentangle morpheme boundaries for the listener.
Sound symbolism
There appears to be a great deal of remnant sound symbolism in the Yahgan lexicon. For example, many roots ending in -m encode as part of their senses the notion of a texturally softened positive curve (similar to -mp in such words as lump or hump in English), while an -l in similar position often shows up when the reference is to bloody core parts, often out from once safe confinement inside the body. Many roots with initial ch- refer to repeated, spiny extrusions, final -x to dry, hard-edged, or brittle parts, and so on.The historical sources of these patterns cannot be known for sure, but it may be possible that there was at one time a shape and texture classifier system of some sort behind them. Such systems are rather common in South American languages.
There is little direct onomatopoeia recorded by Bridges, despite descriptions of highly animated imitative behavior on the part of speakers being recorded in the late 19th century. Several bird names are perhaps reduplications of calls (or other nonvocal behavior), and there are a couple of imitative cries and sound words. Most words denoting sounds end in an unproductive verb-deriving suffix -sha (in at least one case -ra, and r is known to alternate with sh), which may be derived from the Yahgan root ha:sha 'voice, language, uttered words, speech, cry', or vra 'to cry'. Ex. gvlasha 'to rattle'.
In the Bridges dictionary of the language one may note several otherwise identical terms differing only in whether they are spelled with an s or a ch (for example asela/achela 'skin'). It is not known whether this was dialectal, dialect mixture, ideolectal, gender-based usage or a real grammatical variation such as might occur with augmentative/diminutive sound symbolic shifting.
Syntax
Yahgan exhibits extensive case marking on nouns and equally extensive voice marking on verbs. Because of this, word order is relatively less important in determining subject and object relations. Most of the clauses in the three published biblical texts, the dictionary, and the various grammars show either verb medial or verb final orders. Certain clause types are verb initial, but are the distinct minority.Further analysis of the biblical texts is showing that the Yahga dialect allowed for semantic reordering of constituents. For instance if SVO is considered the default order for subject and object flanking the verb, then when O is left-shifted (SOV) there is often a sense that the object nominal has more say in his/her patient-hood than if kept to the right of the verb. Similarly, when the subject is right-shifted (VSO) its agent-hood appears often less than what one would expect. It will remain to be seen how pervasive this principle is in the language, and how intricately it interacts with Tense-Aspect-Mood and Polarity marking, topicalization, focus, etc.
The adverb kaia 'fast, quick(ly)' can be used lexically to modify predications, but in the three biblical texts it is also apparently used to mark the second component clause in 'if-then' types of constructions. There is no mention made of this in surviving grammars, nor in the dictionary glosses of kaia. The progressive verb suffix -gaiata may be related.
Grammaticalization
Grammaticalization is an historical linguistic process whereby regular lexical items shift function (and sometimes form) and become part of the grammar structure.An example of this in Yahgan would be the change of posture verbs into aspectual markers. Yahgan has a system of verbs which denote the posture of an entity: 'stand' mvni, 'sit' mu:tu:, 'lie' (w)i:a and others (for instance a:gulu: 'fly/jump', kvna 'float' etc.). In normal lexical usage one could say
hai ha-mu:t-ude: 'I sat'. (hai full pronoun first person singular, ha- bound version unmarked for number, -ude: past tense).
sa sa-mvni-de: 'You stood'. (sa full pronoun second singular, sa- bound).
But with the same root in their grammaticalized forms added:
hai ha-mvni-mu:t-ude: 'I stood regularly, or as a rule'.
sa sa-muhr-mvni-de: 'You often sat, or were ready to sit'.
The semantic bases of such usage seems to the degree of bodily contact with the substratum, vigilance, engagement, etc. Flying/jumping means ceasing some activity of interest entirely and going off to do something else rather suddenly, standing implies readiness to do something else as needed but attending to the activity when one can. Sitting is regular involvement in the activity, though not to the exclusion of other things that need doing. Lying (not just on but also within) is deep involvement, almost to the exclusion of other activities (English 'immersed in', being 'wrapped up in', 'in a rut' 'be up to one's neck/ears in', 'in over one's head', 'buried in (as work)' etc. have similar import). Relative height is another way to look at it- we say we are 'over' with something to mean 'done with' (equivalent to the jump/fly term in Yahgan), with a hint of relative dominance implied as well. While English has a plethora of colorful expressions for denoting such circumstances, Yahgan has reduced the system to a well defined smallish set of terms from the domain of posture verbs. Such reduction is one symptom of grammaticalization.
Such contact/engagement-based semantic clines are relatively common crosslinguistically, and the phenomenon of posture verbs changing to aspect marking morphemes is well known among linguists, though it is not the only pathway to creating such terms.
A phonetically based cline (based on both oral articulatory position and manner) can be seen in prefixes y- a- u:- in Yahgan, and combinations ya- and u:a-.
y- denotes an activity begun or intended, but not completed. a- seems to imply continuation, and u:- removal of impediments to the completion of the activity. Combined forms ya- and u:a- appear to accentuate the continuous part of the activity.
In North America, languages of the Siouan and Chemakuan families have similarly structured basic systems (Siouan prefixal, Chemakuan suffixal), but mostly with spatial reference. i- is standing out, away from some surface, a- is surface contact, and u- is containment within a surface, though there are also processual and figure/ground senses involved. Note that standing away minimizes surface contact. Other language families have distance demonstratives which follow similar phonological clines. It is possible that there may be historical connections between the y- form and ki:pa 'woman' and u:- and u:a 'man', which when verbalized apparently refer to less and more forceful or determined attempts to achieve respectively. Verbs ya:na 'to intend, wish' and wa:na 'pass, surpass', as well as u:a- 'do fiercely, forcibly' may be related, with suffixal -na on the first forms.
Horizontal movement verbs commonly change, crosslinguistically, into tense markers. Yahgan shows evidence of such shifts as well.
Pronouns
The three personal pronoun bases are: h- first person/proximal, s- second person/near distal, k- third person/further distal. These are also the forms found as bound prefixes on verbs.Free/emphatic forms: Nominative Singular: 1 hai, 2 sa, 3 kvnjin.
Dual: 1 hipai, 2 sapai, 3 kvnde:(i) or kvnde:u:. Plural: 1 haian, 2 san, 3 kvndaian
Accusative Singular: 1 haia, 2 skaia, 3 kvnjima. Dual: 123. Plural: 1 haiananima, 2 sananima, 3 kvndaiananima.
Demonstratives
The demonstrative bases are the same historically as those of the pronouns:- hauan: 'here'
- hauanchi: 'this'
- siu:an: 'there (close)'
- siu:anchi: 'that (close)'
- kvnji: 'that (further away)'
Adjectives
Yahgan possesses a large number of adjective roots, especially those referring to physical states of matter, health, psychological states, etc. Many do double duty as nouns, adverbs, less often without derivation as verbs. Nouns and adjectives can be verbalized by adding -Vna '(be) in a state', or -ata 'become' or both -Vnata 'develop into a state' (where the identity of V is influenced by the final vowel of the root, but is often not identical to it). Such verbalizations are exceedingly common in the dictionary, and can be further derived and inflected.Example: lvmbi 'dark, black', lvmbi:na 'be dark', lvmbi:nata 'become dark', lvmbi:nuhrka:taka 'incrementally become dark', tu:lvmbi:nuhrchella 'cause to leave off becoming dark'.
Adjectives in Yahgan generally have predicative value when following a noun, but are attributive when preceding. There are large numbers of adjective-noun compounds in the language. Examples of attributive adjectives preceding the noun: yaus-u:a 'a lying man, i.e. a liar', yaus-ki:pa 'a lying woman', yeka-kaiiu:ala 'a young child', hu:lu:-a:nan 'a large canoe'. Examples of predicative adjectives following a noun: lvn-tauwa 'tight-tongued i.e. tongue-tied', yvsh-duf 'weak-handed i.e. not dexterous'.
Some more commonly used suffixal forms creating adjectives are: -kuru: 'wishing, wanting to X', -pun 'having no ability to resist X'ing', -Vta 'disposed towards X(ing)', -vnnaka 'having difficulty Xing or unable to X', -a:ru:gata 'troubled doing X', -siu:wa:ta 'tired of X or Xing', -Vtas 'doing X well'. Examples: a:musha:kuru: 'liking to pray', u:ku:tu:mvra-siu:wa:ta 'tired of explaining', i:kama:natas 'good at writing'. As with other adjective roots, these suffixed forms may be further derived as in the lvmbi example above.
Adverbs
Adverbs are the one word class that appears to allow for productive reduplication, for instance chilla 'again', chilla chilla 'again and again'.Nouns
The physical environment in which the Yahgan people lived was relatively poor in land resources, and historically they spent little time in the interior. It is understandable, then, that the vocabulary reflects this. There are many fewer names for land animals and plants than one might expect based on what is found in other languages from other, richer natural environments. The sea coast was a different matter, and the language had many terms for sea birds and ocean life.Yahgan emphasized interconnected parts over unanalyzed wholes (also reflected in their verb serialization). Body parts are finely differentiated, as are social relationships. The vocabulary contained a vast number of deverbalized nouns.
Personal names often derived from the name of the place of birth- for instance a man born in Ushuaia (meaning 'bay (waia) in the upper back (ushsha)') might be Ushuaia-njiz. Alternatively one might use the case form -ndaulum 'from' and u:a 'man' giving Ushuaia-ndaulum-u:a.
Subject nouns take no overt case marking (subject coreference is on the verb instead). Nouns can be marked for accusative, genitive, dative, locative, instrumental and other cases. Geographical information can be incorporated into the string, as can information about number, collectivity, definiteness, etc. Most of these marks are suffixal.
In the three biblical texts there are numerous complex noun phrases with very involved case relations. It is unknown whether this is characteristic of speaker usage or an invention of the missionary Bridges.
Verbs can be nominalized through a variety of means, particularly by the prefixation of circumstantial T (with its various allomorphs) and/or suffixation of participial morphemes: -shin 'past participle', -(k)un 'present participle', and -Vmvs 'future participle'. Examples: ts-ta:gu: 'to give at some particular time, in some stated place, using some tool', or 'a gift', teki-shin 'when X saw, or the one who saw', wvle:wa twi:amanana-shin 'The boy who lived', ts-ta:pvn-a:mvs 'the one who will die'.
Verbs
Verbs in Yahgan are often compoundedCompound (linguistics)
In linguistics, a compound is a lexeme that consists of more than one stem. Compounding or composition is the word formation that creates compound lexemes...
("serialized
Serial verb construction
The serial verb construction, also known as serialization, is a syntactic phenomenon common to many African, Asian and New Guinean languages...
"). Bound subject pronouns (ha- 1st, sa- 2nd, kv- 3rd), unmarked for number, are prefixed, coming before voice prefixes (such as ma(m) -passive, tu:- causative, u:- permissive, T- circumstantial (with allomorphs t-, tv-, tu:-, ts-, chi:-, chi-, ch-), l- back, in response to, etc.). Aspect (such as progressive -gaiata-), tense (for instance -vde: simple past, -u:a simple future, with added increments -vde:aka 'further past', -u:ana 'further future), and mood (generally in that order), etc. are suffixal, along with the two 'benefactive' suffixes -a:gu: 'for self', -ya:gu: 'for another'. Number within the verb (number of subjects or acts) can be encoded by overt marking (once -ata, twice -a:pai/-pikin-, several times -a:misiu:, plural -isin-/-u:sin-, or even none -apisiu:) or the many different distinct plural verbs (for instance mvni 'sg. to stand', palana 'pl. to stand'; ata 'sg. to take, convey', tu:mi:na 'pl. to take, convey').
Ex. i:nan haian kvndaiananima ha-ts-tu:-uhr-gaiat-u:sin-de:-aka a:nan 'We (haian) were making them (kvndaiananima) take (uhr < ata 'take') the boat (a:nan) during (ts- circumstantial plus -n locative on) the winter (i:na) a while ago'.
A handful of verbs form doublets where one of the pair seems to have an unproductive reversative suffix possibly related to the form -a:gu: '(do) for oneself'. For instance ma:na 'to lend', ma:na:ku: 'to borrow'.
In addition to normal serialization Yahgan also exhibits complex verb stems of a type relatively common in western North America, where the main verb is flanked by instrument/body part manner of action prefixes and pathway/position suffixes. The prefixes are part of a larger, more open system of elements marking various kinds of causes or motivations, grading off into more grammaticalized voice marking. Many of the path/position suffixes (especially posture verbs) do double duty as sources for more grammaticalized aspectual morphology. Tense suffixes seem to derive historically from horizontal motion verbs, and together with the more vertical postural aspect forms, make an interesting Cartesian-style coordinate system for dealing with the temporal dimension.
Example stems are: -aku:-pung-kvna-, -aku:- 'by striking' (itself from aki 'strike' plus -u:- permissive/causative), -(a)pvna-'kill/die', -kvna 'in a boat or afloat', meaning 'to kill by striking while afloat'. -alagvnat-u:-tekil-uhr-man-a:tsikvri- 'to stand by watching (-alagvnat-) and let (-u:) step completely (-tekil-ata-) out (-man-a:tsikvri-) (say a person one does not like out of the house into the line of gunfire without warning or stopping him).
A small number of commonly used verb roots have irregular present tenses. Instead of dropping the final vowel (triggering reductive processes) these forms instead add -ata after the vowel is dropped. Examples: mu:tu: 'to sit'/'to be', present mu:ta (from mu:t-ata), wi:a 'to lie'/'to be', present wi:ata, kvna 'to float'/'to be', present ga:rata. In the last example note that this seemingly suppletive present may in fact hark back to the original historical form, and infinitival kvna may be the changed one.
The form mvra 'to hear' has grammaticalized into an evidential suffix -mush 'hearsay'. Ex. hauanchi isin wuru: yamanaiamalim ma:maia-mushun-de: 'They say that in this land many men died'. There are several other evidential suffixes, differentiating sensory mode (hearing, sight, etc.) as well as time. mvra also finds modal use in the clitic space that often follows the first substantive in the sentence: kvnjin MUSH yamana:mu:ta, kvndaian-da:gia kv-teki-sin-de: kvnjima hauanchi moala 'He MUST be alive, because they (the ones who told me about it) saw him today'. There are other modal verbs also found in this space.
There is little or no reduplication evident on the Yahgan verb, and sound symbolism of the augmentative/diminutive type appears to be largely lexicalized. On the other hand, Yahgan exhibits a good deal of remnant sound symbolism in the verb, similar to what one sees in English.
A good number of verbs seem to form small 'word families' which have slight semantic differences which may have been encoded using sound symbolism (as one often sees, for instance, in some languages of the Austroasiatic stock). For instance haina 'go, walk lightly' versus u:unna 'walk heavily, plod'. In such cases the original symmetry of form seems often to have been distorted by historical changes.
Sample vocabulary
Included below are some basic Yaghan words.- man: yagan, yámana
- woman: kíppa
- dog: yasála, jesæla
- blood: sápa
- arm: kaméin, kamæn
- heart: sáeskin, sæskin
- moon: hanúha, hanúxa
- star: ahpérnih, apærnix
- rain: paléna
- water: síma
- fog: fóka, háokà
- sky: wákul
- fire: pusáki
- ash: áfua, axuá, ahuá
- day: maóla, mólla
- bay, inlet: ushipin
- canoe: ánan
See also
- FuegiansFuegiansFuegians are the indigenous inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, at the southern tip of South America. In English, the term originally referred to the Yaghan people of Tierra del Fuego...
- MamihlapinatapaiMamihlapinatapaiMamihlapinatapai is a word from the Yaghan language of Tierra del Fuego, listed in The Guinness Book of World Records as the "most succinct word", and is considered one of the hardest words to translate...
- Selk'nam
- Kawésqar
- Kawésqar languageKawésqar languageKawésqar is an Alacalufan language spoken in southern Chile by the Kawésqar people. Originally there were several distinct dialects...
- HaushHaushThe Haush or Manek'enk were an indigenous people, considered the oldest inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego. They inhabited the Mitre Peninsula, the eastern tip of the island, and made regular hunting trips to Isla de los Estados....
- Fuegian languagesFuegian languagesFuegian languages refers to mainly to three languages spoken in Tierra del Fuego by native Americans; the Kawésqar language, the Ona language and the Yaghan language....
External links
- South American Missionary Society : Tierra del Fuego, 1898:
- Yagán dictionary online (select simple or advanced browsing)
- Ethnologue report
- Lenguas Australes
- Yagán (Universidad de Chile)
- Lengua Yagán (Universidad de Chile)
- Waata Chis, a discussion list on the Yaghan people, their language, and their culture
- Moribund 'Savages' of Tierra del Fuego
- http://issuu.com/annakoelle/docs/y_gankuta__independiente_ Little Yagan Dictionary
- Acts of the Apostles translated into Yahgan, Google Books
- Acts of the Apostles translated into Yahgan, www.archive.org
- Gospel of John translated into Yahgan, Google Books
- Gospel of John translated into Yahgan, www.archive.org
- Gospel of Luke translated into Yahgan, www.archive.org
- Glossar der feuerländischen Sprache (1882)
- Mission scientifique du Cap Horn, 1882–1883, Volume 7, pp. 262–335 on Yahgan language, grammar
- Grammaire de la langue jâgane By Lucien Adam
- Oracion matutina y vespertina, colectas (Yahgan) Anglican liturgical translation