Northern Paiute language
Northern Paiute ,[3] also known as Numu and Paviotso, is a Western Numic language of the Uto-Aztecan family, which according to Marianne Mithun had around 500 fluent speakers in 1994.[4] Ethnologue reported the number of speakers in 1999 as 1,631.[5] It is closely related to the Mono language.
Phonology
Northern Paiute's phonology is highly variable, and its phonemes have many allophones.[6]
Consonants
| |
Bilabial |
Alveolar |
Palatal |
Velar |
Glottal |
| Plain |
Lab. |
|
| Stop |
p | t | | k | kʷ | ʔ |
| Nasal |
m | n | | ŋ | | |
| Fricative |
| s | | | | h |
| Affricate |
| ts | tʃ | | | |
| Approximant |
w | | j | | | |
Vowels
|
Front |
Central |
Back |
| Close |
i | ɨ | u |
| Open-Mid |
| | ɔ |
| Open |
| a | |
Language revitalization
In 2005, the Northwest Indian Language Institute of the University of Oregon formed a partnership to teach Northern Paiute and Kiksht in the Warm Springs Indian Reservation schools.[7] In 2013, Washoe County, Nevada became the first school district in Nevada to offer Northern Paiute classes, offering an elective course in the language at Spanish Springs High School.[8] Classes have also been taught at Reed High School in Sparks, Nevada.[9]
Elder Ralph Burns of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Reservation worked with University of Nevada, Reno linguist Catherine Fowler to help develop a written language. The alphabet uses 19 letters. They have also developed "a language-learning book, “Numa Yadooape,” and a series of computer disks of language lessons."[9]
Morphology
Northern Paiute is an agglutinative language, in which words use suffix complexes for a variety of purposes with several morphemes strung together.
References
- 1 2 Northern Paiute at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
- ↑ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Northern Paiute". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
- ↑ Laurie Bauer, 2007, The Linguistics Student’s Handbook, Edinburgh
- ↑ Mithun (1999:541)
- ↑ "Report on Northern Paiute". Ethnologue. Retrieved 2007-03-29.
- ↑ Haynes, Erin Flynn (2010). "Phonetic and Phonological Acquisition in Endangered Languages Learned by Adults:
A Case Study of Numu (Oregon Northern Paiute)". PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkley
- ↑ Joanne B. Mulcahy (2005). "Warm Springs: A Convergence of Cultures" (Oregon History Project). Retrieved 2013-02-26.
- ↑ Joe Hart (Director). "Nevada Proud: Students get a chance to learn native language in school". My News 4. KRNV, Reno, NV. Retrieved 2013-10-24.
- 1 2 Vogel, Ed (2014-02-01). "Paiute elder rescues language near extinction". Las Vegas Review-Journal. Retrieved 2014-02-26.
Bibliography
- Liljeblad, Sven, Catherine S. Fowler, & Glenda Powell. 2012. The Northern Paiute-Bannock Dictionary, with an English-Northern Paiute-Bannock Finder List and a Northern Paiute-Bannock-English Finder List. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. ISBN 978-1-60781-030-8
- Mithun, Marianne (1999). Languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Snapp, Allen, John L. Anderson, and Joy Anderson. 1982. Northern Paiute. In Ronald W. Langacker, eds. Sketches in Uto-Aztecan grammar, III: Uto-Aztecan grammatical sketches. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics and the University of Texas at Arlington. Summer Institute of Linguistics Publications in Linguistics, 57(3) [The publication erroneously stated (56)3, but this has been amended in the PDF made available online by the publisher.] pp. 1–92.
- Thornes, Tim (2003). "A Northern Paiute Grammar with Texts". Ph.D. dissertation. University of Oregon-Eugene.
External links
