Short high vowels may become more centralized in fast speech: /i/→[ɪ], /u/→[ʊ].
Long high vowels are almost always lower than their short counterparts: /iː/→[ɛː], /uː/→[ɔː].
All long vowels may be shortened by a phonological process. Thus, a single long vowel has two different phonetic realizations:
/iː/→[ɛ,ɛː],
/aː/→[a,aː],
/uː/→[ɔ,ɔː],
/ɔː/→[ɔ,ɔː].
Note that the high long vowel /uː/ is usually pronounced the same as /ɔ/ and /ɔː/.
As can be seen, Yawelmani vowels have a number of different realizations (phones) which are summarized below:
The Yawelmani syllables can be either a consonant-vowel sequence (CV), such as deeyi- 'lead', or a consonant-vowel-consonant sequence (CVC), such as xata- 'eat'.[clarification needed] Thus the generalized syllable is the following:
CV(C)
Word roots are bisyllabic and have either one of two shapes:
CV.CV
CV.CVC
Phonological processes
Vowel shortening
When long vowels are in closed syllables, they are shortened:
Vowel harmony
Yawelmani has suffixes that contain either an underspecified high vowel /I/ or an underspecified non-high vowel /A/.
Underspecified /I/ will appear as /u/ following the high rounded vowel /u/ and as /i/ following all other vowels /i,a,ɔ/:
Underspecified /A/ will appear as /ɔ/ following the non-high rounded vowel /ɔ/ and as /a/ following all other vowels /i,u,a/:
Vowel epenthesis
Yawelmani adds vowels to stems, when suffixes with an initial consonant are affixed to word with two final consonants in order to avoid a triple-consonant-cluster.
A. L. Krober documented the language's case system in his 1907 paper The Yokuts language of south central California.[5]
Speakers
A 2011 estimate by Victor Golla placed the number of fluent and semi-fluent Yawelmani speakers at "up to twenty-five"[6]
Revitalization efforts
In 1993, the Master-Apprentice Language Learning Program piloted a series of language programs that included Yawelmani. The program was reportedly effective in teaching conversational Yawelmani to tribal members without prior knowledge and increasing language use among elders.[7]
^Whistler, Kenneth W.; Golla, Victor (1986). "Proto-Yokuts Reconsidered". International Journal of American Linguistics. 52 (4): 317–358. doi:10.1086/466028. ISSN 0020-7071. JSTOR 1265536. S2CID 144822697.
^ a b c dWeigel, William (2005). "Yowlumne in the Twentieth Century". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
^Newman, Stanley S. (1946). The Yawelmani Dialect of Yokuts. In Harry Hoijer (ed.), Linguistic Structures of Native America: New York: Viking Fund. pp. 222–248.
^Kroeber, A. L. (1907). "The Yokuts language of south central California" (PDF). University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnography: 281.
^Golla, Victor (2011-08-02). California Indian Languages. University of California Press. ISBN 9780520266674.
^"Survival of Endangered Languages: The California Master-Apprentice Program". International Journal of the Sociology of Language (123): 177–191. 2009. doi:10.1515/ijsl.1997.123.177. ISSN 1613-3668.
External links
English/Yowlumne dictionary
Yowlum'nen Trexul: Yowlumne phrase and lesson book