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Yawelmani Yokuts

Closeup map of historical Yawelmani distribution

Yawelmani Yokuts (also spelled Yowlumne and Yauelmani) is an endangered dialect of Southern Valley Yokuts historically spoken by the Yokuts living along the Kern River north of Kern Lake in the Central Valley of California.[2] Today, most Yawelmani speakers live on or near the Tule River Reservation.[3]

Name

Academic sources frequently use the name Yawelmani while referring to the language, though tribe members more often use the name Yowlumne.[3]

When referencing their language, modern speakers of Yawelmani use the terms inyana (Indian), and yaw'lamnin ṭeexil (speech of the Yowlumne).[3]

Phonology

Consonants

Vowels

Yawelmani has 10 vowel phonemes:

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:

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/.

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.

Grammar

Case system

Yawelmani is a primary object language.[3]

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]

Selected vocabulary

References

  1. ^ Yokuts at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022) Closed access icon
  2. ^ 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.
  3. ^ a b c d Weigel, William (2005). "Yowlumne in the Twentieth Century". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  4. ^ 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.
  5. ^ Kroeber, A. L. (1907). "The Yokuts language of south central California" (PDF). University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnography: 281.
  6. ^ Golla, Victor (2011-08-02). California Indian Languages. University of California Press. ISBN 9780520266674.
  7. ^ "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