Wintuan languages

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Pre-contact distribution of Wintuan languages

Wintuan (also Wintun, Wintoon, Copeh, Copehan) is a family of languages spoken in the Sacramento Valley of central Northern California.

All Wintuan languages are severely endangered.

1 Family division
2 Bibliography
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Family division

There are 4 Wintuan languages:

I. Northern Wintuan

1. Wintu (a.k.a. Wintu proper)

2. Nomlaki (a.k.a. Noamlakee, Central Wintu)

II. Southern Wintuan

3. Patwin (a.k.a. Patween)

4. Southern Patwin (†)

Wintu may only have 2 speakers left. Nomlaki has few to none speakers. One speaker of Patwin (Hill Patwin dialect) remained in 1997. Southern Patwin became extinct fairly soon after contact with whites and is thus poorly known (Mithun 1999). Gordon (2005) reports 5-6 speakers total for all Wintuan languages. Wintu proper is the best documented of the four Wintuan languages.

Pitkin (1984) considers the Wintuan languages as close to each other as the Romance languages. They may have diverged from a common tongue only 2,000 years ago.

The Wintuan family was a member of the California kernel of the original Penutian proposal of Roland B. Dixon and Alfred L. Kroeber. This proposal is still hypothetical. The Wintuan, if Penutian, may not be part of a Californian subgroup, but instead be part of an Oregon Penutian grouping.

[edit] Bibliography

Dixon, Roland R.; & Kroeber, Alfred L. (1903). The native languages of California. American Anthropologist, 5, 1-26.
Dixon, Roland R.; & Kroeber, Alfred L. (1913). Relationship of the Indian languages of California. Science, 37, 225.
Dixon, Roland R.; & Kroeber, Alfred L. (1913). New linguistic families in California. American Anthropologist, 15, 647-655.
Dixon, Roland R.; & Kroeber, Alfred L. (1919). Linguistic families of California (pp. 47-118) Berkeley: University of California.
Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (Ed.). (2005). Ethnologue: Languages of the world (15th ed.). Dallas, TX: SIL International. ISBN 1-55671-159-X. (Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com).
Grant, Anthony. (1997). Coast Oregon Penutian. International Journal of American Linguistics, 63, 144-156.
Mithun, Marianne. (1999). The languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-23228-7 (hbk); ISBN 0-521-29875-X.
Pitkin, Harvey. (1984). Wintu grammar. University of California publications in linguistics (Vol. 94). Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-09612-6.
Pitkin, Harvey. (1985). Wintu dictionary. University of California publications in linguistics (Vol. 95). Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-09613-4.
Shepherd, Alice. (1989). Wintu texts. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-09748-3.
Whistler, Kenneth. (1980). Proto-Wintun kin classification: A case study in reconstruction of a complex semantic system. (Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Berkeley).