Pawnee language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Pawnee | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | United States | |
| Region: | North-central Oklahoma | |
| Total speakers: | 20 | |
| Language family: | Caddoan languages Northern Caddoan Pawnee-Kitsai Pawnee Pawnee |
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| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | none | |
| ISO 639-2: | — | |
| ISO 639-3: | paw | |
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| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key. | ||
The Pawnee language is a Caddoan language spoken by Pawnee Native Americans located in North central Oklahoma. Once the language of thousands of Pawnees, today Pawnee is spoken by a shrinking number of elderly speakers, and as more young people continue to learn English as their first language, the status of Pawnee declines towards extinction.
Contents |
[edit] Dialects
Two important dialect divisions are evident in Pawnee: South Band and Skiri. The distinction between the two dialects rests on differences in their respective phonetic inventory and lexicon.
[edit] Sounds
The sounds described in this section belong to the South Band dialect of Pawnee.
[edit] Consonants
Pawnee has eight consonant phonemes, and according to one analysis of medial- and final-position glottal stops, one may posit a ninth consonant phoneme.
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Velar | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stop | p | t | k | (ʔ) |
| Affricate | ʦ | |||
| Rhotic | r | |||
| Fricative | s | h | ||
| Approximant | w |
- /ʔ/ is predictable when it occurs in the middle of words. However, since /ʔ/ is not completely predictable at the ends of words, it may also need to be considered as a (phonemic) consonant.
[edit] Vowels
Pawnee has four short vowel phonemes and four long counterparts (also phonemic).
| Front | Back | |
|---|---|---|
| High | i/iː | u/uː |
| Mid-low | e/eː | a/aː |
[edit] Grammar
Pawnee is a polysynthetic language and displays ergativity between nouns and verbs.
[edit] References
- Mithun, Marianne. (1999). The languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-23228-7 (hbk); ISBN 0-521-29875-X.
- Parks, Douglas R. (1976). A grammar of Pawnee. New York: Garland.
- Taylor, Allan R. (1978). [Review of A grammar of Pawnee by D. Parks]. Language, 54 (4), 969-972.
