Lake Miwok language

Lake Miwok
Native to	United States
Region	Lake County, California
Ethnicity	Lake Miwok
Native speakers	2–3 semi-speakers; no active use  (2007)[1]
Language family	Yok-Utian Utian Miwokan Western Lake Miwok
Language codes
ISO 639-3	lmw
Clear Lake

The Lake Miwok language is a moribund (or possibly extinct) language of Northern California, traditionally spoken in an area adjacent to the Clear Lake. It is one of the languages of the Clear Lake Linguistic Area, along with Patwin, East and Southeastern Pomo, and Wappo.^[2]

Phonology

Vowels

Consonants

The consonant inventory of Lake Miwok differs substantially from the inventories found in the other Miwok languages. Where the other languages only have one series of plosives, Lake Miwok has four: plain, aspirated, ejective and voiced. Lake Miwok has also added the affricates č, c, čʼ, ƛʼ and the liquids r and ł. These sounds appear to have been borrowed through loanwords from other, unrelated languages in the Clear Lake area, after which they spread to some native Lake Miwok words.^[2][3]

Grammar

The word order of Lake Miwok is relatively free, but SOV (subject–object–verb) is the most common order.^[4]

Verb morphology

Subject prefixes

In her Lake Miwok grammar, Callaghan reports that one speaker distinguishes between 1st person dual inclusive -ʔoc and exclusive ʔic-. Another speaker also remembers that this distinction formerly was made by older speakers.^[5]

Noun morphology

Case inflection

Nouns can be inflected for ten different cases:

• the Subjective case marks a noun which functions as the subject of a verb. If the subject noun is placed before the verb, the Subjective has the allomorph -n after vowel (or a vowel followed by /h/), and -Ø after consonants. If it is placed after the verb, the Subjective is -n after vowels and -nu after consonants.

kukú	-n	ʔin-	tíkki	-t	mékuh
flea	-subjective	2sg-	forehead	-allative	sit
"A flea is sitting on your forehead."

• the Possessive case is -n after vowels and -Ø after consonants

ʔóle	-n	ṣúluk	táj	-Ø	ṣáapa
coyote	-possessive	skin	man	-possessive	hair
"coyote skin"			"the man's hair"

• the Objective case marks a noun which functions as the object of a verb. It has a the allomorph -u (after a consonant) or -Ø (after a vowel) when the noun is placed immediately before a verb which contains the 2nd person prefix ʔin- (which then has the allomorph -n attached to the noun preceding the verb; compare the example below) or does not contain any subject prefix at all.

káac	-u	-n	ʔúṭe?
fish	-objective	-2sg	see
"Did you see the fish?"

It has the allomorph -Ø before a verb containing any other subject prefix:

kawáj	-Ø	ka-	ʔúṭe
horse	-objective	1sg-	see
"I saw the horse"

If the object noun does not immediately precede the verb, or if the verb is in the imperative, the allomorph of the Objective is -uc:

káac	-uc	jolúm	-mi
fish	-objective	eat	-imperative
"Eat the fish"

• the allative case is -to or -t depending on the environment. It has a variety of meaning, but often expresses direction towards a goal.
• the locative case -m gives a less specific designation of locality than the Allative, and occurs more rarely.
• the ablative case is -mu or -m depending on the context, and marks direction out of, or away from, a place.
• the instrumental case -ṭu marks instruments, e.g. tumáj-ṭu "(I hit him) with a stick".
• the comitative case -ni usually translates as "along with", but can also be used to coordinate nouns, as in kaʔunúu-ni kaʔáppi-ni "my mother and my father".
• the vocative case only occurs with a few kinship terms, e.g. ʔunúu "mother (voc)" from ʔúnu "mother".
• the Appositive case is the citation form of nouns.

Possessive prefixes

Lake Miwok uses possessive prefixes to indicate the possessor of a noun. Except for the 3d person singular, they have the same shape as the subject prefixes, but show no allomorphy.

The reflexive hana-forms have the same referent as the subject of the same clause, whereas the non-reflexive forms have a different referent, e.g.:

• hanaháju ʔúṭe – “He sees his own dog”

• ʔiṭiháju ʔúṭe – “He sees (somebody else’s) dog”

Notes

References

External links

• Lake Miwok language overview at the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages
• Lake Miwok audio recordings at the California Language Archive (login required)
• "Lake Miwok sound recordings". Collections Search Center, Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved 2012-07-20. 
• OLAC resources in and about the Lake Miwok language

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