Kashaya language

Kashaya
Kʼahšá:ya
Native to United States
Region Sonoma County, California
Native speakers
 45 (1994)[1]
Pomoan

  • Western

    • Southern
      • Kashaya
Language codes
ISO 639-3 kju
Glottolog kash1280[2]

The seven Pomoan languages with an indication of their pre-contact distribution within California

Kashaya (also Southwestern Pomo, Kashia) is a name for a branch of Pomo people whose historical home is the Pacific Coastline of what is now Sonoma County, California, and also their severely endangered Pomoan language. The Pomoan languages have been classified as part of the Hokan language family (although the status of Hokan itself is controversial). The name Kashaya corresponds to words in neighboring languages with meanings such as "skillful" and "expert gambler". It is spoken by the Kashia Band of Pomo Indians of the Stewarts Point Rancheria.[3]

Phonology

Fort Ross sign with Kashaya placename /mé·ṭiʔni/, anglicized as “May-tee-nee”

Vowels

Kashaya has five vowels, which all occur as short and long. In the orthography established by Robert Oswalt, long vowels are represented by a raised dot (·).

   Short   Long 
 Front   Back   Front   Back 
 High (close)  i u iː uː
 Mid  e o eː oː
 Low (open)  a aː

Vowel length is contrastive in pairs such as ʔihya "bone" versus ʔihya: "wind", and dono "hill, mountain" versus dono: "uphill".

Consonants

Kashaya has the consonants shown in the chart below, following the transcription style established by Oswalt (1961). The letter c represents the affricate /t͡ʃ/, which patterns phonologically as a palatal stop. The coronal stops differ not so much in the location of the contact against the top of the mouth as in the configuration of the tongue. The dental stop t is described by Oswalt (1961) as post-dental among older speakers but as interdental among younger speakers more heavily influenced by English, similar to the place of articulation of /θ/. This dental stop has a laminal articulation perhaps best transcribed in IPA as /t̻/. The alveolar stop ṭ is an apical articulation, more precisely /t̺/. For younger speakers it resembles the English t in position. This chart treats aspirated and glottalized sonorants as single segments;[4] Oswalt analyzes them as sequences of a sonorant plus /h/ or /ʔ/, from which they often derive.

Labial Dental Alveolar Palatal Velar Uvular Glottal
Plosive plain p t [t̻] ṭ [t̺] c [t͡ʃ] k q ʔ
aspirated pʰ tʰ [t̻ʰ] ṭʰ [t̺ʰ] cʰ [t͡ʃʰ] kʰ qʰ
ejective pʼ tʼ [t̻ʼ] ṭʼ [t̺ʼ] cʼ [t͡ʃʼ] kʼ qʼ
voiced b d [d̺]
Fricative voiceless (f) s š [ʃ] h
ejective sʼ
Nasal plain m n
aspirated mʰ nʰ
glottalized mʼ nʼ
Approximant plain w l (r) y [j]
aspirated wʰ lʰ (rʰ) yʰ [jʰ]
glottalized wʼ lʼ (rʼ) yʼ [jʼ]

The consonants /f, r/ occur only in loanwords; due to the influence of English, loans from Spanish and Russian receive a pronunciation of /r/ like that in American English. The voiced stops /b, d/ are the realization of /mʼ, nʼ/ in onset position.

Syllable structure

In the normal case, every syllable requires a single onset consonant; no onset clusters are permitted. In most contexts, the rhyme consists of a vowel that may be long or followed by a single consonant in the coda, resulting in the possible syllables CV, CV:, and CVC. Examples of these structures are duwi "coyote", mo:de: "is running (non-final)", and kʰošciʔ "to bow".

A few loanwords do have an onset cluster, such as fré:nu "bridle" and stú:fa "stove" (from Spanish freno, estufa). Loans may also have superheavy CV:C syllables, since stressed vowels in the source language are typically borrowed with a long vowel: pó:spara "match", kú:lpa "fault", pé:čʰka "brick" (Spanish fósforo, culpa; Russian péčka "oven"). An exceptional word with CVCC is huʔúyṭ’boṭ’bo "gnat".

Superheavy CV:C and CVCC syllables are well attested word-finally in specific verb forms. For example, the Suppositional suffix /ins’/ can be final as in /mo-ala-ins’/ yielding mo:lans’ "he must have run down". More typically a superheavy syllable occurs when the rightmost suffix is one of several evidential suffixes containing an /a/ vowel that deletes when no other suffix follows, such as the Circumstantial /qa/ in sinamqʰ "he must have drowned" and the Visual /ya/ in moma:y "I saw it run in".

Stress

The determination of stress is quite complex and the main stress can fall on any of the first five syllables in a phrase, depending on various factors. According to the analysis in Buckley (1994), iambs are constructed from left to right and the leftmost foot generally receives the main stress: (momácʰ)(mela) "I ran in", (kél)(macʰ) "he is peeking in there". Non-initial feet do not receive secondary stress but lead to lengthening of vowels in open syllables (which however does not apply to word-final vowels nor to a large set of suffixes occurring toward the end of the word). The initial syllable is extrametrical unless the word begins with a monosyllabic root, as in the case of /mo/ "run". For example, the footing in ca(qʰamá:)(lawi:)(biʔ) "start to cut downward" with the root /caqʰam/ "cut" skips the first syllable, while in (momú:)(lic’e:)(duce:)du "keep running all the way around" this is blocked by the short root /mo/ "run".

The pattern is further complicated when the first foot begins on a syllable that has a long vowel, as in di:c’- "tell". If the following syllable is closed, the stress shifts to the foot that contains that syllable: (di:)(c’áh)(qaw) "cause to bring a message out here". If the long vowel is followed by a CV syllable, i.e. if the initial sequence to be footed is CV:CV, the length moves rightward to create CVCV: and the stress similarly shifts to the next foot: (dic’a:)(qoc’í) "bring a message out!". Combined with extrametricality, this can lead to stress as far in as the fifth syllable: mu(naci:)(ducé:)du "always be too shy" from the root /muna:c/ "be shy"; this verb forms a minimal pair with /munac/ "gather", which lacks stress shift in mu(nací:)(duce:)du "always gather".

While iambic lengthening is determined by footing within a word, stress can be reassigned at the phrasal level across word boundaries: q’oʔ(di ʔí)(ce:)du "be good!" where q’oʔdi is the adjective "good" and the remainder is the imperative verb.

Phonological processes

A large number of processes affect the realization of underlying sounds in Kashaya. A representative sample is given here.

Morphology

Kashaya can be classified as a polysynthetic language; it is primarily suffixing but has an important set of instrumental prefixes on verbs.

Nouns

Noun morphology is modest. The main examples are prefixes that mark possession of kinship terms. The first person has several allomorphs including the prefix ʔa:- and CV: reduplication; the latter is informal and is associated with phonologically less marked stems, no doubt derived historically from child pronunciations. The prefixes mi-, miya:-, ma- mark second, third, and reflexive ("one's own"). These prefixes occur with the suffixes -n’, -s’ depending on the stem and prefix. Examples with /qa/ "grandmother" are miqas’ "your ~", miyá:qas’ "his/her/their ~", and informal ka:kan’ "my grandma", based on /ka/ simplified from /qa/.

Verbs

Verbs take a great variety of suffixes divided into many position classes. There are also instrumental prefixes that figure crucially in the use of many verb stems.

Position classes

Oswalt (1961) identifies the following position classes; it can be seen that there is far more complexity in the set of suffixes than in the prefixes.

Only a few of the most important categories can be illustrated here.

Instrumental prefixes

Many verbs cannot occur without a prefix that provides information about the manner of the action described. These 20 instrumental prefixes, all of the shape CV, are the following.

For example, the root /hcʰa/ "knock over" can occur unprefixed as "fall over" where no agency is indicated, but is typically prefixed to expand upon the meaning: ba-hcʰa- "knock over with snout", bi-hcʰa- "throw someone in wrestling", ca-hcʰa- "knock over by backing into", da-hcʰa- "push over with the hand", du-hcʰa- "push over with the finger", di-hcʰa- "be knocked over by a falling object", etc.

Suffixes

A sampling of verb suffixes:

Position class XIV (Evidentials, Modals, Imperatives, Futures, Absolutive, Adverbializers) represents the largest set of suffixes and is the only slot that is obligatorily filled in every verb.

A few examples of verbs with many affixes, the root shown in bold:

Syntax

The basic word order of Kashaya is quite flexible in main clauses; however, the default location for the verb is final, and this position is required in subordinate clauses. A notable feature is that when a verb does occur in non-final position, it takes the suffix -e:. Some possible orders are illustrated here with the simple sentence "I see that dog", containing the elements ʔa "I (subj)", mul "that (obj)", hayu "dog", can’- "see".

Oswalt (1961) reports that younger speakers tend to favor the SVO order typical of English.

Case marking

The most important case markers are subjective and objective case. (Others are the vocative and comitative, of more limited application.) Most nouns are marked with the subjective ʔem or the objective ʔel; these are morphologically complex and contain the actual case markers /m/ and /l/, found with verbal expressions.

Personal names take the suffix -to in the objective case, zero in the subjective.

Pronouns have distinct forms in subjective and objective case; the forms are not easily analyzed but the objective case generally ends in -(a)l or -to.

  Singular Plural
Subjective Objective Subjective Objective
1st person ʔa(:) to(:) ya yal
2nd person ma mito maya mayal
3rd person masc mu:kin’ mu:kito, mu:bal ma:cac ma:cal
3rd person fem man’ ma:dal
Reflexive ti(:) tito same as singular

Demonstratives are also distinguished for case; they are given here as subjective/objective:

Switch reference

Switch reference refers to markings according to whether a subordinate verb has the same or different subject as the main verb. In Kashaya it also marks whether the time of the action is the same, or preceding the main verb action in the past or future. There is no consistent expression of these categories except for the element /pʰi/ in both future suffixes, but the remaining /la/ is not identifiable as a separate suffix.

  Simultaneous Past Future
Same subject -in -ba -pʰi
Different subject -em -wli, -ʔli -pʰila

The suffix containing /li/ is realized as -wli after vowels, -u:li (or /uwli/) after d, and -ʔli after other consonants; this allomorphy is related to that of the very common Absolutive suffix, -w, -u, -ʔ. A few examples of these morphemes:

Notable Kashaya Pomo speakers

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Kashaya at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Kashaya". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  3. ↑ About Us. Kashia Band of Pomo Indians of Stewarts Point Rancheria. (retrieved 28 July 2009)
  4. ↑ Buckley, Eugene (1994). Theoretical aspects of Kashaya phonology and morphology. CSLI Publications, Stanford University.
  5. ↑ Buckley, Eugene (2004). The Origin of a Crazy Rule: "du" in the Southern Pomoan Group (PDF). Annual Meeting of The Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas. Boston.
  6. ↑ Fimrite, Peter (2003-04-29). "Langford Pinola -- Native American storyteller - SFGate". SFGate. Retrieved 2013-04-08.
  7. ↑ "Essie Parrish, Kashaya Pomo Doctor". PR Web: Marin Museum of the American Indian presents The Final Fall Lecture Series. 2002-10-27. Retrieved 2013-04-08.

References

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