Tübatulabal language

Infobox Language
name=Tübatulabal
region=Kern River, California, United States
speakers=Possibly 6Gordon (2005).]
familycolor=American
fam1=Uto-Aztecan
fam2=Northern
iso2=nai
iso3=tub

Tübatulabal (IPA: "IPA|təˈbɑtələˌbɑl") is a Uto-Aztecan language, traditionally spoken in Kern County, California. It is the traditional language of the Tübatulabal people, who have now largely shifted to English. The language is currently considered moribund.

In English, the name Tübatulabal refers to both the Tübatulabal people and their language. However, in the language itself, the term Tübatulabal (pronounced "IPA|tɨˈbatulaˌbal") refers only to the Tübatulabal people. Its origin is unclear, but it may be related to the noun stem "IPA|tɨba-" "pine nuts". The Tübatulabal term for the Tübatulabal language is "pakaːnil".

Phonology

egmental phonology

Vowels

There are six phonemic vowels in Tübatulabal:

Conjunction

Conjunction involves the combination of a particle with a word of another type. According to Voegelin, the behavior of particles in these constructions is similar to that of enclitics in other Uto-Aztecan languages, but distinct enough from them that this should not be considered a kind of cliticization.

Compounding

Compounding appears to have been a much more productive process at an earlier stage of the language. Compounding now has very limited productivity, and in many cases appears to have been completely lexicalized insofar as it can occur at all.

Verb morphology

Each verb stem has an unpredictable inherent aspect value (either telic or atelic; by default, a bare stem is inherently atelic), and an inherent value for transitivity (transitive, intransitive or impersonal). These inherent values can be changed by morphological addition in order to yield a verb stem with any of the other possible values. Aspect reversal is indicated by initial reduplication. Transitivity change is indicated by the use of one (or more) of a number of derivational suffixes with which verbs are constructed.

The full verb structure can be summarized as (A) + B + (C) + (D), where B is the verb root, and the other positions (all optional) represent classes of morphemes. A indicates initial reduplication, which can occur only once per word. C indicates a class of derivational morphemes, which can be divided into ten ordered positions, each of which allows at most one morpheme per word. D is the final position; there are nine possible morphemes in final position, but only one can occur in any single word.

The C class morphemes are given with examples in the table below. When these morphemes co-occur in a word, they must occur in the order given. Transitivity changing morphemes are marked with *. These morphemes have a different effect depending on the inherent transitivity of the verb root, as well as the presence of other transitivity-changing morphology.

Particle morphology

Morphemes belonging to the particle class are distinguished by the fact that they undergo little or no inflection and suffixation, unlike verbs and nouns. The particle class includes two subclasses of morphemes which behave quite differently: conjunctive particles and independent particles.

Conjunctive particles resemble clitics in that they never appear independently (that is, they always lean on another word). However, unlike clitics, conjunctive particles typically bear their own stress, and they do not alter the stress of the word on which they lean. Conjunctive particles include various discourse and modal morphemes, as well as the typical pronominal agreement morphemes which occur with verbs.

Independent particles are fully independent words. They include prepositional, modal and exclamatory morphemes, numerals, and one class of pronouns.

The table below shows the pronominal morphemes of Tübatulabal. Like nouns, pronouns distinguish between three cases: subject, object and possessive. (Unsurprisingly, pronouns do not make a distinction between absolute and relative entities.) Different forms exist for first, second and third person entities. Second and third person forms distinguish only singular and plural numbers, while first person forms distinguish between singular, dual inclusive, dual exclusive, and plural numbers. All pronouns may be expressed through conjunctive particles. The subject pronouns are unique in that they can also be expressed by an independent particle. [Cells marked with "--" are phonologically null. Cells marked with "?" are forms missing without explanation in Harv | Voegelin | 1935.]

The first person subject conjunctive forms have special allomorphs when they occur with the exhortative suffix -"ma":

The third person conjunctive form is usually null, but it is expressed by -"d͡za" when it occurs after the exhortative or permissive suffixes. (This suffix often undergoes syncope and devoicing, yielding -"t͡s".) The second person conjunctive plural subject form may also syncopate, in which case the medial vowel shortens as well, yielding -"bum". The first person conjuncitve singular subject form may also syncopate, triggering devoicing but no irregular phonology; in these cases the suffix has the form -"k".

Subject pronouns typically lean on verbs (if conjunctive) and correspond to grammatical subject, e.g. "iwikkːɨki" "I discarded (it)" (with devoicing); "anabaːhaʃta" "they can throw it" (with metathesis of the components of the affricate, and consequent change of "s" > "ʃ").

Object pronouns also lean on verbs, and indicate any non-possessive oblique function, including transitive objects, ditransitive objects or benefactives, objects of imperative verbs, as well as subjects of subordinate verbs if not equivalent to the subject of the matrix verb.

Possessive pronouns typically lean on the possessum, e.g. "IPA|haniːnɨʔɨŋ" "my house"; "IPA|ʃɔːɔjin" "his wife".

yntax

Word order in Tübatulabal is generally flexible. According to Harv | Voegelin | 1935, "Word-order in general is stylistic rather than obligatory." (p. 185)

Orthography

Transcriptions in this article follow the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Much published material concerning Tübatulabal uses the Americanist orthography. In addition, the most important linguistic work on Tübatulabal Harv | Voegelin | 1935 uses a somewhat different orthography.

Voegelin writes "IPA|ɨ" as "ï" and "IPA|ɔ" as "ô". He also writes "IPA|ʃ" as "c", "IPA|t​͡ʃ" as "tc", "IPA|ʔ" as "‘", "IPA|d​͡ʒ" as "dž" and "IPA|j" as "y". He also uses a number of special symbols for vocalic allomorphs. "ι" is an allomorph of "i", "μ" is an allomorph of "u", "o" is an allomorph of "ô" (IPA "IPA|ɔ"), and "ŏ" is an allomorph of both "a" and "ô".

The letter "ü" in the name Tübatulabal represents the central unrounded vowel "IPA|ɨ".

Notes

Bibliography

* cite book
author = Aion, Nora
title = Selected Topics in Nootka and Tübatulabal Phonology
publisher = City University of New York
location = PhD dissertation
date = 2003
*cite journal |author=Crowhurst, Megan |title=Demorification in Tübatulabal: Evidence from Initial Reduplication and Stress |year=1991 |journal=NELS |volume=21 |pages=49–63
*cite book |author=Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (ed.) |year=2005 |chapter= [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=tub Tübatulabal] |title=Ethnologue: Languages of the World |edition=15th ed. |location=Dallas, Tex. |publisher=SIL
*cite journal |author=Heath, Jeffrey |title=Tübatulabal Phonology |year=1981 |journal=Harvard Studies in Phonology |volume=2
*cite paper
author = Jensen, John
title = Stress and the Verbal Phonology of Tubatulabal
publisher = Thesis, Indiana University
date = 1973
*cite journal |author=Manaster Ramer, Alexis |title=Proto-Uto-Aztecan Phonology: Evidence From Tübatulabal Noun Morphophonemics |year=1992 |journal=International Journal of American Linguistics |volume=58 |issue=4 |pages=436–446
*cite book |author=Voegelin, Charles F. |year=1935 |title=Tübatulabal Grammar |location=Berkeley, Calif. |publisher=University of California Press
*cite journal |author=Voegelin, Charles F. |title=Working Dictionary of Tübatulabal |year=1958 |journal=International Journal of American Linguistics |volume=24 |pages=221–228 |doi=10.1086/464459

External links

* [http://www.native-languages.org/tubatulabal.htm "Tubatulabal Language" at native-languages.org]