Cocopah language

Cocopah
Kwikapa
Spoken in	Mexico, USA
Region	Baja California, Arizona, Sonora
Ethnicity	Cocopah
Native speakers	350  (1998)
Language family	Yuman Delta–Californian Cocopah
Language codes
ISO 639-3	coc
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Cocopah is a Delta language of the Yuman language family spoken by the Cocopah. It is still being learned by children.

Sounds

Consonants

Cocopah has 21 consonants:

		Bilabial	Alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar		Glottal
						plain	labial
Nasal		m	n		ɲ
Stop		p	t	ʈ	tʃ	k	kʷ	ʔ
Fricative	central		s	ʂ	ʃ	x	xʷ
	lateral				ɬʲ
Approximant	central				j		w
	lateral		l		lʲ
Rhotic			r

• /r/ is usually a trill [r] but sometimes is a flap [ɾ].
• /tʃ, ɲ, ʃ/ are postalveolar (palato-alveolar). /lʲ, ɬʲ/ are palatalized alveolar consonants.
• /ɬʲ/ is usually palatalized but unlike /lʲ/ it does not contrast with a non-palatalized [ɬ].

Vowels

Cocopah has 4 vowels.

	Front	Back
High	i / iː	u / uː
Non-High	e / eː	a / aː

Cocopah has both short and long vowels.

Syllable & phonotactics

The Cocopah syllable:

(C)(C)(C)V(ː)(C)(C)

• Word-initial two-consonant clusters usually consist of a fricative plus another consonant, e.g. /sp, ʂm, ʃp, xt͡ʃ/. Rarer two-consonant clusters start with a lateral or a stop consonant, e.g. /lt͡ʃ, ɬʲt͡ʃ, ps, t͡ʃp/.
• Three-consonant clusters are rare, recorded examples include /pxk, pxkʷ, spx/.

Grammar

Bibliography

• Crawford, James M. (1970). Cocopa baby talk. International Journal of American linguistics, 36, 9-13.
• Crawford, James M. (1978). More on Cocopa baby talk. International Journal of American linguistics, 44, 17-23.
• Crawford, James M. (1989). Cocopa dictionary. University of California publications in linguistics (Vol. 114). Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-09749-1.
• Crawford, James M. (1983). Cocopa texts. University of California publications in linguistics (Vol. 100). Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-09652-5.
• Crawford, James M. (1998). Classificatory verbs in Cocopa. In L. Hinton & P. Munro (Eds.), American Indian languages: Description and theory (pp. 5–9). Berkeley: University of California.
• Mithun, Marianne. (1999). The languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-23228-7 (hbk); ISBN 0-521-29875-X.
• Wares, Alan C. (1968). A comparative study of Yuman consonantism. Janua linguarum, Series practica (No. 57). The Hauge: Mouton.

External links

• Cocopa Swadesh vocabulary list (from Wiktionary)
• Cocopa dictionary on Google Books