Colorado River Numic (also called Ute , Southern Paiute , Ute–Southern Paiute, or Ute-Chemehuevi ), of the Numic branch of the

Uto-Aztecan The Uto-Aztecan languages are a family of native American languages, consisting of over thirty languages. Uto-Aztecan languages are found almost entirely in the Western United States and Mexico. The name of the language family reflects the common ...

language family, is a dialect chain that stretches from southeastern

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

Colorado Colorado is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States. It is one of the Mountain states, sharing the Four Corners region with Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. It is also bordered by Wyoming to the north, Nebraska to the northeast, Kansas ...

. Individual dialects are Chemehuevi, which is in danger of extinction, Southern Paiute (Moapa, Cedar City, Kaibab, and San Juan subdialects), and

Ute Ute or UTE may refer to: * Ute people, a Native American people of the Great Basin * Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation, Utah * Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah * Southern Ute Indian Tribe of the Southern ...

(Central Utah, Northern, White Mesa, Southern subdialects). According to the ''

Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensive catalogue of languages. It w ...

'', there were a little less than two thousand speakers of Colorado River Numic Language in 1990, or around 40% out of an ethnic population of 5,000. The Southern Paiute dialect has played a significant role in

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

, as the background for a famous article by linguist

Edward Sapir Edward Sapir (; January 26, 1884 – February 4, 1939) was an American anthropologist-linguistics, linguist, who is widely considered to be one of the most important figures in the development of the discipline of linguistics in the United States ...

and his collaborator Tony Tillohash on the nature of the

phoneme A phoneme () is any set of similar Phone (phonetics), speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible Phonetics, phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word fr ...

Dialects

The three major dialect groups of Colorado River are Chemehuevi, Southern Paiute, and

, although there are no strong isoglosses. The threefold division is primarily one of culture rather than strictly linguistic. There are, however, three major phonological distinctions among the dialects: :*In Southern Paiute and Ute, initial has been lost: Chemehuevi 'drink' is a verb, other dialects 'drink'. :*In Ute, nasal-stop clusters have become voiceless geminate stops: Ute 'horse, pet', other dialects . :*In Ute, the mid back round vowel has been fronted to : Ute 'lungs', other dialects . There are no strong isoglosses between Southern Paiute and Ute for the changes but an increasing level of change, as one moves from Kaibab Southern Paiute (0% of nasal-stop clusters have changed) to Southern Ute (100% of nasal-stop clusters have changed).

Phonology

Consonant and vowel charts for the westernmost and easternmost dialects are given.

Consonants

Vowels

Vowels can be long or short. Short unstressed vowels can be devoiced.

Morphology

The Colorado River Numic language is an

agglutinative In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes (word parts), each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglu ...

language, in which words use suffix complexes for a variety of purposes with several

morpheme A morpheme is any of the smallest meaningful constituents within a linguistic expression and particularly within a word. Many words are themselves standalone morphemes, while other words contain multiple morphemes; in linguistic terminology, this ...

s strung together.

References

Bibliography

* * * * * * * *

External links

A Preliminary Analysis of Southern Ute with a Special Focus on Noun Phrases
- also contains phonology information
Chemehuevi language
overview at the

Survey of California and Other Indian Languages The Survey of California and Other Indian Languages (originally the Survey of California Indian Languages) at the University of California at Berkeley documents, catalogs, and archives the indigenous languages of the Americas. The survey also hosts ...

A Chemehuevi Language Archive
- 1970s Fieldwork and Analysis by Margaret L. Press
OLAC resources in and about the Ute-Southern Paiute language

Collected Works of Edward Sapir, Vol. X: Southern Paiute and Ute Linguistics and Ethnography

Ute Dictionary
{{Authority control Numic languages Agglutinative languages Indigenous languages of Nevada Indigenous languages of Arizona Indigenous languages of California Indigenous languages of the Southwestern United States Paiute Ute (ethnic group) Chemehuevi Endangered Indigenous languages of the Americas