Timbisha (''Tümpisa'') or Panamint (also called Koso) is the language of the Native American people who have inhabited the region in and around

Death Valley Death Valley is a desert valley in Eastern California, in the northern Mojave Desert, bordering the Great Basin Desert. It is thought to be the Highest temperature recorded on Earth, hottest place on Earth during summer. Death Valley's Badwat ...

, California, and the southern

Owens Valley Owens Valley (Mono language (California), Mono: ''Payahǖǖnadǖ'', meaning "place of flowing water") is an arid valley of the Owens River in eastern California in the United States. It is located to the east of the Sierra Nevada (U.S.), Sierra ...

since late prehistoric times. There are a few elderly individuals who can speak the language in

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 ...

and

Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a landlocked state in the Western United States. It borders Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. Nevada is the seventh-most extensive, th ...

, but none are monolingual, and all use English regularly in their daily lives. Until the late 20th century, the people called themselves and their language "Shoshone." The tribe then achieved federal recognition under the name Death Valley Timbisha Shoshone Band of California. This is an Anglicized spelling of the native name of

, ''tümpisa'', pronounced , which means "rock paint" and refers to the rich sources of

red ochre Ochre ( ; , ), iron ochre, or ocher in American English, is a natural clay earth pigment, a mixture of ferric oxide and varying amounts of clay and sand. It ranges in colour from yellow to deep orange or brown. It is also the name of the col ...

in the valley. Timbisha is also the language of the so-called "Shoshone" groups at

Bishop A bishop is an ordained member of the clergy who is entrusted with a position of Episcopal polity, authority and oversight in a religious institution. In Christianity, bishops are normally responsible for the governance and administration of di ...

, Big Pine, Darwin,

Independence Independence is a condition of a nation, country, or state, in which residents and population, or some portion thereof, exercise self-government, and usually sovereignty, over its territory. The opposite of independence is the status of ...

, and Lone Pine communities in California and the Beatty community in Nevada. It was also the language spoken at the former Indian Ranch reservation in Panamint Valley.

Classification

Timbisha is one of the Central Numic languages of the Numic branch of

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 ...

. It is most closely related to Shoshoni and

Comanche The Comanche (), or Nʉmʉnʉʉ (, 'the people'), are a Tribe (Native American), Native American tribe from the Great Plains, Southern Plains of the present-day United States. Comanche people today belong to the List of federally recognized tri ...

Geographic distribution

Timbisha was formerly spoken in the region between the

Sierra Nevada The Sierra Nevada ( ) is a mountain range in the Western United States, between the Central Valley of California and the Great Basin. The vast majority of the range lies in the state of California, although the Carson Range spur lies primari ...

mountains of eastern

and the region just to the east of

. Principal valleys where villages were located were (from west to east)

, Indian Wells Valley, Saline Valley, Panamint Valley, and

. In addition, there were villages along the southern slopes of the Kawich Range in Nevada.

Dialects

Each valley had its own variety of Timbisha with mostly lexical differences between them. There was, however, a general loss of ' as one moved west across Timbisha territory with ' virtually gone in

varieties. McLaughlin's grammar is based on the far eastern variety from Beatty, Nevada, while Dayley's is based on a central variety from

Phonology

Vowels

Timbisha also has a typical Numic

vowel A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...

inventory of five vowels. In addition, there is the common

diphthong A diphthong ( ), also known as a gliding vowel or a vowel glide, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of ...

', which varies rather freely with ', although certain

morphemes 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 ...

always contain ' and others always contain '. (The official orthography is shown in parentheses.)

Consonants

Timbisha has a typical Numic consonant inventory. (The official orthography is shown in parentheses.):

Phonotactics

Timbisha stops (including the affricate) and nasals are voiced and lenited between vowels, are voiced in nasal-stop clusters, and are lenited (but not voiced) following '. Voiceless vowels are less common in Timbisha than in Shoshoni and

Writing system

Timbisha spelling is based on Dayley and uses the Roman alphabet. ''Ü'' is used for and ''ng'' for .

Grammar

Study of Timbisha has been carried on by Jon Dayley and John McLaughlin, both of whom wrote grammatical descriptions. Dayley has published a dictionary.

Word order and case marking

Timbisha

word order In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how languages employ different orders. Correlatio ...

is usually SOV as in: The

accusative case In grammar, the accusative case ( abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to receive the direct object of a transitive verb. In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: "me", "him", "he ...

and

possessive case A possessive or ktetic form (abbreviated or ; from ; ) is a word or grammatical construction indicating a relationship of possession in a broad sense. This can include strict ownership, or a number of other types of relation to a greater or les ...

are marked with

suffixes In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns and adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can ca ...

. Adverbial relationships are marked with postpositions on

nouns In grammar, a noun is a word that represents a concrete or abstract thing, like living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, and ideas. A noun may serve as an object or subject within a phrase, clause, or sentence.Example n ...

as well as with true

adverbs An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, an adjective, another adverb, a determiner, a clause, a preposition, or a sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, or level of certainty by ans ...

. For example: Adjectives are usually prefixed to the nouns they modify, unless the relationship is temporary when they are independent words with special suffixes. Compare ''tosa-kapayu'', 'white-horse', "palomino or other pale-colored breed" and ''tosapihtü kapayu'', 'white/pale horse', "white or pale horse" (who happens to be white or pale, but whose siblings may be any color).

Verbs

Verbs A verb is a word that generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual description of English, the basic fo ...

are marked for

grammatical aspect In linguistics, aspect is a grammatical category that expresses how a verbal action, event, or state, extends over time. For instance, perfective aspect is used in referring to an event conceived as bounded and unitary, without reference t ...

with

. Valence is marked with both

prefixes A prefix is an affix which is placed before the stem of a word. Particularly in the study of languages, a prefix is also called a preformative, because it alters the form of the word to which it is affixed. Prefixes, like other affixes, can b ...

and

. Some common intransitive verbs have

suppletive In linguistics and etymology, suppletion is traditionally understood as the use of one word as the inflection, inflected form of another word when the two words are not cognate. For those learning a language, suppletive forms will be seen as "irre ...

forms for singular or plural subjects and some common

transitive verbs A transitive verb is a verb that entails one or more transitive objects, for example, 'enjoys' in ''Amadeus enjoys music''. This contrasts with intransitive verbs, which do not entail transitive objects, for example, 'arose' in ''Beatrice arose' ...

have

forms for singular or plural objects. Otherwise, there is no grammatical agreement marked by the verb.

References

External links

Panamint 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 ...

Linguist List map of Panamint

How to count in Timbisha

OLAC resources in and about the Panamint language
Timbisha Agglutinative languages Numic languages Indigenous languages of California Indigenous languages of the Southwestern United States Indigenous languages of the North American Southwest Indigenous languages of the North American Great Basin Subject–object–verb languages {{Languages of California