Chumashan languages
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
Chumashan is a family of languages that were spoken on the southern California coast (from San Luis Obispo to Malibu), in neighboring inland regions (San Joaquin Valley), and on three nearby islands (San Miguel, Santa Rosa, and Santa Cruz).
The entire Chumashan family is now extinct. The last speaker of a Chumashan language was Mary Yee who died in 1965 and spoke Barbareño.
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Family division
Chumashan consists of 6 languages.
I. Northern Chumash
- 1. Obispeño (a.k.a. Northern Chumash)
II. Southern Chumash
- a. Island Chumash
- 2. Island Chumash (a.k.a. Ysleño, Isleño)
- b. Central Chumash
- 3. Purisimeño
- 4. Ineseño (a.k.a. Inezeño)
- 5. Barbareño
- 6. Ventureño
Ineseño and Barbareño may have been dialects of the same language.
Obispeño, Purisimeño, Ineseño, Barbareño, and Ventureño are named after the Franciscan missions where they were moved to.
Genetic relations
Roland Dixon and Alfred L. Kroeber suggested that the Chumashan languages might be related to the neighboring Salinan in a Iskoman grouping. Edward Sapir accepted this speculation and included Iskoman into his classfication of Hokan. Afterwards, Kathryn Klar (1977) found that Salinan and Chumashan shared only word, which the Chumashan languages probably borrowed from Salinan (the word meant 'white clam shell' and was used as currency). As a result, the inclusion of Chumashan into Hokan is now unfavored by most specialists.
Characteristics
The Chumashan languages are well-known for their consonant harmony (regressive sibilant haromony).
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Links
See also: Chumash.
Bibliography
- Campbell, Lyle. (1997). American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509427-1.
- Goddard, Ives. (1999). Native languages and language families of North America (rev. and enlarged ed. with additions and corrections). [Map]. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press (Smithsonian Institute). (Updated version of the map in Goddard 1996). ISBN 0-8032-9271-6.
- Klar, Kathryn. (1977). Topics in historical Chumash grammar. (Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Berkeley).
- Mithun, Marianne. (1999). The languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-23228-7 (hbk); ISBN 0-521-29875-X.
- Sturtevant, William C. (Ed.). (1978-present). Handbook of North American Indians (Vol. 1-20). Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution. (Vols. 1-3, 16, 18-20 not yet published).
