The Lake Miwok language is a moribund (or possibly extinct) language of Northern California, traditionally spoken in an area adjacent to the Clear Lake. It is one of the languages of the Clear Lake Linguistic Area, along with Patwin,

East East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from the fac ...

and Southeastern Pomo, and Wappo.Campbell 1997, p.336

Phonology

Vowels

Consonants

The consonant inventory of Lake Miwok differs substantially from the inventories found in the other

Miwok languages The Miwok or Miwokan languages (; Miwok: ), also known as ''Moquelumnan'' or ''Miwuk'', are a group of endangered languages spoken in central California by the Miwok peoples, ranging from the Bay Area to the Sierra Nevada. There are seven Miwok ...

. Where the other languages only have one series of plosives, Lake Miwok has four:

plain In geography, a plain is a flat expanse of land that generally does not change much in elevation, and is primarily treeless. Plains occur as lowlands along valleys or at the base of mountains, as coastal plains, and as plateaus or uplands ...

, aspirated,

ejective In phonetics, ejective consonants are usually voiceless consonants that are pronounced with a glottalic egressive airstream. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated, voiced and tenuis consonants. Some ...

and

voiced Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds (usually consonants). Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless (otherwise known as ''unvoiced'') or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer ...

. Lake Miwok has also added the affricates č, c, čʼ, cʼ, ƛʼ and the liquids r and ł. These sounds appear to have been borrowed through loanwords from other, unrelated languages in the Clear Lake area, after which they spread to some native Lake Miwok words.

Grammar

The word order of Lake Miwok is relatively free, but SOV ( subject–object–verb) is the most common order.

Verb morphology

Pronominal clitics

In her Lake Miwok grammar, Callaghan reports that one speaker distinguishes between 1st person dual inclusive ʔoc and exclusive ʔic. Another speaker also remembers that this distinction used to be made by older speakers.Callaghan 1963, p.75

Noun morphology

Case inflection

Nouns can be inflected for ten different cases: * the Subjective case marks a noun which functions as the subject of a verb. If the subject noun is placed before the verb, the Subjective has the

allomorph In linguistics, an allomorph is a variant phonetic form of a morpheme, or, a unit of meaning that varies in sound and spelling without changing the meaning. The term ''allomorph'' describes the realization of phonological variations for a specif ...

-n after vowel (or a vowel followed by /h/), and -Ø after consonants. If it is placed after the verb, the Subjective is -n after vowels and -nu after consonants. * the Possessive case is -n after vowels and -Ø after consonants * the

Objective case In grammar, an oblique (abbreviated ; from la, casus obliquus) or objective case ( abbr. ) is a nominal case other than the nominative case, and sometimes, the vocative. A noun or pronoun in the oblique case can generally appear in any role ex ...

marks a noun which functions as the

object Object may refer to: General meanings * Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept ** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place ** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter * Goal, an ...

of a verb. It has the allomorph -u (after a consonant) or -Ø (after a vowel) when the noun is placed immediately before a verb which contains the 2nd person prefix ʔin- (which then has the allomorph -n attached to the noun preceding the verb; compare the example below) or does not contain any subject prefix at all. :It has the allomorph -Ø before a verb containing any other subject prefix: :If the object noun does not immediately precede the verb, or if the verb is in the imperative, the allomorph of the Objective is -uc: * the

allative case In grammar, the allative case (; abbreviated ; from Latin ''allāt-'', ''afferre'' "to bring to") is a type of locative grammatical case. The term allative is generally used for the lative case in the majority of languages that do not make finer ...

is -to or -t depending on the environment. It has a variety of meaning, but often expresses direction towards a goal. * the locative case -m gives a less specific designation of locality than the Allative, and occurs more rarely. * the ablative case is -mu or -m depending on the context, and marks direction out of, or away from, a place. * the instrumental case -ṭu marks instruments, e.g. ''tumáj-ṭu'' "(I hit him) with a stick". * the

comitative case In grammar, the comitative case (; abbreviated ) is a grammatical case that denotes accompaniment. In English, the preposition "with", in the sense of "in company with" or "together with", plays a substantially similar role (other uses of "with", l ...

-ni usually translates as "along with", but can also be used to

coordinate In geometry, a coordinate system is a system that uses one or more numbers, or coordinates, to uniquely determine the position of the points or other geometric elements on a manifold such as Euclidean space. The order of the coordinates is sign ...

nouns, as in ''kaʔunúu-ni ka ʔáppi-ni'' "my mother and my father". * the

vocative case In grammar, the vocative case ( abbreviated ) is a grammatical case which is used for a noun that identifies a person (animal, object, etc.) being addressed, or occasionally for the noun modifiers (determiners, adjectives, participles, and nume ...

only occurs with a few kinship terms, e.g. ''ʔunúu'' "mother ()" from ''ʔúnu'' "mother". * the Appositive case is the citation form of nouns.

Possessive clitics

Lake Miwok uses pronominal clitics to indicate the possessor of a noun. Except for the 3d person singular, they have the same shape as the nominative pronominal clitics, but show no allomorphy. The reflexive ''hana'' forms have the same referent as the subject of the same clause, whereas the non-reflexive forms have a different referent, e.g.: *''hana'' háju ʔúṭe – "He sees his own dog" *''ʔiṭi'' háju ʔúṭe – "He sees (somebody else's) dog"

Notes

References

* * * * * Callaghan, Catherine A. "Note of Lake Miwok Numerals." International Journal of American Linguistics, vol. 24, no. 3 (1958): 247. * Keeling, Richard. "Ethnographic Field Recordings at Lowie Museum of Anthropology," 1985. Robert H. Lowie Museum of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley. v. 2. North-Central California: Pomo, Wintun, Nomlaki, Patwin, Coast Miwok, and Lake Miwok Indians * Lake Miwok Indians. "Rodriguez-Nieto Guide" Sound Recordings (California Indian Library Collections), LA009. Berkeley: California Indian Library Collections, 1993. "Sound recordings reproduced from the Language Archive sound recordings at the Language Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley." In 2 containers.

External links

Lake Miwok language overview
at the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages
Lake Miwok audio recordings
at th
California Language Archive
(login required) *
OLAC resources in and about the Lake Miwok languageLake Miwok basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database
{{Miwok Utian languages Miwok History of Lake County, California