Ventureño is a member of the extinct
Chumashan languages
Chumashan is an extinct and revitalizing family of languages that were spoken on the southern California West Coast of the United States, coast by Native Americans in the United States, Native American Chumash people, from the Coastal plains an ...
, a group of
Native American languages previously spoken by the
Chumash people
The Chumash are a Native Americans in the United States, Native American people of the central and southern coastal regions of California, in portions of what is now Kern County, California, Kern, San Luis Obispo County, California, San Luis O ...
along the coastal areas of
Southern California
Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and Cultural area, cultural List of regions of California, region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Its densely populated coastal reg ...
from as far north as
San Luis Obispo
; ; ; Chumashan languages, Chumash: ''tiłhini'') is a city and county seat of San Luis Obispo County, California, United States. Located on the Central Coast (California), Central Coast of California, San Luis Obispo is roughly halfway betwee ...
to as far south as Malibu. Ventureño was spoken from as far north as present-day Ventura to as far south as present-day
Malibu and the
Simi Hills
The Simi Hills are a low rocky mountain range of the Transverse Ranges in eastern Ventura County, California, Ventura County and western Los Angeles County, California, Los Angeles County, of Southern California, United States.
The range runs ma ...
,
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 ...
. Dialects probably also included
Castac and Alliklik.
Ventureño is, like its sister Chumashan languages, a
polysynthetic
In linguistic typology, polysynthetic languages, formerly holophrastic languages, are highly synthetic languages, i.e., languages in which words are composed of many morphemes (word parts that have independent meaning but may or may not be able t ...
language, having larger words composed of a number of morphemes. Ventureño has separate word classes of
verb
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 f ...
,
noun
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 (grammar), object or Subject (grammar), subject within a p ...
, and oblique adjunct; with no separate word class for adjectives or adpositions.
Nouns and verbs are often heavily
affix
In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. The main two categories are Morphological derivation, derivational and inflectional affixes. Derivational affixes, such as ''un-'', ''-ation' ...
ed (mostly
prefix
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 ...
ed) in Ventureño, affixing being a way to denote those meanings often conveyed by separate words in more
analytic language
An analytic language is a type of natural language in which a series of root/stem words is accompanied by prepositions, postpositions, particles and modifiers, using affixes very rarely. This is opposed to synthetic languages, which synthesi ...
s. Verbs play a primary role in Ventureño with utterances often composed only of a verb with clitics. Chumash word order is
VSO/
VOS, or VS/
VO.
Phonology
Ventureño has a similar phonemic inventory to other Chumash languages. Ventureño consists of 30 consonants and 6 vowels.
Vowels
Ventureño consists of a regular 5-vowel inventory with a sixth vowel transcribed as .
[ In Barbareño transcriptions, is used. It is not known whether these two phones are the same in both languages (and the difference in transcription merely one of convention), or whether the sounds were in fact different enough for Harrington to use different symbols.
]
Consonants
#Ventureño has only one lateral, . However, has a distinct allophone that Harrington includes in his transcriptions.
Orthography
Ventureño has been written in several different ways by different linguists.[ John Peabody Harrington, who compiled most of the data on Ventureño, used a modified version of the ]International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standard written representation ...
. Harrington differed from the International Phonetic Alphabet in the following symbols: a kappa (small-cap 'k') for , a for , a slanted bar for , a reversed apostrophe for aspiration, and a right-turned (standard) apostrophe for a glottal stop (this symbol was also used for ejectives and glottalized sonorants).[ Microfilm reels 69, 89, and 94 on Ventureño.]
The Barbareño/Ventureño Band of Mission Indians has adopted an Americanist form of transcription for Ventureño based on the work done by Harrington: for , for , for , for aspiration, for , and for . A standard apostrophe continues to be used for a glottal stop
The glottal stop or glottal plosive is a type of consonantal sound used in many Speech communication, spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic ...
and for denoting ejectives. Glottalized sonorants are written with a combining apostrophe over the symbol , , , . This transcription is in keeping with most current Chumashists (such as Wash below) except that alveolar affricates () are written as in Ventureño, where other Chumashists write them as . Likewise, Ventureño writes postalveolar affricates () as , where other Chumashists write this sound as .
Morphology
Chumash morphology is fairly polysynthetic
In linguistic typology, polysynthetic languages, formerly holophrastic languages, are highly synthetic languages, i.e., languages in which words are composed of many morphemes (word parts that have independent meaning but may or may not be able t ...
. This applies especially to the verbs of the language, which has over 15 distinct morphological slots (when counting nominalized verbs).
This is illustrated in the table below by the nominalized verb meaning "your wanting to make fun of us".
Numbers
The Chumash languages exhibit a quaternary numeral system
Quaternary is a numeral system with four as its base. It uses the digits 0, 1, 2, and 3 to represent any real number. Conversion from binary is straightforward.
Four is the largest number within the subitizing range and one of two numbers ...
.
References
External links
Ventureño 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 ...
*
OLAC resources in and about the Ventureño languageVentureño at the California Language Archive
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ventureno language
Chumashan languages
Indigenous languages of California
Extinct languages of North America
Languages extinct in the 20th century
History of Ventura County, California