Yawelmani Yokuts (also spelled Yowlumne and Yauelmani) is an endangered dialect of

Southern Valley Yokuts Southern Valley Yokuts is a dialect network within the Valley Yokuts division of the Yokutsan languages spoken in the Central Valley of California. Among the dialects grouped under the label Southern Valley Yokuts are Wechihi, Tachi, Telamni, ...

historically spoken by the

Yokuts The Yokuts (previously known as MariposasPowell, 1891:90–91.) are an ethnic group of Native Americans native to central California. Before European contact, the Yokuts consisted of up to 60 tribes speaking several related languages. ''Yokuts ...

living along the

Kern River The Kern River, previously Rio de San Felipe, later La Porciuncula, is an Endangered, Wild and Scenic river in the U.S. state of California, approximately long. It drains an area of the southern Sierra Nevada mountains northeast of Bakersfiel ...

north of Kern Lake in the Central Valley of California. Today, most Yawelmani speakers live on or near the

Tule River Reservation ''Schoenoplectus acutus'' ( syn. ''Scirpus acutus, Schoenoplectus lacustris, Scirpus lacustris'' subsp. ''acutus''), called tule , common tule, hardstem tule, tule rush, hardstem bulrush, or viscid bulrush, is a giant species of sedge in the pl ...

Name

Academic sources frequently use the name ''Yawelmani'' while referring to the language, though tribe members more often use the name ''Yowlumne''. When referencing their language, modern speakers of Yawelmani use the terms (Indian), and (speech of the Yowlumne).

Phonology

Consonants

Vowels

Yawelmani has 8

vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...

phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west o ...

s: * There are 4 short-long vowel pairs. * Short high vowels may become more centralized in fast speech: , . * Long high vowels are almost always lower than their short counterparts: , . * All long vowels may be shortened by a

phonological Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...

process. Thus, a single long vowel has two different

phonetic Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...

realizations: ** , ** , ** , ** . * Note that the high long vowel is usually pronounced the same as and . As can be seen, Yawelmani vowels have a number of different realizations (

phones A telephone is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into ele ...

) which are summarized below:

Syllable & phonotactics

The Yawelmani

syllable A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "bu ...

s can be either a consonant-vowel sequence (CV), such as ''deeyi-'' 'lead', or a consonant-vowel-consonant sequence (CVC), such as ''xata-'' 'eat'. Thus the generalized syllable is the following: : CV(C) Word roots are bisyllabic and have either one of two shapes: * CV.CV * CV.CVC

Phonological processes

Vowel shortening

When long vowels are in closed

s, they are shortened: :

Vowel harmony

Yawelmani has

suffix 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, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry ...

es that contain either an underspecified high vowel or an underspecified non-high vowel . * Underspecified will appear as following the high rounded vowel and as following all other vowels : : * Underspecified will appear as following the non-high rounded vowel and as following all other vowels : :

Vowel epenthesis

Yawelmani adds vowels to stems, when suffixes with an initial consonant are affixed to word with two final consonants in order to avoid a triple-consonant-cluster.

Grammar

Case system

Yawelmani is a primary object language. A. L. Krober documented the language's case system in his 1907 paper ''The Yokuts language of south central California.''

Speakers

A 2011 estimate by

Victor Golla Victor Golla (1939–2021) was a linguist and a leading expert on the indigenous languages of California and Oregon, especially the Pacific Coast Athabaskan subgroup of the Athabaskan language family and the languages of the region that belong t ...

placed the number of fluent and semi-fluent Yawelmani speakers at "up to twenty-five"

Revitalization efforts

In 1993, the Master-Apprentice Language Learning Program piloted a series of language programs that included Yawelmani. The program was reportedly effective in teaching conversational Yawelmani to tribal members without prior knowledge and increasing language use among elders.

Selected vocabulary

File:Yowlumne body parts.svg, Yawelmani anatomy File:Yawelmani kinship.svg, Yawelmani kinship terms

References

{{Reflist

External links

English/Yowlumne dictionaryYowlum'nen Trexul: Yowlumne phrase and lesson book
Endangered Yokutsan languages