Picuris (also Picurís) is a language of the Northern Tiwa branch of Tanoan spoken in Picuris Pueblo,

New Mexico ) , population_demonym = New Mexican ( es, Neomexicano, Neomejicano, Nuevo Mexicano) , seat = Santa Fe, New Mexico, Santa Fe , LargestCity = Albuquerque, New Mexico, Albuquerque , LargestMetro = Albuquerque metropolitan area, Tiguex , Offi ...

Genealogical relations

Picuris is partially

mutually intelligible In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as a ...

with

Taos dialect The Taos language of the Northern Tiwa branch of the Tanoan language family is spoken in Taos Pueblo, New Mexico. Sociolinguistics In data collected in 1935 and 1937, George L. Trager (1946) notes that Taos was spoken by all members of the Ta ...

, spoken at

Taos Pueblo Taos Pueblo (or Pueblo de Taos) is an ancient pueblo belonging to a Taos-speaking (Tiwa) Native American tribe of Puebloan people. It lies about north of the modern city of Taos, New Mexico. The pueblos are considered to be one of the oldest ...

. It is slightly more distantly related to Southern Tiwa (spoken at

Isleta Pueblo Pueblo of Isleta ( tix, Shiewhibak , kjq, Dîiw'a'ane ; nv, Naatoohó ) is an unincorporated community and Tanoan pueblo in Bernalillo County, New Mexico, United States, originally established in the . The Southern Tiwa name of the pue ...

and

Sandia Pueblo Sandia Pueblo (; Tiwa: Tuf Shur Tia) is a federally recognized tribe of Native American Pueblo people inhabiting a reservation of the same name in the eastern Rio Grande Rift of central New Mexico. It is one of 19 of New Mexico's Native Americ ...

Phonology

: * The consonants are only found in recent Spanish

loanword A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because ...

s. * G. Trager (1942, 1943) analyzed Picuris as also having aspirated stops , ejective stops , and labialized . These are considered by F. Trager (1971) to be sequences of , , and . * Velar has strong frication. * Stops are unaspirated while may be slightly aspirated. * The

affricate An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation (most often coronal). It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pai ...

freely varies with a more forward articulation : for example, F. Trager recorded the word "witch" with an initial but the related word "witch chief" with initial .F. Trager does not give further details about whether the forward articulation is dental or alveolar. If Picuris is like Taos, then the most forward articulation would be alveolar. G. Trager states that the articulation is consistently post-alveolar (and does not mention free variation). * The sequence is only found in a single word . * Alveolar has an assimilated velar variant when it precedes labio-velar . * Nasal in a low-toned syllable is partially devoiced and denasalized before a glottal stop , as in " chokecherry" which is phonetically . * Fricative freely varies between a lateral fricative and a central-lateral fricative sequence * Lateral is palatalized before the high front vowel . * Only the

sonorant In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant or resonant is a speech sound that is produced with continuous, non-turbulent airflow in the vocal tract; these are the manners of articulation that are most often voiced in the world's languages. Vowels ar ...

s can occur in

syllable coda 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 " ...

position.

Vowels

Picuris has 6 vowels. Picuris also has nasalized counterparts for each vowel. : Picuris has three degrees of stress: ''primary'', ''secondary'', and ''unstressed''. Stress affects the phonetic length of

syllable rime 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 " ...

s (lengthening the vowel or the syllable-final sonorant consonant). Additionally, there are three tones: ''high'', ''mid'', and ''low'' — the mid tone being the most frequent.

Text

Two sentences with

interlinear In linguistics and pedagogy, an interlinear gloss is a gloss (annotation), gloss (series of brief explanations, such as definitions or pronunciations) placed between lines, such as between a line of original text and its translation into another l ...

glosses: : :

Notes

Bibliography

* Harrington, John P.; & Roberts, Helen. (1928). Picuris children's stories with texts and songs. ''Bureau of American Ethnology: Annual report'', ''43'', 289-447. * Nichols, Lynn. (1994). Vowel copy and stress in Northern Tiwa (Picurís and Taos). In S. Epstein et al. (Eds.), ''Harvard working papers in linguistics'' (Vol. 4, pp. 133–140). * Nichols, Lynn. (1995). Referential hierarchies and C-command in Picurís. In S. Epstein et al. (Eds.), ''Harvard working papers in linguistics'' (Vol. 45, pp. 76–92). * Trager, Felicia. (1968). ''Picuris Pueblo, New Mexico: An ethnolinguistic "salvage" study''. (Doctoral dissertation, State University of New York, Buffalo, NY). * Trager, Felicia. (1971). The phonology of Picuris. ''International Journal of American Linguistics'', ''37'', 29-33. * Trager, Felicia. (1975). Morphemic change in Picuris: A case of culture contact? ''Studies in Linguistics'', ''25'', 89-93. * Trager, George L. (1942). The historical phonology of the Tiwa languages. ''Studies in Linguistics'', ''1'' (5), 1-10. * Trager, George L. (1943). The kinship and status terms of the Tiwa languages. ''American Anthropologist'', ''45'' (1), 557-571. * Trager, George L. (1969). Taos and Picuris: How long separated?. ''International Journal of American Linguistics'', ''35'' (2), 180-182. * Zaharlick, Ann Marie (Amy). (1975). Pronominal reference in Picurís. ''Studies in Linguistics'', ''25'', 79-88. * Zaharlick, Ann Marie (Amy). (1977). ''Picurís syntax''. (Doctoral dissertation, American University). * Zaharlick, Ann Marie (Amy). (1979). Picuris and English: Similarities and differences. In R. J. Rebert (Ed.), ''Language descriptions from Indian New Mexico'' (pp. 20–51). Albuquerque: The University of New Mexico, American Indian Bilingual Education Center, pp. * Zaharlick, Ann Marie (Amy). (1980). An outline of Picuris syntax. ''Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences'', ''345'', 147-163. * Zaharlick, Ann Marie (Amy). (1981). A preliminary examination of tone in Picuris. Special Issue: Native Languages of the Americas. ''Journal of the Linguistic Association of the Southwest'', ''4'' (2), 123-129. * Zaharlick, Ann Marie (Amy). (1982). Tanoan studies: Passive sentences in Picuris. ''Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics'', ''26'', 34-48.

External links

Stress, length, and moraic trochees in Northern Tiwa Picurís
{{DEFAULTSORT:Picuris Language Tanoan languages Indigenous languages of New Mexico Indigenous languages of the Southwestern United States Indigenous languages of the North American Southwest