Picuris (also Picurís) is a language of the
Northern Tiwa branch of
Tanoan spoken in
Picuris Pueblo,
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States. It is one of the Mountain States of the southern Rocky Mountains, sharing the Four Corners region with Utah, Colorado, and Arizona. It also ...
.
Classification
Picuris is partially
mutually intelligible with
Taos dialect, spoken at
Taos Pueblo
Taos Pueblo (or Pueblo de Taos) is an ancient pueblo belonging to a Taos language, Taos-speaking (Tiwa languages, Tiwa) Native American tribe of Puebloan peoples, Puebloan people. It lies about north of the modern city of Taos, New Mexico. T ...
. It is slightly more distantly related to
Southern Tiwa (spoken at
Isleta Pueblo and
Sandia Pueblo).
Phonology
:
* The consonants are only found in recent Spanish
loanword
A loanword (also a loan word, loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language (the recipient or target language), through the process of borrowing. Borrowing is a metaphorical term t ...
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
sonorants can occur in
syllable coda 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 basic unit of organization within a sequence of speech sounds, such as within a word, typically defined by linguists as a ''nucleus'' (most often a vowel) with optional sounds before or after that nucleus (''margins'', which are ...
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 glosses:
See also
*
Picuris Pueblo
*
Tiwa languages
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