Central Hill Nisenan was spoken in the hills northeast of Sacramento, California, but like many other California languages, it is no longer spoken. This monograph includes texts recorded by the late Richard Smith, a brief description of the language (with chapters on phonology, morphology, and syntax), and a short word list.
Central Hill Nisenan was spoken in the hills northeast of Sacramento, California, but like many other California languages, it is no longer spoken. This monograph includes texts recorded by the late Richard Smith, a brief description of the language (with chapters on phonology, morphology, and syntax), and a short word list.
Before the first appearance of the Atlas of the World's Languages in 1993, all the world's languages had never been accurately and completely mapped. The Atlas depicts the location of every known living language, including languages on the point of extinction. This fully revised edition of the Atlas offers: up-to-date research, some from fieldwork in early 2006 a general linguistic history of each section an overview of the genetic relations of the languages in each section statistical and sociolinguistic information a large number of new or completely updated maps further reading and a bibliography for each section a cross-referenced language index of over 6,000 languages. Presenting contributions from international scholars, covering over 6,000 languages and containing over 150 full-colour maps, the Atlas of the World's Languages is the definitive reference resource for every linguistic and reference library.
Coppa Hembo was a fascinating historical figure. Born of a Maidu father and Washoe mother he would rise to become the primary Huuk (Chief ) for nearly 50 years over the Hill Nisenan band of the Southern Maidu, with authority over the Maidu and Washoe people living on the Divide between the forks of the Natoman (American) River. As a young man he had been attacked by a grizzly bear which he managed to kill, permanently disfigured by the mauling he was given the name Coppa Hembo (Grizzly Bear Killer). He would lead his people in battles against slave raiders but managed to keep his people out of both the First and Second Indian Wars of El Dorado County continuing to live in peace with the horde of invading miners. Coppa Hembo’s leadership included arranging for his people to be vaccinated against small pox in 1852. His reputation for wisdom and impartiality found him serving as both a judge and keeper of the peace for both Indians and non-Indians. A staunch proponent of education he arranged to help the local school system during conflicts arising from the American Civil War. He would guide his people into full integration into the American society thus saving them from being rounded up and herded onto reservations. His is not a story of tragedy but instead one of triumph for a true American Hero.
The Yuki language, including Huchnom and Coast Yuki, was spoken in Mendocino County until relatively recently (the last speaker died in 1983). This grammar is based primarily on spoken narratives recorded by Alfred Kroeber between 1901-1911. While Yuki was extensively documented over the course of the twentieth century, there is relatively little in the way of actual published works on the language. Balodis discusses the language within the historical and cultural context of the people who spoke it.
Published through theRecovering Languages and Literacies of the Americas initiative, supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. A Native American language formerly spoken in hundreds of communities in the interior of California, Patwin (also known as Wintun Tʼewe) is now spoken by a small but growing number of language revitalizationists and their students. A Grammar of Patwin brings together two hundred years of word lists, notebooks, audio recordings, and manuscripts from archives across the United States and synthesizes this scattered collection into the first published description of the Patwin language. This book shines a light on the knowledge of past speakers and researchers with a clear and well-organized description supported by ample archival evidence. Lewis C. Lawyer addresses the full range of grammatical structure with chapters on phonetics, phonology, nominals, nominal modifiers, spatial terms, verbs, and clauses. At every level of grammatical structure there is notable variation between dialects, and this variation is painstakingly described. An introductory chapter situates the language geographically and historically and also gives a detailed account of previous work on the language and of the archival materials on which the study is based. Throughout the process of writing this book, Lawyer remained in contact with Patwin communities and individuals, who helped to ensure that the content is appropriate from a cultural perspective.
The Chimariko language, now extinct, was spoken in Trinity County, California. This reference grammar, based on data collected by Harrington in the 1920's, represents the most comprehensive description of the language. Written from a functional-typological perspective this work also examines language contact in Northern California showing that grammatical traits are often shared among genetically unrelated languages in geographically contiguous areas.
This volume describes aspects of word- and sentence-formation in Nuuchahnulth (formerly known as Nootka), a language spoken on the west coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. Aspects included are polysynthetic word formation, word classes, and clause structure. The morphosyntactic regularities are examined in the context of general structural characteristics of the language in an attempt to contribute to the language an internally and typologically accurate understanding of Nuuchahnulth morphosyntactic structures.
This unique collection of articles in honor of Marianne Mithun represents the very latest in research on language contact and language change in the Indigenous languages of the Americas. The book aims to provide new theoretical and empirical insights into how and why languages change, especially with regard to contact phenomena in languages of North America, Meso-America and South America. The individual chapters cover a broad range of topics, including sound change, morphosyntactic change, lexical semantics, grammaticalization, language endangerment, and discourse-pragmatic change. With chapters from distinguished scholars and talented newcomers alike, this book will be welcomed by anyone with an interest in internally- and externally-motivated language change.
This book connects two linguistic phenomena, modality and subordinators, so that both are seen in a new light, each adding to the understanding of the other. It argues that general subordinators (or complementizers) denote propositional modality (otherwise expressed by moods such as the indicative-subjunctive and epistemic-evidential modal markers). The book explores the hypothesis both on a cross-linguistic and on a language-branch specific level (the Germanic languages). One obvious connection between the indicative-subjunctive distinction and subordinators is that the former is typically manifested in subordinate clauses. Furthermore, both the indicative-subjunctive and subordinators determine clause types. More importantly, however, it is shown, through data from various languages, that subordinators themselves often denote the indicative-subjunctive distinction. In the Germanic languages, there is variation in many clause types between both the indicative and the subjunctive and "that" and "if "depending on the speaker s and/or the subject s certainty of the truth of the proposition."
