Valley Yokuts
| Valley Yokuts | |
|---|---|
| Region | San Joaquin Valley, California |
| Ethnicity | Yokut |
|
Native speakers
|
8 Chukchansi speakers (2011) |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | (included in yok) |
| Glottolog |
vall1251 (Valley Yokuts)yoku1256 (Yokuts (Yawelmani))
|
Valley Yokuts is a dialect cluster of the Yokutsan language family of California.
Chukchansi, which is still spoken natively, has language classes and a preschool for children. It is also taught at a local elementary school. Though there are no longer any native speakers, Tachi has a Headstart language program.
Valley Yokuts is sometimes considered three languages, of which only Northern Valley Yokuts is still spoken.
Of these, Yawelmani /jɑːwɛlˈmɑːni/, also known as Yowlumni, is the best known. See also Chukchansi dialect.
Yawelmani will be taken as representative.
Yawelmani has 8 vowel phonemes:
As can be seen, Yawelmani vowels have a number of different realizations (phones) which are summarized below:
The Yawelmani syllables 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:
Word roots are bisyllabic and have either one of two shapes:
When long vowels are in closed syllables, they are shortened:
Yawelmani has suffixes that contain either an underspecified high vowel /I/ or an underspecified non-high vowel /A/.
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