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Yawelmani dialect

Valley Yokuts
Region San Joaquin Valley, California
Ethnicity Yokut
Native speakers
8 Chukchansi speakers (2011)
Yok-Utian ?
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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