Picuris language explained

Picuris
States:	United States
Region:	Picuris Pueblo, New Mexico
Ethnicity:	230^[1]
Speakers:	225
Date:	2007
Ref:	^[2]
Familycolor:	American
Fam1:	Tanoan
Fam2:	Tiwa
Fam3:	Northern Tiwa
Iso3:	twf
Iso3comment:	(Northern Tiwa)
Glotto:	picu1248
Glottorefname:	Picuris Northern Tiwa
Lingua:	64-CAA-ab
Map:	Lang Status 80-VU.svg
Notice:	IPA

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

Genealogical relations

Picuris is partially mutually intelligible with Taos dialect, spoken at Taos Pueblo.^[3] It is slightly more distantly related to Southern Tiwa (spoken at Isleta Pueblo and Sandia Pueblo).

Phonology

		Bilabial	Dental		Alveolar	Palatal	Velar		Glottal
		Bilabial		central	Alveolar	Palatal	lateral	central	Glottal	labial
Stop	voiced	pronounced as /(b)/	pronounced as /(d)/				pronounced as /(ɡ)/
	voiceless	pronounced as /p/	pronounced as /t/			pronounced as /tʃ/	pronounced as /k/	pronounced as /kʷ/	pronounced as /ʔ/
	aspirated	pronounced as /pʰ/	pronounced as /tʰ/
	ejective	pronounced as /pʼ/	pronounced as /tʼ/			pronounced as /tʃʼ/	pronounced as /kʼ/	(pronounced as /kʼʷ/)
Fricative				pronounced as /ɬ/	pronounced as /s/		pronounced as /x/	pronounced as /xʷ/	pronounced as /h/
Nasal		pronounced as /m/	pronounced as /n/
Approximant		pronounced as /w/		pronounced as /l/		pronounced as /j/
Flap					pronounced as /(ɾ)/

The consonants pronounced as //b, d, ɡ, ɾ// are only found in recent Spanish loanwords.
G. Trager (1942, 1943) analyzed Picuris as also having aspirated stops pronounced as //pʰ, tʰ//, ejective stops pronounced as //pʼ, tʼ, tʃʼ, kʼ//, and labialized pronounced as //kʷ, kʼʷ, xʷ//. These are considered by F. Trager (1971) to be sequences of pronounced as //ph, th//, pronounced as //pʔ, tʔ, tʃʔ, kʔ//, and pronounced as //kw, kʔw, xw//.^[4]
Velar pronounced as //x// has strong frication.^[5]
Stops pronounced as //p, t, ʔ// are unaspirated while pronounced as //k// may be slightly aspirated.
The affricate pronounced as //tʃ// freely varies with a more forward articulation pronounced as /[tʃ~ts]/: for example, F. Trager recorded the word pronounced as //ˈtʃāˈxʌ̀nē// "witch" with an initial pronounced as /[tʃ]/ but the related word pronounced as //ˈtʃāˈxʌ́ˈɬāwēnē// "witch chief" with initial pronounced as /[tsʲ]/.^[6]
The sequence pronounced as //kʔw// is only found in a single word pronounced as //kʔwìatʃéne//.
Alveolar pronounced as //n// has an assimilated velar variant pronounced as /[ŋ]/ when it precedes labio-velar pronounced as //w//.
Nasal pronounced as //m// in a low-toned syllable is partially devoiced and denasalized pronounced as /[mp]/ before a glottal stop pronounced as //ʔ//, as in pronounced as //ˈʔʌ̀mʔēnē// "chokecherry" which is phonetically pronounced as /[ˈʌ̀mpʔɛ̄nɛ̄]/.
Fricative pronounced as //ɬ// freely varies between a lateral fricative and a central-lateral fricative sequence pronounced as /[ɬ~sɬ]/
Lateral pronounced as //l// is palatalized pronounced as /[lʲ]/ before the high front vowel pronounced as //i//.
Only the sonorants pronounced as //m, n, l, w, j// can occur in syllable coda position.

Vowels

Picuris has 6 vowels. Picuris also has nasalized counterparts for each vowel.

Oral Vowels!! Front! Back
High	pronounced as /i/	pronounced as /u/
Upper Mid	pronounced as /e/	pronounced as /o/
Lower Mid		pronounced as /ʌ/
Low	pronounced as /a/

Nasal Vowels!! Front! Back
High	pronounced as /ĩ/	pronounced as /ũ/
Upper Mid	pronounced as /ẽ/	pronounced as /õ/
Lower Mid		pronounced as /ʌ̃/
Low	pronounced as /ã/

Picuris has three degrees of stress: primary, secondary, and unstressed. Stress affects the phonetic length of syllable rimes (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:

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

Notes and References

News: Tiwa, Northern. Ethnologue. 2018-05-23. en.
Web site: UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in danger. www.unesco.org. en. 2018-05-23.
Sources on mutual intelligibility report conflicting information. Mithun (1999): "they [Taos and Picuris] are close but generally considered mutually unintelligible". But, G. Trager (1969): "The facts that there are considerable phonological differences between the two languages [Taos and Picuris], but that the grammatical systems are very much alike and that mutual intelligibility still persists...". G. Trager (1946): "The two Tiwa groups [Northern Tiwa and Southern Tiwa] are fairly homogeneous: Sandía and Isleta [of the Southern Tiwa group] differ very little and are mutually completely intelligible; Taos and Picurís [of the Northern Tiwa group] diverge more from each other. Further, the group as a whole is very similar: Taos and Picurís are each intelligible to the other three, and Sandía and Isleta are understood in the north, though with difficulty". G. Trager (1943): "Taos and Picurís are much alike, and mutually understandable. Sandía and Isleta are almost identical. A speaker of the southern languages can manage to understand the northern two, but the reverse is not true." F. Trager (1971): "[Picuris] is most closely related to Taos; these two languages are in part mutually intelligible."
The consonant cluster analysis is similar to G. Trager's later reanalysis of Taos. (See: Taos phonology: Consonants).
This is unlike the weak frication of Taos pronounced as //x//.
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).