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| Pawnee | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | United States | |
| Region: | North-central Oklahoma | |
| Total speakers: | 20 | |
| Language family: | Caddoan languages Northern Caddoan Pawnee-Kitsai Pawnee Pawnee |
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| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | none | |
| ISO 639-2: | – | |
| ISO 639-3: | paw | |
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| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
The Pawnee language is a Caddoan language spoken by Pawnee Native Americans located in North central Oklahoma. Once the language of thousands of Pawnees, today Pawnee is spoken by a shrinking number of elderly speakers, and as more young people continue to learn English as their first language, the status of Pawnee declines towards extinction.
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Dialects
Two important dialect divisions are evident in Pawnee: South Band and Skiri. The distinction between the two dialects rests on differences in their respective phonetic inventory and lexicon.
Sounds
The sounds described in this section belong to the South Band dialect of Pawnee.
Consonants
Pawnee has eight consonant phonemes, and according to one analysis of medial- and final-position glottal stops, one may posit a ninth consonant phoneme.
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Velar | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stop | p | t | k | (ʔ) |
| Affricate | ʦ | |||
| Rhotic | r | |||
| Fricative | s | h | ||
| Approximant | w |
- /ʔ/ is predictable when it occurs in the middle of words. However, since /ʔ/ is not completely predictable at the ends of words, it may also need to be considered as a (phonemic) consonant.
Vowels
Pawnee has four short vowel phonemes and four long counterparts (also phonemic).
| Front | Back | |
|---|---|---|
| High | i/iː | u/uː |
| Mid-low | e/eː | a/aː |
Grammar
Pawnee is a polysynthetic language and displays ergativity between nouns and verbs.
References
- Mithun, Marianne. (1999). The languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-23228-7 (hbk); ISBN 0-521-29875-X.
- Parks, Douglas R. (1976). A grammar of Pawnee. New York: Garland.
- Taylor, Allan R. (1978). [Review of A grammar of Pawnee by D. Parks]. Language, 54 (4), 969-972.
External links
