The Lake Miwok language is a moribund (or possibly extinct) language of Northern California, traditionally spoken in an area adjacent to the Clear Lake. It is one of the languages of the Clear Lake Linguistic Area, along with Patwin, East and Southeastern Pomo, and Wappo.
Phonology
Vowels
Consonants
The consonant inventory of Lake Miwok differs substantially from the inventories found in the other Miwok languages. Where the other languages only have one series of plosives, Lake Miwok has four: plain, aspirated, ejective and voiced. Lake Miwok has also added the affricates Ä, c, Äʼ, ƛʼ and the liquids r and Å‚. These sounds appear to have been borrowed through loanwords from other, unrelated languages in the Clear Lake area, after which they spread to some native Lake Miwok words.
Grammar
The word order of Lake Miwok is relatively free, but SOV (subjectâ€"objectâ€"verb) is the most common order.
Verb morphology
Pronominal clitics
In her Lake Miwok grammar, Callaghan reports that one speaker distinguishes between 1st person dual inclusive Ê"oc and exclusive Ê"ic. Another speaker also remembers that this distinction used to be made by older speakers.
Noun morphology
Case inflection
Nouns can be inflected for ten different cases:
- the Subjective case marks a noun which functions as the subject of a verb. If the subject noun is placed before the verb, the Subjective has the allomorph -n after vowel (or a vowel followed by /h/), and -Ø after consonants. If it is placed after the verb, the Subjective is -n after vowels and -nu after consonants.
- the Possessive case is -n after vowels and -Ø after consonants
- the Objective case marks a noun which functions as the object of a verb. It has the allomorph -u (after a consonant) or -Ø (after a vowel) when the noun is placed immediately before a verb which contains the 2nd person prefix Ê"in- (which then has the allomorph -n attached to the noun preceding the verb; compare the example below) or does not contain any subject prefix at all.
- It has the allomorph -Ø before a verb containing any other subject prefix:
- If the object noun does not immediately precede the verb, or if the verb is in the imperative, the allomorph of the Objective is -uc:
- the allative case is -to or -t depending on the environment. It has a variety of meaning, but often expresses direction towards a goal.
- the locative case -m gives a less specific designation of locality than the Allative, and occurs more rarely.
- the ablative case is -mu or -m depending on the context, and marks direction out of, or away from, a place.
- the instrumental case -á¹u marks instruments, e.g. tumáj-á¹u "(I hit him) with a stick".
- the comitative case -ni usually translates as "along with", but can also be used to coordinate nouns, as in kaÊ"unúu-ni ka Ê"áppi-ni "my mother and my father".
- the vocative case only occurs with a few kinship terms, e.g. Ê"unúu "mother (voc)" from Ê"únu "mother".
- the Appositive case is the citation form of nouns.
Possessive clitics
Lake Miwok uses pronominal clitics to indicate the possessor of a noun. Except for the 3d person singular, they have the same shape as the nominative pronominal clitics, but show no allomorphy.
The reflexive hana forms have the same referent as the subject of the same clause, whereas the non-reflexive forms have a different referent, e.g.:
- hana háju Ê"úá¹e â€" “He sees his own dogâ€
- Ê"iá¹i háju Ê"úá¹e â€" “He sees (somebody else’s) dogâ€
Notes
References
External links
- Lake Miwok language overview at the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages
- Lake Miwok audio recordings at the California Language Archive (login required)
- "Lake Miwok sound recordings". Collections Search Center, Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved 2012-07-20.Â
- OLAC resources in and about the Lake Miwok language
- Lake Miwok basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database
