Keres ( / ˈ k eɪ r eɪ s / ), also Keresan ( / ˈ k ɛ r ə s ən / ), is a Native American language , spoken by the Keres Pueblo people in New Mexico . Depending on the analysis, Keres is considered a small language family or a language isolate with several dialects . If it is considered a language isolate, it would be the most widely spoken language isolate within the borders of the United States . The varieties of each of the seven Keres pueblos are mutually intelligible with its closest neighbors. There are significant differences between the Western and Eastern groups, which are sometimes counted as separate languages.
56-666: The Pueblo of Acoma ( Western Keres : Áakʼu ) is an Indian reservation of the Acoma Pueblo peoples located in parts of Cibola , Socorro , and Catron counties, in New Mexico , the Southwestern United States . It covers 594.996 sq mi (1,541.033 km). The reservation borders the Laguna Indian Reservation to the east and is near El Malpais National Monument due west. The total number of tribal members
112-592: A phonemic distinction in duration : all vowels can be long or short. Additionally, short vowels can also be voiceless. The vowel chart below contains the vowel phonemes and allophones from the information of the Keresan languages combined from The Language of Santa Ana Pueblo (1964), The Phonemes of Keresan (1946), and Kansas Working Papers in Linguistics (1987). Notes: All Keresan short vowels may be devoiced in certain positions. The phonemic status of these vowels
168-560: A CV(V) shape. The maximal syllable structure is CCVVC and the minimal syllable is CV. In native Keresan words, only a glottal stop /ʔ/ ⟨ʼ⟩ can close a syllable, but some loanwords from Spanish have syllables that end in a consonant, mostly a nasal (i.e. /m n/ but words containing these sequences are rare in the language. Due to extensive vowel devoicing, several Keresan words may be perceived as ending in consonants or even containing consonant clusters. The only sequence of consonants (i.e. consonant cluster ) that occurs in native Keresan words
224-421: A connection with Wichita . Joseph Greenberg grouped Keres with Siouan , Yuchi , Caddoan , and Iroquoian in a superstock called Keresiouan. None of these proposals has been validated by subsequent linguistic research. In 2007, there was an estimate total of 10,670 speakers. Keresan has between 42 and 45 consonant sounds, and around 40 vowel sounds, adding up to a total of about 85 phonemes , depending on
280-537: A different existing tone. This is called tone sandhi. In Mandarin Chinese, for example, a dipping tone between two other tones is reduced to a simple low tone, which otherwise does not occur in Mandarin Chinese, whereas if two dipping tones occur in a row, the first becomes a rising tone, indistinguishable from other rising tones in the language. For example, the words 很 [xɤn˨˩˦] ('very') and 好 [xaʊ˨˩˦] ('good') produce
336-575: A dot below (see table). Tone may or may not be represented in the orthography of Keresan. When represented, four diacritics may be used above the vowel. Unlike the system used for Navajo , diacritics for tone are not repeated in long vowels. Although Keresan is not normally written, there exists one dictionary of the language in which words are listed in any given order. In this dictionary of Western Keres, digraphs count as single letters, although ejective consonants are not listed separately; occurring after their non-ejective counterparts. The symbol for
392-541: A huge number of tones as well. The most complex tonal systems are actually found in Africa and the Americas, not east Asia. Tones are realized as pitch only in a relative sense. "High tone" and "low tone" are only meaningful relative to the speaker's vocal range and in comparing one syllable to the next, rather than as a contrast of absolute pitch such as one finds in music. As a result, when one combines tone with sentence prosody ,
448-652: A language with five registers. However, the most that are actually used in a language is a tenth of that number. Several Kam–Sui languages of southern China have nine contrastive tones, including contour tones. For example, the Kam language has 9 tones: 3 more-or-less fixed tones (high, mid and low); 4 unidirectional tones (high and low rising, high and low falling); and 2 bidirectional tones (dipping and peaking). This assumes that checked syllables are not counted as having additional tones, as they traditionally are in China. For example, in
504-433: A mid-register tone – the default tone in most register-tone languages. However, after a falling tone it takes on a low pitch; the contour tone remains on the first syllable, but the pitch of the second syllable matches where the contour leaves off. And after a low-dipping tone, the contour spreads to the second syllable: the contour remains the same ( ˨˩˦ ) whether the word has one syllable or two. In other words,
560-437: A monosyllabic word (3), but there is no such difference in a word-tone language. For example, Shanghainese has two contrastive (phonemic) tones no matter how many syllables are in a word. Many languages described as having pitch accent are word-tone languages. Tone sandhi is an intermediate situation, as tones are carried by individual syllables, but affect each other so that they are not independent of each other. For example,
616-787: A multisyllabic word, each syllable often carries its own tone. Unlike in Bantu systems, tone plays little role in the grammar of modern standard Chinese, though the tones descend from features in Old Chinese that had morphological significance (such as changing a verb to a noun or vice versa). Most tonal languages have a combination of register and contour tones. Tone is typical of languages including Kra–Dai , Vietic , Sino-Tibetan , Afroasiatic , Khoisan , Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan languages. Most tonal languages combine both register and contour tones, such as Cantonese , which produces three varieties of contour tone at three different pitch levels, and
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#1732858195116672-488: A number of Mandarin Chinese suffixes and grammatical particles have what is called (when describing Mandarin Chinese) a "neutral" tone, which has no independent existence. If a syllable with a neutral tone is added to a syllable with a full tone, the pitch contour of the resulting word is entirely determined by that other syllable: After high level and high rising tones, the neutral syllable has an independent pitch that looks like
728-527: A single tone may be carried by the entire word rather than a different tone on each syllable. Often, grammatical information, such as past versus present, "I" versus "you", or positive versus negative, is conveyed solely by tone. In the most widely spoken tonal language, Mandarin Chinese , tones are distinguished by their distinctive shape, known as contour , with each tone having a different internal pattern of rising and falling pitch. Many words, especially monosyllabic ones, are differentiated solely by tone. In
784-654: A tone is used to mark aspect . The first work that mentioned this was published in 1986. Example paradigms: Tones are used to differentiate cases as well, as in Maasai language (a Nilo-Saharan language spoken in Kenya and Tanzania ): Certain varieties of Chinese are known to express meaning by means of tone change although further investigations are required. Examples from two Yue dialects spoken in Guangdong Province are shown below. In Taishan , tone change indicates
840-588: Is a verb-final language, though word order is rather flexible. Tone (linguistics) Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All oral languages use pitch to express emotional and other para-linguistic information and to convey emphasis, contrast and other such features in what is called intonation , but not all languages use tones to distinguish words or their inflections, analogously to consonants and vowels. Languages that have this feature are called tonal languages;
896-684: Is a default tone, usually low in a two-tone system or mid in a three-tone system, that is more common and less salient than other tones. There are also languages that combine relative-pitch and contour tones, such as many Kru languages and other Niger-Congo languages of West Africa. Falling tones tend to fall further than rising tones rise; high–low tones are common, whereas low–high tones are quite rare. A language with contour tones will also generally have as many or more falling tones than rising tones. However, exceptions are not unheard of; Mpi , for example, has three level and three rising tones, but no falling tones. Another difference between tonal languages
952-701: Is a morphologically conditioned alternation and is used as an inflectional or a derivational strategy. Lien indicated that causative verbs in modern Southern Min are expressed with tonal alternation, and that tonal alternation may come from earlier affixes. Examples: 長 tng 'long' vs. tng 'grow'; 斷 tng 'break' vs. tng 'cause to break'. Also, 毒 in Taiwanese Southern Min has two pronunciations: to̍k (entering tone) means 'poison' or 'poisonous', while thāu (departing tone) means 'to kill with poison'. The same usage can be found in Min, Yue, and Hakka. In East Asia, tone
1008-411: Is a sacred language that must exist only in its spoken form. The language's religious connotation and years of persecution of Pueblo religion by European colonizers may also explain why no unified orthographic convention exists for Keresan. However, a practical spelling system has been developed for Laguna (Kʼawaika) and more recently for Acoma (Áakʼu) Keres, both of which are remarkably consistent. In
1064-834: Is a sequence of a fricative /ʃ ʂ/ and a stop or affricate. Clusters are restricted to beginnings of syllables (i.e. the syllable onset ). When the alveolo-palatal consonant /ʃ/ occurs as C 1 , it combines with alveolar and palatal C 2 , whereas the retroflex alveolar /ʂ/ precedes bilabial and velar C 2 s, which suggest a complementary distribution. Consonant clusters may occur both word-initially and word-medially. shd áurákụ 'frog, toad' sht érashtʼígá 'cricket' shtʼ idyàatịshị 'plot of land' shj v 'upward' shch úmúmá 'wasp' shchʼ ísạ 'six' srb úuná 'water jug' srp àat'i 'mockingbird' srpʼ eruru 'it's full' srg ásrgáukʼa 'quail' srk v́dútsị 'mound, hill' srkʼ abíhí 'female in-law' Traditional Keresan beliefs postulate that Keres
1120-585: Is a table of the six Vietnamese tones and their corresponding tone accent or diacritics: Mandarin Chinese , which has five tones , transcribed by letters with diacritics over vowels: These tones combine with a syllable such as ma to produce different words. A minimal set based on ma are, in pinyin transcription: These may be combined into a tongue-twister : See also one-syllable article . A well-known tongue-twister in Standard Thai is: A Vietnamese tongue twister: A Cantonese tongue twister: Tone
1176-493: Is about 6,000. 3,230 people were living on the reservation's lands, as reported in the 2020 census . The Acoma Pueblo (Sky City) is the heart of the reservation and is held as one of the oldest continuously inhabited places in the United States . Western Keres language Keres is now considered a language isolate . In the past, Edward Sapir grouped it together with a Hokan –Siouan stock. Morris Swadesh suggested
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#17328581951161232-649: Is based on a split-intransitive pattern, in which subjects are marked differently if they are perceived as actors than from when they are perceived as undergoers of the action being described. The morphology of Keresan is mostly prefixing , although suffixes and reduplication also occur. Keresan distinguishes nouns , verbs, numerals and particles as word classes. Nouns in Keresan do not normally distinguish case or number , but they can be inflected for possession , with distinct constructions for alienable and inalienable possession. Other than possession, Keresan nouns show no comprehensive noun classes . Keresan
1288-603: Is controversial. Maring (1967) considers them to be phonemes of Áákʼu Keres, whereas other authors disagree. There are phonetic grounds for vowel devoicing based on the environment they occur, for instance word-finally, but there are also exceptions. Vowels in final position are nearly always voiceless and medial vowels occurring between voiced consonants, after nasals and ejectives are nearly always voiced. Acoma Keres has four lexical tones : high, low, falling and rising. Falling and rising tones only occur in long vowels and voiceless vowels bear no tones: Most Keresan syllables take
1344-733: Is debate over the definition of pitch accent and whether a coherent definition is even possible. Both lexical or grammatical tone and prosodic intonation are cued by changes in pitch, as well as sometimes by changes in phonation. Lexical tone coexists with intonation, with the lexical changes of pitch like waves superimposed on larger swells. For example, Luksaneeyanawin (1993) describes three intonational patterns in Thai: falling (with semantics of "finality, closedness, and definiteness"), rising ("non-finality, openness and non-definiteness") and "convoluted" (contrariness, conflict and emphasis). The phonetic realization of these intonational patterns superimposed on
1400-850: Is highly conserved among members. However, when considered in addition to "simple" tone systems that include only two tones, tone, as a whole, appears to be more labile, appearing several times within Indo-European languages, several times in American languages, and several times in Papuan families. That may indicate that rather than a trait unique to some language families, tone is a latent feature of most language families that may more easily arise and disappear as languages change over time. A 2015 study by Caleb Everett argued that tonal languages are more common in hot and humid climates, which make them easier to pronounce, even when considering familial relationships. If
1456-476: Is marked and which is the default. In Navajo , for example, syllables have a low tone by default, whereas marked syllables have high tone. In the related language Sekani , however, the default is high tone, and marked syllables have low tone. There are parallels with stress: English stressed syllables have a higher pitch than unstressed syllables. In many Bantu languages , tones are distinguished by their pitch level relative to each other. In multisyllable words,
1512-495: Is more prominent than the others. Most languages use pitch as intonation to convey prosody and pragmatics , but this does not make them tonal languages. In tonal languages, each syllable has an inherent pitch contour, and thus minimal pairs (or larger minimal sets) exist between syllables with the same segmental features (consonants and vowels) but different tones. Vietnamese and Chinese have heavily studied tone systems, as well as amongst their various dialects. Below
1568-489: Is most frequently manifested on vowels, but in most tonal languages where voiced syllabic consonants occur they will bear tone as well. This is especially common with syllabic nasals, for example in many Bantu and Kru languages , but also occurs in Serbo-Croatian . It is also possible for lexically contrastive pitch (or tone) to span entire words or morphemes instead of manifesting on the syllable nucleus (vowels), which
1624-494: Is the case in Punjabi . Tones can interact in complex ways through a process known as tone sandhi . In a number of East Asian languages, tonal differences are closely intertwined with phonation differences. In Vietnamese , for example, the ngã and sắc tones are both high-rising but the former is distinguished by having glottalization in the middle. Similarly, the nặng and huyền tones are both low-falling, but
1680-721: Is typically lexical. That is, tone is used to distinguish words which would otherwise be homonyms . This is characteristic of heavily tonal languages such as Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, and Hmong . However, in many African languages, especially in the Niger–Congo family, tone can be both lexical and grammatical. In the Kru languages , a combination of these patterns is found: nouns tend to have complex tone systems but are not much affected by grammatical inflections, whereas verbs tend to have simple tone systems, which are inflected to indicate tense and mood , person , and polarity , so that tone may be
1736-469: Is whether the tones apply independently to each syllable or to the word as a whole. In Cantonese , Thai , and Kru languages , each syllable may have a tone, whereas in Shanghainese , Swedish , Norwegian and many Bantu languages , the contour of each tone operates at the word level. That is, a trisyllabic word in a three-tone syllable-tone language has many more tonal possibilities (3 × 3 × 3 = 27) than
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1792-479: The nặng tone is shorter and pronounced with creaky voice at the end, while the huyền tone is longer and often has breathy voice . In some languages, such as Burmese , pitch and phonation are so closely intertwined that the two are combined in a single phonological system, where neither can be considered without the other. The distinctions of such systems are termed registers . The tone register here should not be confused with register tone described in
1848-528: The Keres spelling system, each symbol represents a single phoneme. The letters ⟨c q z f⟩ and sometimes also ⟨v⟩ are not used. Digraphs represent both palatal consonants (written using a sequence of C and ⟨y⟩), and retroflex consonants, which are represented using a sequence of C and the letter ⟨r⟩. These graphemes used for writing Western Keres are shown between ⟨...⟩ below. Signs at Acoma Pueblo sometimes use special diacritics for ejective consonants that differ from
1904-561: The Omotic (Afroasiatic) language Bench , which employs five level tones and one or two rising tones across levels. Most varieties of Chinese use contour tones, where the distinguishing feature of the tones are their shifts in pitch (that is, the pitch is a contour ), such as rising, falling, dipping, or level. Most Bantu languages (except northwestern Bantu) on the other hand, have simpler tone systems usually with high, low and one or two contour tone (usually in long vowels). In such systems there
1960-433: The absolute pitch of a high tone at the end of a prosodic unit may be lower than that of a low tone at the beginning of the unit, because of the universal tendency (in both tonal and non-tonal languages) for pitch to decrease with time in a process called downdrift . Tones may affect each other just as consonants and vowels do. In many register-tone languages, low tones may cause a downstep in following high or mid tones;
2016-466: The analysis and the language variety. Based on the classification in the World Atlas of Language Structures , Keres is a language with a large consonant inventory. The great number of consonants relates to the three-way distinction between voiceless , aspirated and ejective consonants (e.g. /t tʰ tʼ/), and to the larger than average number of fricatives (i.e. /s sʼ ʂ ʂʼ ʃ ʃʼ h/) and affricates ,
2072-402: The conclusions of Everett's work are sound, this is perhaps the first known case of influence of the environment on the structure of the languages spoken in it. The proposed relationship between climate and tone is controversial, and logical and statistical issues have been raised by various scholars. Tone has long been viewed as a phonological system. It was not until recent years that tone
2128-450: The consonants of the proto -Keresan (or pre-Keresan) from Miller & Davis (1963) based on a comparison of Acoma, Santa Ana, and Santo Domingo, as well as other features of the dialects compiled from The Language of Santa Ana Pueblo (1964), Kansas Working Papers in Linguistics (1987), and The Phonemes of Keresan (1946), and the Grammar of Laguna Keres (2005). Keresan vowels have
2184-517: The differentiation of tones. Investigations from the 2010s using perceptual experiments seem to suggest phonation counts as a perceptual cue. Many languages use tone in a more limited way. In Japanese , fewer than half of the words have a drop in pitch ; words contrast according to which syllable this drop follows. Such minimal systems are sometimes called pitch accent since they are reminiscent of stress accent languages, which typically allow one principal stressed syllable per word. However, there
2240-514: The distinctive tone patterns of such a language are sometimes called tonemes, by analogy with phoneme . Tonal languages are common in East and Southeast Asia, Africa, the Americas and the Pacific. Tonal languages are different from pitch-accent languages in that tonal languages can have each syllable with an independent tone whilst pitch-accent languages may have one syllable in a word or morpheme that
2296-470: The distribution; for groups like Khoi-San in Southern Africa and Papuan languages, whole families of languages possess tonality but simply have relatively few members, and for some North American tone languages, multiple independent origins are suspected. If generally considering only complex-tone vs. no-tone, it might be concluded that tone is almost always an ancient feature within a language family that
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2352-422: The effect is such that even while the low tones remain at the lower end of the speaker's vocal range (which is itself descending due to downdrift), the high tones drop incrementally like steps in a stairway or terraced rice fields, until finally the tones merge and the system has to be reset. This effect is called tone terracing . Sometimes a tone may remain as the sole realization of a grammatical particle after
2408-440: The five lexical tones of Thai (in citation form) are as follows: With convoluted intonation, it appears that high and falling tone conflate, while the low tone with convoluted intonation has the same contour as rising tone with rising intonation. Languages with simple tone systems or pitch accent may have one or two syllables specified for tone, with the rest of the word taking a default tone. Such languages differ in which tone
2464-443: The glottal stop ⟨ʼ⟩, for long vowels (e.g. ⟨aa ee ii⟩ etc.) are not treated as separate letters. Letters〈f q x z〉are not used to write Keres, whereas the letters ⟨ɨ o v⟩ are only used in some dialects. Keresan is a split-ergative language in which verbs denoting states (i.e. stative verbs ) behave differently from those indexing actions, especially in terms of the person affixes they take. This system of argument marking
2520-416: The latter also showing the three-way distinction found in stops . The large number of vowels derives from a distinction made between long and short vowels (e.g. /e eː/), as well as from the presence of tones and voicelessness. Thus, a single vowel quality may occur with seven distinct realizations: /é è e̥ éː èː êː ěː/, all of which are used to distinguish words in the language. The chart below contains
2576-412: The next section. Gordon and Ladefoged established a continuum of phonation, where several types can be identified. Kuang identified two types of phonation: pitch-dependent and pitch-independent . Contrast of tones has long been thought of as differences in pitch height. However, several studies pointed out that tone is actually multidimensional. Contour, duration, and phonation may all contribute to
2632-418: The only distinguishing feature between "you went" and "I won't go". In Yoruba , much of the lexical and grammatical information is carried by tone. In languages of West Africa such as Yoruba, people may even communicate with so-called " talking drums ", which are modulated to imitate the tones of the language, or by whistling the tones of speech. Note that tonal languages are not distributed evenly across
2688-407: The original consonant and vowel disappear, so it can only be heard by its effect on other tones. It may cause downstep, or it may combine with other tones to form contours. These are called floating tones . In many contour-tone languages, one tone may affect the shape of an adjacent tone. The affected tone may become something new, a tone that only occurs in such situations, or it may be changed into
2744-457: The phrase 很好 [xɤn˧˥ xaʊ˨˩˦] ('very good'). The two transcriptions may be conflated with reversed tone letters as [xɤn˨˩˦꜔꜒xaʊ˨˩˦] . Tone sandhi in Sinitic languages can be classified with a left-dominant or right-dominant system. In a language of the right-dominant system, the right-most syllable of a word retains its citation tone (i.e., the tone in its isolation form). All the other syllables of
2800-611: The same range as non-tonal languages. Instead, the majority of tone languages belong to the Niger-Congo, Sino-Tibetan and Vietic groups, which are then composed by a large majority of tone languages and dominate a single region. Only in limited locations (South Africa, New Guinea, Mexico, Brazil and a few others) do tone languages occur as individual members or small clusters within a non-tone dominated area. In some locations, like Central America, it may represent no more than an incidental effect of which languages were included when one examines
2856-606: The symbols above, as shown in the table: Vowel sounds are represented straightforwardly in the existing spellings for Keresan. Each vowel sound is written using a unique letter or digraph (for long vowels and diphthongs ). However, there are two competing representations for the vowel /ɨ/. Some versions simply use the IPA ⟨ɨ⟩ whereas others use the letter ⟨v⟩ (the sound /v/ as in veal does not occur in Keresan). Voiceless vowels have also been represented in two ways; either underlined or with
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#17328581951162912-511: The term includes both inflectional and derivational morphology. Tian described a grammatical tone, the induced creaky tone , in Burmese . Languages may distinguish up to five levels of pitch, though the Chori language of Nigeria is described as distinguishing six surface tone registers. Since tone contours may involve up to two shifts in pitch, there are theoretically 5 × 5 × 5 = 125 distinct tones for
2968-406: The tone is now the property of the word, not the syllable. Shanghainese has taken this pattern to its extreme, as the pitches of all syllables are determined by the tone before them, so that only the tone of the initial syllable of a word is distinctive. Lexical tones are used to distinguish lexical meanings. Grammatical tones, on the other hand, change the grammatical categories . To some authors,
3024-894: The traditional reckoning, the Kam language has 15 tones, but 6 occur only in syllables closed with the voiceless stop consonants /p/ , /t/ or /k/ and the other 9 occur only in syllables not ending in one of these sounds. Preliminary work on the Wobe language (part of the Wee continuum) of Liberia and Côte d'Ivoire, the Ticuna language of the Amazon and the Chatino languages of southern Mexico suggests that some dialects may distinguish as many as fourteen tones or more. The Guere language , Dan language and Mano language of Liberia and Ivory Coast have around 10 tones, give or take. The Oto-Manguean languages of Mexico have
3080-475: The word must take their sandhi form. Taiwanese Southern Min is known for its complex sandhi system. Example: 鹹kiam 'salty'; 酸sng 'sour'; 甜tinn 'sweet'; 鹹酸甜kiam 7 sng 7 tinn 'candied fruit'. In this example, only the last syllable remains unchanged. Subscripted numbers represent the changed tone. Tone change must be distinguished from tone sandhi . Tone sandhi is a compulsory change that occurs when certain tones are juxtaposed. Tone change, however,
3136-530: Was found to play a role in inflectional morphology . Palancar and Léonard (2016) provided an example with Tlatepuzco Chinantec (an Oto-Manguean language spoken in Southern Mexico ), where tones are able to distinguish mood , person , and number : In Iau language (the most tonally complex Lakes Plain language , predominantly monosyllabic), nouns have an inherent tone (e.g. be˧ 'fire' but be˦˧ 'flower'), but verbs don't have any inherent tone. For verbs,
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