Havasupai–Hualapai (Havasupai–Walapai) is a Native American language spoken by the Hualapai and Havasupai peoples of northwestern Arizona. Havasupai–Hualapai belongs to the Pai branch of the Yuman–Cochimí language family , together with its close relative Yavapai and with Paipai , a language spoken in northern Baja California. There are two main dialects of this language: the Havasupai dialect is spoken in the bottom of the Grand Canyon , while the Hualapai dialect is spoken along the southern rim. As of 2010, there were approximately 1500 speakers of Havasupai-Hualapai. UNESCO classifies the Havasupai dialect as endangered and the Hualapai dialect as vulnerable. There are efforts at preserving both dialects through bilingual education programs.
23-466: The modern Hualapai and Havasupai have separate sociopolitical identities, but a consensus among linguists is that the differences in speech among them lie only at the dialect level, rather than constituting separate languages, and the differences between the two dialects have been reported as "negligible". The language even bears similarity to Yavapai , and sometimes they are grouped together for means of linguistic classification (see Ethnologue). Regarding
46-443: A form-meaning mismatch . "The theoretical distinction between grammatical definiteness and cognitive identifiability has the advantage of enabling us to distinguish between a discrete (grammatical) and a non-discrete (cognitive) category." In English , definiteness is usually marked by the selection of determiner . Certain determiners, such as a , an , many , and some , along with numbers (e.g., four items ), typically mark
69-641: A nominative/accusative case marking system, as mentioned in the morphology section. It is said that noun incorporation occurs in the language. This is notable with verbs of belonging, such as with the noun "nyigwáy(ya)," meaning "shirt." To say "to be wearing a shirt" the noun form "nyigwáy" is incorporated into the verb, appearing with a prefix for person, and suffixes for reflexiveness and auxiliaries. The noun form obligatorily also occurs before its incorporated verb form: nyigwáy shirt '-nyiggwa:y(-v)-wi 3 / 1 -shirt(- REFL )- AUX nyigwáy '-nyiggwa:y(-v)-wi shirt 3/1-shirt(-REFL)-AUX "I have
92-480: A primary stressed (phonetically long) vowel. The most common syllable structures that occur in Havasupai-Hualapai are CV, CVC, and VC; however, consonant clusters of two or three consonants can and do occur initially, medially, and finally. At word boundaries, syllabification breaks up consonant clusters to CVC or CV structure as much as is possible. CCC and CCCC clusters occur, but they are always broken up by
115-421: A shirt on." Similar processes occur with kinship terms and verbs of belonging such as with the following noun "bi:", which means "female's brother's child/nephew/niece": e'e yes '-bi:-v-wi 3 / 1 -nephew- REFL - AUX e'e '-bi:-v-wi yes 3/1-nephew-REFL-AUX "Yes, I have a nephew/niece." This can be considered a more iconic form of noun incorporation, as the noun doesn't also occur outside
138-681: A syllable boundary (that is, C-CC/CC-C or CC-CC). Syllable-initial CC clusters are either composed of (1) /θ/, /s/, or /h/, followed by any consonant or (2) any consonant followed by /w/. Morphologically, Hualapai-Havasupai is classified by WALS as weakly suffixing. There are different affixes for nouns, verbs, and particles in Hualapai-Havasupai, and there exist suffixes that can change nouns to verbs and vice versa. The affixes that exist—apart from word roots—are generally short in phonemic length, restricted to C, CV, VC, or V in composition. Verbs are marked for person (first, second, and third) through
161-412: A unique, familiar, specific referent such as the sun or Australia , as opposed to indefinite examples like an idea or some fish . There is considerable variation in the expression of definiteness across languages, and some languages such as Japanese do not generally mark it, so the same expression can be definite in some contexts and indefinite in others. In other languages, such as English , it
184-594: Is stress-timed , which governs many parts of the phonological structure of the language, including where long vowels occur, what kind of consonant clusters can occur and where, and how syllable boundaries are divided. There are three types of stress : primary, secondary, and weak. All vowels can have any of these three types of stress, but syllabic consonants can only have weak stress. Primary stresses occur at regularly timed intervals in an utterance. Secondary stresses occur according to an alternating-stress system, which most commonly dictates that two secondary stresses follow
207-530: Is a subject-verb-object language. Some sample words given in Yavapai translation: There have been recordings of Yavapai (as well as other Yuman languages) done in 1974, relating to phonology, syntax, and grammar. This was meant to understand the three topics better and to hear them. There is an effort to revitalize the language. There is a Yavapai language program for adults to learn the language and pass on to future generations. There have been attempts to save
230-446: Is usually marked by the selection of determiner (e.g., the vs. a ). Still other languages, such as Danish , mark definiteness morphologically by changing the noun itself (e.g. Danish en mand (a man), manden (the man)). There are times when a grammatically marked definite NP is not in fact identifiable. For example, the polar bear's habitat is the arctic does not refer to a unique, familiar, specific bear, in an example of
253-527: Is widely discussed in the literature. Watahomigie et al. poses that the use of /β/ is attributed to older generations of Hualapai dialect speakers, and Edwin Kozlowski notes that in the Hualapai dialect, [v] is weakened to [β] in weak-stressed syllables. Thus, the underlying form /v-ul/ "to ride" surfaces as [βəʔul]. Long and short vowels are contrastive in the language. The following is a minimal pair illustrating of
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#1732851127720276-472: The Orthography section of this page. As shown from the chart above, aspiration is a contrastive feature in many stops and affricates in Hualapai-Havasupai. Often, consonant sounds are realized in different ways in different phonetic environments. For example, if a glottal stop occurs at the beginning of a word, it may sometimes be replaced by a vowel such as /a/. The phonemic difference between /β/ and /v/
299-523: The following sentence, both subject markers are used: John(a)-ch John- SUBJ Mary Yavapai language Yavapai is an Upland Yuman language , spoken by Yavapai people in central and western Arizona . There are four dialects: Kwevkepaya, Wipukpaya, Tolkepaya, and Yavepe. Linguistic studies of the Kwevkepaya (Southern), Tolkepaya (Western), Wipukepa (Verde Valley), and Yavepe (Prescott) dialects have been published (Mithun 1999:578). Yavapai
322-431: The incorporate verb form. Havasupai-Hualapai, like other Yuman languages, is known for its switch-reference . This is a mechanism that illustrates whether the subjects are the same for multiple verbs within a sentence. The marker "-k" states that the subject-references are identical, and the marker "-m" is used when the first and second subjects are different for two verbs. The following sentences are examples of each, with
345-572: The language in the Yavapai community. Poetry and stories have been published in Yavapai on several occasions. Yavapai poems are featured in Gigyayk Vo'jka , the anthology of poetry in Yuman languages edited by Hualapai linguist Lucille Watahomigie . Yavapai stories also appear in Spirit Mountain: An Anthology of Yuman Story and Song . Both works are accompanied by English translations, and
368-496: The lists of noun suffixes and prefixes below: Particles exist as interjections, adverbs, possessive pronouns, and articles. There are relatively few particles that exist in the language. They can be marked through prefixes for subordination and intensity in the same way as nouns and through the suffix /-é/, which indicates adverbial place. Havasupai-Hualapai's basic word order is S-O-V . For noun phrases, articles , such as demonstratives , occur as suffixes. Havasupai-Hualapai has
391-399: The markers bolded for illustrative purposes: Rhiannon-ch Rhiannon- SUBJ he'-h dress- DEM tuy -k 3 / 3 .take off- SS dathgwi:l -k -wi-ny 3 / 3 .wash- SS - AUX - PAST Rhiannon-ch he'-h tuy -k dathgwi:l -k -wi-ny Rhiannon-SUBJ dress-DEM {3/3.take off}- SS 3/3.wash- SS -AUX-PAST "Rhiannon took off the dress and washed it. Note that in
414-473: The phonemic contrast of Havasupai-Hualapai vowel length: pa:ʔ ' person ' vs. paʔ ' arrow ' . Short vowels may sometimes be reduced to [ə] or dropped completely when they occur in an unstressed syllable, primarily in a word-initial context. In addition to this chart, there are four attested diphthongs that are common for this language: /aʊ/ as in 'cow', /aɪ/ as in 'lie', /eɪ/ as in 'they', and /ui/ as in 'buoy'. Havasupai-Hualapai's prosodic system
437-571: The poems in Gigyayk Vo'jka also feature a morphological analysis. Alan Shaterian has published a dictionary of Northeastern Yavapai. Pamela Munro is working on a dictionary and grammar for Tolkepaya. Definiteness In linguistics , definiteness is a semantic feature of noun phrases that distinguishes between referents or senses that are identifiable in a given context (definite noun phrases) and those that are not (indefinite noun phrases). The prototypical definite noun phrase picks out
460-757: The prefixes /a-/, /ma-/, and /ø-/, respectively. Many other affixes attach to the verb to reveal information like tense, aspect , modality , number, adverbial qualities, and conjunctivity. The verb suffixes /-wi/ and /-yu/ are divisive for verbs and are weak-stressed by-forms of /wí/, meaning do , and /yú/, meaning be. These occur on all verbs. The three numbers that can be marked in verbs are singular, paucal plural, and multiple plural. There are six types of aspect, and any verb can have as many as three and as few as zero aspect markers. The six types are distributive-iterative, continued, interrupted, perfective, imperfective, and habitual. Nouns are marked for number, case, definiteness , and demonstrativeness , as can be seen by
483-587: The relationship of Havasupai and Hualapai to Yavapai, Warren Gazzam, a Tolkapaya Yavapai speaker, reported that "they (Hualapais) speak the same language as we do, some words or accents are a little different". For illustrative purposes, the following chart is the consonant inventory of the Hualapai dialect of the language, which varies slightly from the Havasupai dialect. Because the two dialects have different orthographies, IPA symbols are used here. For more information about how these sounds are depicted in writing, see
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#1732851127720506-673: The same language as we do, some words or accents are a little different". Due to extensive cultural interchange, many Yavapai were once bilingual in Apache , and some Apache were bilingual in Yavapai. Yavapai consonant phonemes are shown below. Vowels occur short, mid and long in stressed syllables. The contrast is reduced to two lengths in unstressed syllables. There are two tones on stressed syllables, high level and falling, which are neutralized to mid on unstressed syllables. Unlike in Havasupai and Hualapai, postaspirated stops cannot appear in word-initial position (Shaterian 1983:215). Yavapai
529-455: Was once spoken across much of north-central and western Arizona, but is now mostly spoken on the Yavapai reservations at Fort McDowell , the Verde Valley and Prescott . The rate of mutual comprehension between Yavapai and Havasupai–Hualapai is similar to that between Mohave and Maricopa (Biggs 1957). Warren Gazzam, a Tolkapaya speaker, reported that "you know they (Hualapais) speak
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