Colorado River Numic (also called Ute/ˈjuːt/YOOT, Southern Paiute/ˈpaɪjuːt/PIE-yoot, Ute–Southern Paiute, or Ute-Chemehuevi/ˌtʃɛmɪˈweɪvi/CHEH-mih-WAY-vee), of the Numic branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family, is a dialect chain that stretches from southeastern California to Colorado.[2] Individual dialects are Chemehuevi, which is in danger of extinction, Southern Paiute (Moapa, Cedar City, Kaibab, and San Juan subdialects), and Ute (Central Utah, Northern, White Mesa, Southern subdialects). According to the Ethnologue, there were a little less than two thousand speakers of Colorado River Numic Language in 1990, or around 40% out of an ethnic population of 5,000.[3]
The Southern Paiute dialect has played a significant role in linguistics, as the background for a famous article by linguist Edward Sapir and his collaborator Tony Tillohash on the nature of the phoneme.[4]
Dialects
The three major dialect groups of Colorado River are Chemehuevi, Southern Paiute, and Ute, although there are no strong isoglosses. The threefold division is primarily one of culture rather than strictly linguistic. There are, however, three major phonological distinctions among the dialects:
In Southern Paiute and Ute, initial /h/ has been lost: Chemehuevi /hivi/ 'drink' is a verb, other dialects /ivi/ 'drink'.
In Ute, nasal-stop clusters have become voiceless geminate stops: Ute /pukku/ 'horse, pet', other dialects /puŋku/.
In Ute, the mid back round vowel /o/ has been fronted to /ö/: Ute /söö-/ 'lungs', other dialects /soo-/.
There are no strong isoglosses between Southern Paiute and Ute for the changes but an increasing level of change, as one moves from Kaibab Southern Paiute (0% of nasal-stop clusters have changed) to Southern Ute (100% of nasal-stop clusters have changed).
Phonology
Consonant and vowel charts for the westernmost and easternmost dialects are given.[5][6]
Vowels can be long or short. Short unstressed vowels can be devoiced.
Morphology
The Colorado River Numic language is an agglutinative language, in which words use suffix complexes for a variety of purposes with several morphemes strung together.
^Sapir, Edward (1933). "La réalité psychologique des phonèmes" [The psychological reality of phonemes]. Journal de Psychologie Normale et Pathologique (in French).
Bunte, Pamela A. (1979). Problems in Southern Paiute Syntax and Semantics (PhD dissertation). Indiana University.
Charney, Jean O. (1996). A Dictionary of the Southern Ute Language. Ignacio, CO: Ute Press.
Givón, Talmy (2011). Ute Reference Grammar. Culture and Language Use. Vol. 3. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing.
Laird, Carobeth (1976). The Chemehuevis. Banning, CA: Malki Museum Press.
Mithun, Marianne (1999). Languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Press, Margaret L. (1979). Chemehuevi, A Grammar and Lexicon. University of California Publications in Linguistics. Vol. 92. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
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