Cupeño language

Cupeño
Cupeño
Kupangaxwicham Pe'me̲melki
Region	Southern California, United States
Ethnicity	Cupeño people
Extinct	1987, with the death of Roscinda Nolasquez
Language family	Uto-Aztecan Northern Uto-Aztecan Takic Cupan Cahuilla–Cupeño Cupeño; ; ; ; ;
Writing system	Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3	cup
Glottolog	cupe1243
ELP	Cupeño
	This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

Cupeño is an extinct Uto-Aztecan language, formerly spoken by the Cupeño people of Southern California, United States, who now speak English.

Roscinda Nolasquez (d. 1987) was the last native speaker of Cupeño.^[1]

Region[]

The language was originally spoken in Cupa, Wilaqalpa, and Paluqla, San Diego County, California, and later around the Pala Indian Reservation.

Morphology[]

Cupeño is an agglutinative language, where words use suffix complexes for a variety of purposes with several morphemes strung together.

Cupeño inflects its verbs for transitivity, tense, aspect, mood, person, number, and evidentiality.

Evidentiality is expressed in Cupeño with clitics, which generally appear near the beginning of the sentence. =ku'ut 'reportative' (mu=ku'ut 'and it is said that...') =am 'mirative' =$he 'dubitative'

There are two inflected moods, realis =pe and irrealis =e'p.

Pronouns[]

The pronominals of Cupeño appear in many different forms and structures. The following appear attached only to past-tense verbs.

Person	Singular	Plural
1	ne-	chem-
2	e-	em-
3	pe-	pem-

Tense-Aspect system[]

Future simple verbs are unmarked. Past simple verbs have past-tense pronouns; past imperfect add the imperfect modifier shown below.

Number	Present	Imperfect	Fut. Imp	Customary
Singular	-qa	-qal	-nash	-ne
Plural	-we	-wen	-wene	-wene

Phonology[]

Vowels[]

	Front	Central	Back
High	i, iː		u, uː
Mid	ɛ, ɛː	ə, əː	o, oː
Low		a, aː

/ɛ/ and /o/ appear largely in Spanish loanwords, but also as allophones of /ə/ in native Cupeño words.

/i/ can also be realized as [ɪ] in closed syllables, and [e] in some open syllables.

/u/ may reduce to schwa in unstressed syllables.

/ə/ also appears as [ɨː] when long and stressed, [o] after labials and [q], and as [ɛ] before [w].

/a/ is also realized as [ɑ] before uvulars.

Consonants[]

		Bilabial	Coronal		Palatal	Velar		Uvular	Glottal
		Bilabial	laminal	apical	Palatal	plain	labial.	Uvular	Glottal
Nasal		m	n		ɲ	ŋ
Plosive		p	t		(t)ʃ^[a]	k	kʷ^[b]	q	ʔ
Fricative	voiceless		s	ʂ	(t)ʃ^[a]	x ~ χ^[c]	xʷ		h
Fricative	voiced	v^[d]	ð^[d]			ɣ
Approximant					j		w
Lateral			l		ʎ
Trill				ɾ^[d]

^ /tʃ/ is realized as [ʃ] in syllable codas.
^ /kʷ/ is realized as [qʷ] before unstressed /a/ or /e/.
^ [x] and [χ] appear to be in free variation.
^ ^a ^b ^c /v/, /ð/, and /ɾ/ appear only in Spanish loanwords.

References[]

^ Hill, Jane H. (2005-10-18). A Grammar of Cupeño. UC Publications in Linguistics. Vol. 136. University of California Press.

External links[]

The Cupeño language, Four Directions Institute
Cupeño language, Survey of California and Other Indian Languages
OLAC resources in and about the Cupeño language

This article relating to the Indigenous peoples of North America is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by .

[2] /tʃ/ is realized as [ʃ] in syllable codas.

[3] /kʷ/ is realized as [qʷ] before unstressed /a/ or /e/.

[4] [x] and [χ] appear to be in free variation.

[loanwords-5] /v/, /ð/, and /ɾ/ appear only in Spanish loanwords.

[hill2005grammar-1] Hill, Jane H. (2005-10-18). A Grammar of Cupeño. UC Publications in Linguistics. Vol. 136. University of California Press.

[1]

[a]

[b]

[c]

[d]