Ethnicity 6,200 Chemehuevi, Southern Paiute and Ute (2007) Native speakers 920 (2007)20 monolinguals (1990 census) Language family Uto-AztecanNumicSouthern NumicColorado River Dialects ChemehueviSouthern PaiuteUte | ||
Colorado River Numic (also called Ute /ˈjuːt/, Southern Paiute /ˈpaɪjuːt/, Ute–Southern Paiute, or Ute-Chemehuevi /tʃɛmᵻˈweɪvi/), of the Numic branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family, is a dialect chain that stretches from southeastern California to Colorado. 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 ca. 40% out of an ethnic population of 5,000.
Contents
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.
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.
Phonology
Consonants in the Southern Ute dialect
Vowels in the Southern Ute dialect
Vowels can be long or short. Short unstressed vowels can be devoiced.
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:
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).