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The Kawaiisu language[3] is an Uto-Aztecan language spoken by the Kawaiisu people of California. Kawaiisu is a member of the Southern Numic division of the Uto-Aztecan language family, and the remaining Kawaiisu speakers live in the Tehachapi area of California. The language is now classified as an 8b on the language endangerment scale, meaning that it is now spoken only by a few isolated speakers.

Kawaiisu is the most linguistically divergent member of the Southern Numic branch of languages, which also includes Chemehuevi, Southern Paiute and Ute. :xi-xii Kawaiisu is typologically notable for its highly complex word structure. :3

Linguistic environment
The Kawaiisu homeland was bordered by speakers of non-Numic Uto-Aztecan languages: the Kitanemuk to the south spoke Takic, the Tubatulabal to the north spoke Tubatulabal, the Yokuts to the west were non-Uto-Aztecan. Because they shared the Southern Numic language, the Chemehuevi to the east are considered the closest relatives to Kawaiisu.

In comparison to their northern neighbors the Tübatulabal, the Kawaiisu people and language have been historically understudied :vii

Revitalization
When the Kawaiisu language was first studied by the linguist Maurice Zigmond in the 1930s, he estimated the total number of speakers to be about one hundred. :ix In 1994, the language was severely endangered, with perhaps fewer than 20 remaining speakers.[4]

In 2011, The Kawaiisu Project received the Governor’s Historic Preservation Award for its efforts to document the Kaiwaiisu language and culture, including "the Handbook of the Kawaiisu, language teaching and the Kawaiisu Language and Cultural Center [and] the Kawaiisu exhibit at the Tehachapi Museum."[5] [6] As of 2012, the Kawaiisu Language and Cultural Center offers language classes and DVDs for home learning, as well as training for other groups seeking to create language learning programs and materials.[7]

Vowels
Kawaiisu has a typical Numic vowel inventory of six vowels. The vowel phoneme /a/ is sometimes heard as [ə] in Kawaiisu, even when in a stressed position. :5

Some vocalic changes occur across clitic boundaries. A table of these changes is shown below. :11

Consonants
Kawaiisu has 25 total consonant phonemes. :5 Kawaiisu has an atypical Numic consonant inventory in that many of the predictable consonant alternations in other Numic languages are no longer predictable in Kawaiisu. The Kawaiisu consonant inventory, therefore, is much larger than the typical Numic language.

The phonemes /l/, /ŋ/ and /hw/ are rare, with /l/ and /ŋ/ only appearing in loanwords from languages like Spanish, Tübatulabal and Kitanemuk. :6

Alternations
Alternations between the sounds /s/ and /š/, /z/ and /ž/, as well as /c/ and /č/ are common in the environment of front vowels. :7

hana-sɨbi

who-IRR

hini-šɨbi

what-IRR :7

Alternations between /p/, /v/ or /b/, between /t/, /r/ or /d/, and finally between /k/ or /kw/ and /g/ or /gw/ are common, especially in compounding and reduplication, but do not seem to be rule-governed. They appear to be largely lexicalized. :8

toci

head

"head"

cɨga-roci

rough-head

"tangle-haired" :8

Syllable Structure
The typical syllable structure of a word in Kawaiisu is CV, with stems canonically appearing as CVCV and affixes as CV. Consonant clusters never occur at the beginning of native words, although they do occur internally with some frequency, as well as occasionally at the beginning of Spanish loanwords. No words begin with vowels in Kawaiisu, although the V syllable structure is possible for affixes and clitics. :6

Stress
Stress usually falls on the second-to-last mora for words in Kawaiisu. The exception to this rule is words with final long vowels, in which the stress falls on the final syllable. Also, when a word has a vowel-initial disyllabic clitic, this clitic is treated as one mora. :6 Thus, in the following example, stress is placed on the penultimate syllable "pɨ".

ka.ʔa.pɨ=a.na

food=his

his food :6

Morphology
Kawaiisu is an agglutinative language, in which words use suffix complexes for a variety of purposes with several morphemes strung together.

Absolutive (Non-Case) Suffixes
Kawaiisu has several different absolutive suffixes, occurring on the majority of nouns in the language. The presence or absence of these suffixes, however, has no relation to syntactic case. :39 They are often dropped before a plural suffix, a possessor clitic, a postposition, or in compounds. :40

While the particular absolutive suffix used for a given noun is lexically specified, each of them has different distributional properties. These are laid out in the table below. :40

Plural Marking
Plural marking is Kawaiisu is shown through the addition of the suffix "-mɨ" or "-wɨ," sometimes in combination with reduplication of the first syllable of the noun. If a noun has an absolutive suffix, it drops this suffix in the plural. Some nouns without absolutives, however, add an absolutive in their plural form. :40-41

Case
Kawaiisu makes use of a nominative/accusative case system. In the nominative case, nouns simply appear in their citation form. In the accusative case, one of the following suffixes is used. :41

Nominalizers and Complementizers
Main-clause verbs in Kawaiisu have one of two types of final suffixes: a nominalizers or a complementizers. :81 The former does not show subject agreement with a suffixed possessor clitic, while the former does. :81-82

The most common nominalizers are /-dɨ/ and /-rɨ/. :82

yozi-d i 

fly-NOM

"flyer, airplane" :82

The most common complementizer is /-na/. :82

ʔuwa-na=aka

rain-CMP=its

"it's raining" :86

Postpositions
In Kawaiisu, postpositions are suffixed to nouns or pronominal/demonstrative bases. :54

kahni-rukwa

house-under

"under the house" :55

čurči-vaʔa-na

church-at-CMP

"at the church" :26

Clitics
Clitics are frequently used in Kawaiisu. The example below shows two uses of clitics: as an indicator of possession, and as an emphatic construction. :29

nɨʔɨ=su   maha-ka-dɨ        nɨwɨa-ya=ni

I=EMPH   wash-R-NMR      body-ACC=my

"I (myself) alone washed myself" :29

Reduplication
When the first CV syllable of a stem is reduplicated in Kawaiisu, it can signal either an inceptive or a repetitive meaning.

Inceptive:

ka-gaʔa-na=ina

RDP-eat-CMP=his

"he's starting to eat" :76

Repetitive Motion:

ko-koʔo-rɨ

RDP-cut-NMR

"slicing" (repeatedly) :77

Compounds
Compounds can be formed in Kawaiisu by combining two nouns or a noun and an adjective. :71-72

Noun-noun compounds typically involve the first noun semantically modifying the second. :71

ʔavi-gahni

chalk-house

"white-washed house" :71 Adjective-noun compounds typically form nouns with more specialized meanings. :72

sagwa-muupiži

blue-fly

"blue-fly" :72

Syntax
The basic word order of Kawaiisu is relatively free, although SOV is the dominant type. :14-15 The following sentence is an example of this SOV word order:

taʔnip i zi   momoʔo-a       p i kee-r i =ina

man           woman-ACC     see-NMR=her

"The man saw the woman" :14

The following three sentences are examples of different word orders that are also acceptable in Kawaiisu. They demonstrate the free word order that characterizes the language.

VOS:

p i kee-ka-d i =ina      taʔnip i zi-a   n i ʔ i 

see-R-NMR=him    man-ACC     I

"I saw the man" :15

SVO:

wiigara     ʔuna    w i z i -n-p i gad i =ika               ʔuwa-ya      ʔed i -a=v i mi

red:racer    that     put:down-MOM-PERF=it      that-ACC     bow-ACC=own

"Red Racer put down his bow" :163

OVS:

paʔavi-ta     kaʔa-kwee-kee-na=ina=ina    puguzi

meat-ACC    eat-RSLTV-R-CMP=his=him    dog

"The dog ate the meat" :47

WH Questions
In a WH question in Kawaiisu, the question word typically appears first. :32

hana-ya     pɨkee-na=mi       ?

who-ACC  see-CMP=your

"Whom do you see?" :33

The exception to this case is when a focused element (often translated with contrastive stress in English) appears before a WH word. :33

ʔimi    haniya-na=mi

you     say:what-CMP=your

"What did you say?" :33

Negative Sentences
Negative sentences in Kawaiisu normally begin with "yuwaatɨ," translated as "no" or "it is not so." The SOV word order is sometimes relaxed, but the subject usually precedes the object. :111-112

yuwaatɨ    taʔnipɨzi-a      pɨkee-kee-na=ina=ana     momoʔo-na

NEG         man-ACC       see-R-CMP=her=his        woman-ACC

"The man didn't see the woman." :111