Southern Pomo language
Encyclopedia
Southern Pomo is one of seven mutually unintelligible Pomoan languages
which were formerly spoken by the Pomo people
in Northern California
along the Russian River and Clear Lake. The Pomo languages have been grouped together with other so-called Hokan languages. Southern Pomo is unique among the Pomo languages in preserving, perhaps, the greatest number of syllables inherited from Proto-Pomo (the proto-language
from which all seven Pomo languages descend).
dialects, survived to be recorded by the time linguists began to collect data on the language.
At least four modern rancheria
s (the California term for small Indian reservation
s) include members whose ancestral language was Southern Pomo: Dry Creek, Cloverdale, Lytton and Graton
. There is currently one known speaker, from Dry Creek, and a handful of partial speakers.
; however, extensive work was not carried out until Abraham M. Halpern
, in the 1940s, collected a number Southern Pomo words and texts as part of a larger effort to collect data on all the Pomo languages. Halpern published one article, Southern Pomo h and ʔ and Their Reflexes, which dealt with aspects of Southern Pomo phonology
. Halpern's unpublished notes are currently housed at the University of California, Berkeley
. Robert L. Oswalt, who wrote a grammar of the related Kashaya
(Southwestern Pomo) language, began to collect Southern Pomo data approximately twenty years after Halpern's fieldwork. Oswalt eventually published one glossed and translated text, Retribution for Mate-Stealing: A Southern Pomo Tale, as well as a number of other articles which included Southern Pomo data together with data from other Pomo languages. Though Oswalt did a large amount of work on a Southern Pomo dictionary, it has never been completed.
Pomoan languages
Pomoan is a family of endangered languages spoken in northern California by the Pomo people on the Pacific Coast. According to the 2000 census, there are 255 speakers of the languages...
which were formerly spoken by the Pomo people
Pomo people
The Pomo people are an indigenous peoples of California. The historic Pomo territory in northern California was large, bordered by the Pacific Coast to the west, extending inland to Clear Lake, and mainly between Cleone and Duncans Point...
in Northern California
Northern California
Northern California is the northern portion of the U.S. state of California. The San Francisco Bay Area , and Sacramento as well as its metropolitan area are the main population centers...
along the Russian River and Clear Lake. The Pomo languages have been grouped together with other so-called Hokan languages. Southern Pomo is unique among the Pomo languages in preserving, perhaps, the greatest number of syllables inherited from Proto-Pomo (the proto-language
Proto-language
A proto-language in the tree model of historical linguistics is the common ancestor of the languages that form a language family. Occasionally, the German term Ursprache is used instead.Often the proto-language is not known directly...
from which all seven Pomo languages descend).
The Speakers
The speakers of Southern Pomo were never a unified political group; rather, they were spread across a number of villages and spoke slightly different dialects. Southern Pomo speakers did not have a name for their language or themselves. As the southernmost of the Pomo, the speakers of the language were the first to suffer the ravages of Mexican and, later, European-American invasion. Southern Pomo speakers were used by the Mexicans to construct the last of the California missions. The damage done during the Mexican period was compounded by the European-Americans. Only the northernmost populations of Southern Pomo speakers, those of the Dry Creek and CloverdaleCloverdale, California
Cloverdale is a city in Sonoma County, California, United States. The San Francisco and North Pacific Railroad reached Cloverdale in 1872. The Cloverdale Rancheria of Pomo Indians of California is headquartered here...
dialects, survived to be recorded by the time linguists began to collect data on the language.
At least four modern rancheria
Ranchería
The Spanish word ranchería, or rancherío, refers to a small, rural settlement. In the Americas the term was applied to native villages and to the workers' quarters of a ranch. English adopted the term with both these meanings, usually to designate the residential area of a rancho in the American...
s (the California term for small Indian reservation
Indian reservation
An American Indian reservation is an area of land managed by a Native American tribe under the United States Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs...
s) include members whose ancestral language was Southern Pomo: Dry Creek, Cloverdale, Lytton and Graton
Graton Rancheria
The Graton Rancheria was a property in the coastal hills of northern California, about two miles northwest of Sebastopol. Its current address is 10091 Occidental Road, Sebastopol, California. The site is about southwest of the hamlet of Graton, population 1,815 in 2000...
. There is currently one known speaker, from Dry Creek, and a handful of partial speakers.
Work on the language
A small amount of data was collected by early researchers such as Samuel BarrettSamuel Barrett
Samuel Alfred Barrett was an anthropologist and linguist who studied Native American peoples. He began his career at UC Berkeley, and received the first doctorate in anthropology from that university's new anthropology program in 1908....
; however, extensive work was not carried out until Abraham M. Halpern
Abraham M. Halpern
Abraham "Abe" Meyer Halpern was a linguist and anthropologist who specialized in Native American Languages. In the wake of World War II he initiated a second career focusing on United States foreign policy, especially in regard to China...
, in the 1940s, collected a number Southern Pomo words and texts as part of a larger effort to collect data on all the Pomo languages. Halpern published one article, Southern Pomo h and ʔ and Their Reflexes, which dealt with aspects of Southern Pomo phonology
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
. Halpern's unpublished notes are currently housed at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
. Robert L. Oswalt, who wrote a grammar of the related Kashaya
Kashaya
Kashaya has several meanings, see:* Kāṣāya, the traditional monastic robes of Buddhist monks and nuns.* Kashaya language, a distinct Pomo language on the Sonoma County Coastline, California* The subgroup of Pomo people who spoke this language...
(Southwestern Pomo) language, began to collect Southern Pomo data approximately twenty years after Halpern's fieldwork. Oswalt eventually published one glossed and translated text, Retribution for Mate-Stealing: A Southern Pomo Tale, as well as a number of other articles which included Southern Pomo data together with data from other Pomo languages. Though Oswalt did a large amount of work on a Southern Pomo dictionary, it has never been completed.
Phonetics and phonology
Southern Pomo has a rich sound system with aspirated, unaspirated, ejective and voiced stops. It has a total of 28 consonants (plus the pseudo-consonant /ː/). The vowel system, in contrast, contains only five qualities: /i u e o a/. All phonemes, both consonants and vowels, can occur long. The full consonant inventory is laid out below.Consonants
| Labial Bilabial consonant In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:... |
Dental | Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth... |
Postalveolar Postalveolar consonant Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate... |
Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate... |
Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum).... |
Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider... |
||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | unaspirated | p | t̪ | t | k | ʔ | ||
| aspirated Aspiration (phonetics) In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. To feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of one's mouth, and say pin ... |
pʰ | t̪ʰ | tʰ | kʰ | ||||
| ejective Ejective consonant In phonetics, ejective consonants are voiceless consonants that are pronounced with simultaneous closure of the glottis. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated or tenuis consonants... |
pʼ | t̪ʼ | tʼ | kʼ | ||||
| voiced | b | d | ||||||
| Affricate | unaspirated | ts | tʃ | |||||
| aspirated | tʃʰ | |||||||
| ejective Ejective consonant In phonetics, ejective consonants are voiceless consonants that are pronounced with simultaneous closure of the glottis. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated or tenuis consonants... |
tsʼ | tʃʼ | ||||||
| Fricative | s | ʃ | h | |||||
| Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :... |
m | n | ||||||
| Semivowel Semivowel In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel is a sound, such as English or , that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary rather than as the nucleus of a syllable.-Classification:... |
(w) | j | (w) | |||||
| Lateral Lateral consonant A lateral is an el-like consonant, in which airstream proceeds along the sides of the tongue, but is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth.... |
l | |||||||
External links
- Southern Pomo language overview at the Survey of California and Other Indian LanguagesSurvey of California and Other Indian LanguagesThe Survey of California and Other Indian Languages at the University of California at Berkeley documents, catalogs, and archives the indigenous languages of the Americas...
- Resources in and about the Southern Pomo language