Timbisha language
Encyclopedia
The Timbisha language is the language of the Native American
people who have inhabited the region in and around Death Valley
, California and the southern Owens Valley
since late prehistoric times. There are a few elderly individuals who can speak the language in California
and Nevada
, but none are monolingual and all use English
regularly in their daily lives. Until the last decade of the twentieth century, the people called themselves and their language "Shoshone". The tribe then achieved Federal recognition under the name Death Valley Timbisha Shoshone Band of California. This is an Anglicized spelling of the native name of Death Valley
, tümpisa, pronounced tɨmbiʃa, which means "rock paint" and refers to the rich sources of red ochre in the valley. Timbisha is also the language of the so-called "Shoshone" groups at Bishop
, Big Pine
, Darwin
, Independence
, and Lone Pine
communities in California and the Beatty
community in Nevada. It was also the language spoken at the former Indian Ranch reservation in Panamint Valley.
.
and the region just to the east of Death Valley
in Nevada
. Principal valleys where villages were located were (from west to east) Owens Valley
, Indian Wells Valley
, Saline Valley, Panamint Valley
, and Death Valley
. In addition, there were villages along the southern slopes of the Kawich Range
in Nevada.
varieties. McLaughlin (1987) is based on the far eastern variety from Beatty, Nevada
, while Dayley (1989a) is based on a central variety from Death Valley
.
inventory of five vowels. In addition, there is the common diphthong
ai, which varies rather freely with e, although certain morphemes always contain ai and others always contain e. (The official orthography is shown in parens.)
inventory. (The official orthography is shown in parens):
Voiceless vowels are not as common in Timbisha as they are in Shoshoni
and Comanche
.
is usually SOV as in taipo kinni'a punittai, 'white-man falcon saw', "The white man saw a falcon". The accusative case
and possessive case
are marked with suffixes. Adverbial relationships are marked with postpositions on nouns as well as with true adverbs. For example, kahni-pa'a, 'house-on', "on the house". Adjectives are usually prefixed to the nouns they modify, unless the relationship is temporary when they are independent words with special suffixes. Compare tosa-kapayu, 'white-horse', "palomino or other pale-colored breed" and tosapihtü kapayu, 'white/pale horse', "white or pale horse" (who happens to be white or pale, but whose siblings may be any color).
with suffixes. Valence
is marked with both prefixes and suffixes. Some common intransitive verbs have suppletive forms for singular or plural subjects and some common transitive verbs have suppletive forms for singular or plural objects. Otherwise, there is no subject agreement or object agreement marked on the verb.
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
people who have inhabited the region in and around Death Valley
Death Valley
Death Valley is a desert valley located in Eastern California. Situated within the Mojave Desert, it features the lowest, driest, and hottest locations in North America. Badwater, a basin located in Death Valley, is the specific location of the lowest elevation in North America at 282 feet below...
, California and the southern Owens Valley
Owens Valley
Owens Valley is the arid valley of the Owens River in eastern California in the United States, to the east of the Sierra Nevada and west of the White Mountains and Inyo Mountains on the west edge of the Great Basin section...
since late prehistoric times. There are a few elderly individuals who can speak the language in California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
and Nevada
Nevada
Nevada is a state in the western, mountain west, and southwestern regions of the United States. With an area of and a population of about 2.7 million, it is the 7th-largest and 35th-most populous state. Over two-thirds of Nevada's people live in the Las Vegas metropolitan area, which contains its...
, but none are monolingual and all use English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
regularly in their daily lives. Until the last decade of the twentieth century, the people called themselves and their language "Shoshone". The tribe then achieved Federal recognition under the name Death Valley Timbisha Shoshone Band of California. This is an Anglicized spelling of the native name of Death Valley
Death Valley
Death Valley is a desert valley located in Eastern California. Situated within the Mojave Desert, it features the lowest, driest, and hottest locations in North America. Badwater, a basin located in Death Valley, is the specific location of the lowest elevation in North America at 282 feet below...
, tümpisa, pronounced tɨmbiʃa, which means "rock paint" and refers to the rich sources of red ochre in the valley. Timbisha is also the language of the so-called "Shoshone" groups at Bishop
Paiute-Shoshone Indians of the Bishop Community of the Bishop Colony
The Paiute-Shoshone Indians of the Bishop Community of the Bishop Colony is a federally recognized tribe of Mono and Timbisha Indians of the Owens Valley, in Inyo County of eastern California.-Reservation:...
, Big Pine
Big Pine Band of Owens Valley Paiute Shoshone Indians of the Big Pine Reservation
The Big Pine Band of Owens Valley Paiute Shoshone Indians of the Big Pine Reservation are a federally recognized tribe of Mono and Timbisha Indians in California.The Big Pine Reservation is located from Bishop, at the eastern base of the Sierra Nevada...
, Darwin
Darwin, California
Darwin is a census-designated place in Inyo County, California, United States. Darwin is located southeast of Keeler, at an elevation of 4790 feet . The population was 43 at the 2010 census, down from 54 at the 2000 census. It is named after Dr...
, Independence
Independence, California
Independence is the county seat of Inyo County, California. Independence is located south-southeast of Bishop, at an elevation of 3930 feet . The population of this census-designated place was 669 at the 2010 census, up from 574 at the 2000 census....
, and Lone Pine
Paiute-Shoshone Indians of the Lone Pine Community of the Lone Pine Reservation
The Paiute-Shoshone Indians of the Lone Pine Community of the Lone Pine Reservation is a federally recognized tribe of Mono and Timbisha Native American Indians near Lone Pine in Inyo County, California...
communities in California and the Beatty
Beatty, Nevada
Beatty is a census-designated place along the Amargosa River in Nye County in the U.S. state of Nevada. U.S. Route 95 runs through the CDP, which lies between Tonopah, about to the north, and Las Vegas, about to the southeast. State Route 374 connects Beatty to Death Valley National Park, about ...
community in Nevada. It was also the language spoken at the former Indian Ranch reservation in Panamint Valley.
Classification
Timbisha is one of the Central Numic languages of the Numic branch of Uto-Aztecan. It is most closely related to Shoshoni and ComancheComanche language
Comanche is a Uto-Aztecan language spoken by the Comanche people, who split off from the Shoshone soon after they acquired horses in around 1705...
.
Geographic distribution
Timbisha was formerly spoken in the region between the Sierra Nevada mountains of eastern CaliforniaCalifornia
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
and the region just to the east of Death Valley
Death Valley
Death Valley is a desert valley located in Eastern California. Situated within the Mojave Desert, it features the lowest, driest, and hottest locations in North America. Badwater, a basin located in Death Valley, is the specific location of the lowest elevation in North America at 282 feet below...
in Nevada
Nevada
Nevada is a state in the western, mountain west, and southwestern regions of the United States. With an area of and a population of about 2.7 million, it is the 7th-largest and 35th-most populous state. Over two-thirds of Nevada's people live in the Las Vegas metropolitan area, which contains its...
. Principal valleys where villages were located were (from west to east) Owens Valley
Owens Valley
Owens Valley is the arid valley of the Owens River in eastern California in the United States, to the east of the Sierra Nevada and west of the White Mountains and Inyo Mountains on the west edge of the Great Basin section...
, Indian Wells Valley
Indian Wells Valley
Indian Wells Valley is an arid north-south basin in east-central California. In the geologic sense, it is a southern extension of Owens Valley to the north, with the recent volcanics of the Coso Range being the separator...
, Saline Valley, Panamint Valley
Panamint Valley
The Panamint Valley is a long basin located east of the Argus Range and Slate Range, and west of the Panamint Range in the northeastern reach of the Mojave Desert, in eastern California, United States.-Geography:...
, and Death Valley
Death Valley
Death Valley is a desert valley located in Eastern California. Situated within the Mojave Desert, it features the lowest, driest, and hottest locations in North America. Badwater, a basin located in Death Valley, is the specific location of the lowest elevation in North America at 282 feet below...
. In addition, there were villages along the southern slopes of the Kawich Range
Kawich Range
The Kawich Range is a mountain range in Nye County in southern Nevada in the United States, just south of the Hot Creek Range. The southern part of the range lies on the Nellis Air Force Range. The mountains cover an area of about and contain Kawich Peak, at above sea level. The Bureau of Land...
in Nevada.
Dialects
Each valley had its own variety of Timbisha with mostly lexical differences between them. There was, however a general loss of h as one moved west across Timbisha territory with h virtually gone in Owens ValleyOwens Valley
Owens Valley is the arid valley of the Owens River in eastern California in the United States, to the east of the Sierra Nevada and west of the White Mountains and Inyo Mountains on the west edge of the Great Basin section...
varieties. McLaughlin (1987) is based on the far eastern variety from Beatty, Nevada
Beatty, Nevada
Beatty is a census-designated place along the Amargosa River in Nye County in the U.S. state of Nevada. U.S. Route 95 runs through the CDP, which lies between Tonopah, about to the north, and Las Vegas, about to the southeast. State Route 374 connects Beatty to Death Valley National Park, about ...
, while Dayley (1989a) is based on a central variety from Death Valley
Death Valley
Death Valley is a desert valley located in Eastern California. Situated within the Mojave Desert, it features the lowest, driest, and hottest locations in North America. Badwater, a basin located in Death Valley, is the specific location of the lowest elevation in North America at 282 feet below...
.
Vowels
Timbisha also has a typical Numic vowelVowel
In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...
inventory of five vowels. In addition, there is the common diphthong
Diphthong
A diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel...
ai, which varies rather freely with e, although certain morphemes always contain ai and others always contain e. (The official orthography is shown in parens.)
| front | back unrounded | back rounded |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| High | i | ɨ (ü) | u |
| Non-High | a | o | |
| Diphthong | ai (ai, e) |
Consonants
Timbisha has a typical Numic consonantConsonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and ,...
inventory. (The official orthography is shown in parens):
| Bilabial Bilabial consonant In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:... | Coronal Coronal consonant Coronal consonants are consonants articulated with the flexible front part of the tongue. Only the coronal consonants can be divided into apical , laminal , domed , or subapical , as well as a few rarer orientations, because only the front of the tongue has such... | 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).... | Labialized velar | 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... |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stop Stop consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &... |
p | t | k | kʷ | ʔ | |
| Affricate Affricate consonant Affricates are consonants that begin as stops but release as a fricative rather than directly into the following vowel.- Samples :... |
ts | |||||
| Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or... |
s | 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 | ŋ (ng) | ŋw (ngw) | ||
| 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:... |
j (y) | w |
Phonology
Timbisha stops (including the affricate) and nasals are voiced and lenited between vowels, are voiced in nasal-stop clusters, and are lenited (but not voiced) following h.Voiceless vowels are not as common in Timbisha as they are in Shoshoni
Shoshone language
Shoshoni or Shoshone is a Native American language spoken by the Shoshone people. Principal dialects of Shoshoni include Western Shoshoni in Nevada, Gosiute in western Utah, Northern Shoshoni in southern Idaho and northern Utah, and Eastern Shoshoni in Wyoming.Shoshoni-speaking Native Americans...
and Comanche
Comanche language
Comanche is a Uto-Aztecan language spoken by the Comanche people, who split off from the Shoshone soon after they acquired horses in around 1705...
.
Writing System
Timbisha spelling is based on Dayley (1989a, 1989b) and uses the Roman alphabet. Ü is used for ɨ and ng for ŋ.Grammar
Work on Timbisha has been carried on by Jon Dayley and John McLaughlin, both of whom wrote grammatical descriptions (McLaughlin 1987, 2006; Dayley 1989a). Dayley has published a dictionary (Dayley 1989b).Word Order and Case Marking
Timbisha word orderWord order
In linguistics, word order typology refers to the study of the order of the syntactic constituents of a language, and how different languages can employ different orders. Correlations between orders found in different syntactic subdomains are also of interest...
is usually SOV as in taipo kinni'a punittai, 'white-man falcon saw', "The white man saw a falcon". The accusative case
Accusative case
The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of prepositions...
and possessive case
Possessive case
The possessive case of a language is a grammatical case used to indicate a relationship of possession. It is not the same as the genitive case, which can express a wider range of relationships, though the two have similar meanings in many languages.See Possession for a survey of the different...
are marked with suffixes. Adverbial relationships are marked with postpositions on nouns as well as with true adverbs. For example, kahni-pa'a, 'house-on', "on the house". Adjectives are usually prefixed to the nouns they modify, unless the relationship is temporary when they are independent words with special suffixes. Compare tosa-kapayu, 'white-horse', "palomino or other pale-colored breed" and tosapihtü kapayu, 'white/pale horse', "white or pale horse" (who happens to be white or pale, but whose siblings may be any color).
Verbs
Verbs are marked for grammatical aspectGrammatical aspect
In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb is a grammatical category that defines the temporal flow in a given action, event, or state, from the point of view of the speaker...
with suffixes. Valence
Valency (linguistics)
In linguistics, verb valency or valence refers to the number of arguments controlled by a verbal predicate. It is related, though not identical, to verb transitivity, which counts only object arguments of the verbal predicate...
is marked with both prefixes and suffixes. Some common intransitive verbs have suppletive forms for singular or plural subjects and some common transitive verbs have suppletive forms for singular or plural objects. Otherwise, there is no subject agreement or object agreement marked on the verb.
External links
- Panamint 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...
- Ethnologue report for Panamint
- Linguist List map of Panamint
- How to count in Timbisha