| Cupeño | |
|---|---|
| Kupangaxwicham Pe'me̲melki | |
| Native to | United States |
| Region | SouthernCalifornia |
| Ethnicity | Cupeño |
| Extinct | 1987, with the death of Roscinda Nolasquez |
| Revival | [1] |
| Latin | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | cup |
| Glottolog | cupe1243 |
| ELP | Cupeño |
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| This article containsIPA phonetic symbols. Without properrendering support, you may seequestion marks, boxes, or other symbols instead ofUnicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, seeHelp:IPA. | |
Cupeño, orPá'anexily, is anUto-Aztecan language that was spoken by theCupeño people of southernCalifornia, United States.[3]Roscinda Nolasquez (d. 1987) was the last native speaker of Cupeño.[4] The Cupeño people now speak English. The native nameKupangaxwicham means 'people from the sleeping place', referring to their traditional homeland, prior to 1902, of Ktipa (at the base ofWarner's Hot Springs).[5][6] A smaller village was located to the south of Ktipa, namedWildkalpa.
Throughout the 1890s, there was debate over whether the Cupeño people should be allowed to continue living on traditional Cupeño territory.[5] After many years of public protests, theCalifornia Supreme Court decided to relocate the Cupeño people to thePala Reservation.[5][6][when?]
Cupeño shows linguistic influence from both the languages that preceded it and theYuman-speakingIpai, who share their southern border.[5]
The language was originally spoken in Cupa, Wilaqalpa, and Paluqla, located inSan Diego County, California, and later around thePala Indian Reservation.
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | iiː | uuː | |
| Mid | ɛɛː | əəː | ooː |
| Low | aaː |
/ɛ/ and/o/ primarily occur in Spanishloanwords but also serve asallophones of/ə/ in native Cupeño words.
/i/ can be realized as[ɪ] in closed syllables and as[e] in some open syllables.
/u/ may reduce to a 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.[4]
| Bilabial | Coronal | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| laminal | apical | plain | labial. | ||||||
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | |||||
| Plosive | p | t | (t)ʃ[a] | k | kʷ[b] | q | ʔ | ||
| Fricative | voiceless | s | ʂ | x ~χ[c] | xʷ | h | |||
| voiced | β | ð[d] | ɣ | ||||||
| Approximant | j | w | |||||||
| Lateral | l | ʎ | |||||||
| Trill | ɾ[d] | ||||||||
Cupeño is anagglutinative language, where words use suffix complexes for a variety of purposes with severalmorphemes strung together. It is dominantlyhead-final, with a mostly strict word order (SOV)[4] for some constituents, such as genitive-noun constructions. However, in certain contexts, there is flexibility in the word order, allowing verbs to be shifted to the initial part of a sentence or arguments to follow verbs.[4]
Nouns, as well as demonstratives, determiners, quantifiers, and adjectives, in Cupeño are marked for case and number and agree with each other in complex nominal constructions.[4]
Cupeño inflects its verbs fortransitivity,tense,aspect,mood, person, number, andevidentiality.
Evidentiality in Cupeño is expressed withclitics, typically appearing near the beginning of the sentence:
=kuʼut 'reportative' (mu=kuʼut 'and it is said that...')=am 'mirative'=$he 'dubitative'
There are two inflected moods, realis=pe and irrealis=eʼp.
Future simple verbs remain unmarked. Past simple verbs include past-tense pronouns, while past imperfect verbs add the imperfect modifier as shown below.
| Present | Imperfect | Fut. Imp | Customary | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Singular | -qa | -qal | -nash | -ne |
| Plural | -we | -wen | -wene | -wene |
The pronominals in Cupeño manifest in various forms and structures. The following are only attached to past-tense verbs.
| Singular | Plural | |
|---|---|---|
| 1st person | ne | chem- |
| 2nd person | e- | em- |
| 3rd person | pe- | pem- |
| English | Cupeño |
|---|---|
| one | suplawut |
| two | wiʼ |
| three | pa |
| four | wichu |
| five | numaqananax |
| man | naxanis |
| woman | muwikut |
| sun | tamyut |
| moon | munil |
| water | pal |
Italics indicate extinct languages | |||||||||||||||||
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