Lake Miwok
Clear Lake
Native to	United States
Region	Lake County,California
Ethnicity	Lake Miwok
Extinct	1990s[1]
Language family	Yok-Utian Utian Miwokan Western Lake Miwok
Language codes
ISO 639-3	lmw
Glottolog	lake1258
ELP	Lake Miwok
Lake Miwok is classified as Critically Endangered by theUNESCOAtlas of the World's Languages in Danger.
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TheLake Miwok language is an extinct language of Northern California, traditionally spoken in an area adjacent to theClear Lake. It is one of the languages of theClear Lake Linguistic Area, along with Patwin,East andSoutheastern Pomo, andWappo.^[2]

The consonant inventory of Lake Miwok differs substantially from the inventories found in the otherMiwok languages. Where the other languages only have one series ofplosives, Lake Miwok has four:plain,aspirated,ejective andvoiced. Lake Miwok has also added the affricatesč,c,čʼ,cʼ,ƛʼ and the liquidsr andł. These sounds appear to have been borrowed through loanwords from other, unrelated languages in the Clear Lake area, after which they spread to some native Lake Miwok words.^[2][3]

The word order of Lake Miwok is relatively free, but SOV (subject–object–verb) is the most common order.^[4]

In her Lake Miwok grammar, Callaghan reports that one speaker distinguishes between 1st person dualinclusiveʔoc andexclusiveʔic. Another speaker also remembers that this distinction used to be made by older speakers.^[5]

Nouns can be inflected for ten differentcases:

• theSubjective case marks a noun which functions as thesubject of a verb. If the subject noun is placed before the verb, the Subjective has theallomorph-n after vowel (or a vowel followed by /h/), and-Ø after consonants. If the noun is placed after the verb, the Subjective is-n after vowels and-nu after consonants.^[6]

• the Possessive case is-n after vowels and-Ø after consonants.^[8]

• theObjective case marks a noun which functions as the direct or indirectobject of a verb.^[10] It has the allomorph-u (after a consonant) or-Ø (after a vowel) when the noun is placed immediately before a verb which contains the 2nd person prefix ʔin- (which then has the allomorph-n attached to the noun preceding the verb; compare the example below) or does not contain any subject prefix at all.^[10]

It has the allomorph-Ø before a verb containing any other subject prefix:^[11]

If the object noun does not immediately precede the verb, or if the verb is in the imperative, the allomorph of the Objective is-uc:^[11]

• theallative case is-to after a consonant, before the first person dual prefix or the second person singular prefix, or after a vowel if the noun is at the end of the phrase:^[13]

If the allative case appears after a vowel, most often in non-final position, it appears as-t:^[13]

The allative case has a variety of meanings, but often expresses direction towards a goal.^[13]

The allative case is also often used with the suffix-(m)pa meaning "onto, to, toward":^[15]

• thelocative case-m gives a less specific designation of locality than the Allative, and occurs more rarely, generally only with an additional locational nominal suffix, such as -wa.^[16] An example:

• theablative case is-mu or-m depending on the context, and marks direction out of, or away from, a place.^[18] An example:

• theinstrumental case-ṭu marks instruments, e.g.tumáj-ṭu "(I hit him) with a stick".
• thecomitative case-ni usually translates as "along with", but can also be used tocoordinate nouns, as inkaʔunúu-ni ka ʔáppi-ni "my mother and my father".
• thevocative case only occurs with a few kinship terms, e.g.ʔunúu "mother (voc)" fromʔúnu "mother".
• the Appositive case is the citation form of nouns.

Lake Miwok usespronominal clitics to indicate the possessor of a noun. Except for the 3d person singular, they have the same shape as the nominative pronominal clitics, but show no allomorphy.

The reflexivehana forms have the same referent as the subject of the same clause, whereas the non-reflexive forms have a different referent, e.g.:

• hana háju ʔúṭe – "He sees his own dog"
• ʔiṭi háju ʔúṭe – "He sees (somebody else's) dog"

• Lake Miwok language overview at theSurvey of California and Other Indian Languages
• Lake Miwok audio recordings at theCalifornia Language Archive (login required)
• "Lake Miwok sound recordings".Collections Search Center, Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved2012-07-20.
• OLAC resources in and about the Lake Miwok language
• Lake Miwok basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database

• Miwok languages
• Lake Miwok
• History of Lake County, California

• Language articles citing Ethnologue 25
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Articles with ambiguous glossing abbreviations
• CS1 maint: location missing publisher