Colorado River Numic language

Colorado River Numic (also called Ute /ˈjuːt/ YOOT, Southern Paiute /ˈpaɪjuːt/ PIE-yoot, Ute–Southern Paiute, or Ute-Chemehuevi /ˌtʃɛmɪˈweɪvi/ CHEH-mih-WAY-vee), of the Numic branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family, is a dialect chain that stretches from southeastern California to Colorado.^[2] Individual dialects are Chemehuevi, which is in danger of extinction, Southern Paiute (Moapa, Cedar City, Kaibab, and San Juan subdialects), and Ute (Central Utah, Northern, White Mesa, Southern subdialects). According to the Ethnologue, there were a little less than two thousand speakers of Colorado River Numic Language in 1990, or around 40% out of an ethnic population of 5,000.^[3]

Colorado River Numic
Southern Paiute
Native to	United States
Region	Nevada, California, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico
Ethnicity	6,200 Chemehuevi, Southern Paiute and Ute (2007)[1]
Native speakers	920 (2007)[1] 20 monolinguals (1990 census)[1]
Language family	Uto-Aztecan Numic Southern Numic Colorado River Numic
Dialects	Chemehuevi Southern Paiute Ute
Language codes
ISO 639-3	ute
Glottolog	utes1238
ELP	Ute
Chemehuevi is classified as Critically Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger
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The Southern Paiute dialect has played a significant role in linguistics, as the background for a famous article by linguist Edward Sapir and his collaborator Tony Tillohash on the nature of the phoneme.^[4]

Dialects

The three major dialect groups of Colorado River are Chemehuevi, Southern Paiute, and Ute, although there are no strong isoglosses. The threefold division is primarily one of culture rather than strictly linguistic. There are, however, three major phonological distinctions among the dialects:

• In Southern Paiute and Ute, initial /h/ has been lost: Chemehuevi /hivi/ 'drink' is a verb, other dialects /ivi/ 'drink'.
• In Ute, nasal-stop clusters have become voiceless geminate stops: Ute /pukku/ 'horse, pet', other dialects /puŋku/.
• In Ute, the mid back round vowel /o/ has been fronted to /ö/: Ute /söö-/ 'lungs', other dialects /soo-/.

There are no strong isoglosses between Southern Paiute and Ute for the changes but an increasing level of change, as one moves from Kaibab Southern Paiute (0% of nasal-stop clusters have changed) to Southern Ute (100% of nasal-stop clusters have changed).

Phonology

Consonant and vowel charts for the westernmost and easternmost dialects are given.^[5][6]

Consonants

Consonant phonemes in Chemehuevi dialect

		labial	dental	palatal	velar		glottal
					plain	labial
plosive		p	t	ts	k	kʷ	ʔ
fricative		β	s		ɣ	ɣʷ	h
rhotic			ɾ
nasal	plain	m	n		ŋ	ŋʷ
	glottalized	mˀ	nˀ		ŋˀ
glide	plain	w		j
	glottalized	wˀ		jˀ

Consonant phonemes in Southern Ute dialect

	labial	dental	palatal	velar		glottal
				plain	labial
plosive	p	t	tʃ	k	kʷ	ʔ
fricative	β	s		ɣ	ɣʷ
rhotic		ɾ
nasal	m	n
glide	w		j

Vowels

Vowel phonemes in Chemehuevi dialect

	front	central	back
			unrounded	rounded
high	i		ɯ	u
mid				o
low		ɑ

Vowel phonemes in Southern Ute dialect

	front		central	back
	unrounded	rounded		unrounded	rounded
high	i			ɯ	u
mid		ø
low			ɑ

Vowels can be long or short. Short unstressed vowels can be devoiced.

Morphology

The Colorado River Numic language is an agglutinative language, in which words use suffix complexes for a variety of purposes with several morphemes strung together.