Ute dialect

Ute
núu-'apaghapi núuchi
Native to	United States
Region	Utah,Colorado
Ethnicity	Ute
Native speakers	1,640(2010)
Language family	Uto-Aztecan Numic Southern Numic Colorado River Ute
Language codes
ISO 639-3	None(mis)
Glottolog	utee1244
Area where the Ute dialect is spoken.

Ute(/ˈjuːt/YOOT)is a dialect of theColorado River Numic language,spoken by theUte people.Speakers primarily live on three reservations:Uintah-Ouray (or Northern Ute)in northeastern Utah,Southern Utein southwesternColorado,andUte Mountainin southwestern Colorado and southeasternUtah.Ute is part of theNumic branchof theUto-Aztecanlanguage family. Other dialects in thisdialect chainare Chemehuevi and Southern Paiute. As of 2010, there were 1,640 speakers combined of all three dialects Colorado River Numic.Ute's parent language, Colorado River Numic, is classified as a threatened language, although there are tribally-sponsored language revitalization programs for the dialect.

Uteas a term was applied to the group by Spanish explorers, being derived from the termquasuatas,used by the Spanish at the time to refer to all tribes north of the Pueblo peoples and up to the Shoshone peoples.The Ute people refer to their own language asnúu-'apaghapiornúuchi,meaning "the people's speech" and "of the people" respectively.

Phonology

Vowels

T.Givon (2011) gives the following orthography and phonetic information for Southern Ute. Northern Ute differs from Southern and Central in some lexical and phonological areas.

Southern Ute has five vowels, as well as several allophones, which are not shown in the orthography. Each vowel can be short or long, and vowel length is marked orthographically by doubling the vowel. In Ute, the length of a vowel is often phonemic, and relevant for determining meaning. For example,whca-y,meaning 'wrapping,' versuswhcáa-y,meaning 'swirling'. In some cases, however, the difference between a long and a short vowel is purely phonetic, and does not change word meaning. Ute devoices vowels in certain phonological or grammatical environments, as described in later sections. Devoiced vowels are marked in the orthography by underlining them, or, when the identity of the underlying vowel has been lost, with the letter [h].

Here bold text indicates a practical orthographic representation, while theIPArepresentation is included in brackets.

	Front		Central	Back
	unrounded	rounded		unrounded	rounded
High	i[i]			ʉ[ɯ]	u[u]
Mid		ɵ[œ]
Low			a[ä]

Allophones

• [ɨ]is an allophone ofʉ
• [e]and[æ]are both allophones ofa;the former is used more often by younger speakers, while older speakers use the latter
• [o]is an allophone ofɵ.

Consonants

Southern Ute consonants are given in the table below. As above, orthographic representations are bold and the IPA representations are in brackets. All stops in Ute are voiceless. Thus,ghere does not indicate avoiced velar stopbut rather avoiced velar fricative,similar toluegoin Spanish. Also similar to Spanish is thevoiced bilabial fricativev,as in the Spanish phrasela verdad,in contrast with the voiced labiodental fricative[v]which does not appear in Ute. The velar soundskandghaveuvularallophones:kbecomes either avoiceless uvular stop[q]or avoiceless uvular fricative[χ]when either between two vowels or adjacent to the vowel[o];likewisegbecomes a voiced uvular fricative[ʁ]under the same conditions. Eitherkorgcan become avoiceless velar fricative[x]when before a de-voiced word ending.

Note here thatcoronalsare produced as dental sounds rather than thealveolarsounds used in English.

	Labial	Dental	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stop	p[p]	t[t]	ch[tʃ]	k[k]	'[ʔ]
Fricative	v[β]	s[s]		g[ɣ]
Nasal	m[m]	n[n]
Semivowel	w[w]		y[j]
Flap		r[ɾ]

Allophones

• [q],andqh (or[χ]), are allophones ofk
• kh (or[x]), is an allophone ofkorg
• gh,or[ʁ],is an allophone ofg

Syllable structure

Syllablesusually follow the CVCV pattern. All words must begin with a consonant, but other syllables may or may not include an onset. When an onset is present, it is usually composed of only one consonant. Words with suffixes like-'ni, -'na,and'wa,can have a two-consonant onset, though they were historically -ni-'i, -na-'a,and-wa-'arespectively. These earlier suffix forms did have single-consonant onsets. Most syllables do not have codas, but some codas do appear at word-end, such as inpʉi-n,'I'm sleeping'.

Stress

Each Southern Ute word must have onestressedvowel. Either the first or second vowel of a word in Ute may be stressed, with the latter situation being the most common. Stress is orthographically marked when it occurs on the first vowel. In compound words, the primary stress is applied to the first stem, and a secondary stress may also occur on a later stem.

Vowel stress is contrastive in pairs such as,suwá,meaning 'almost', andsúwa,meaning 'straight out'.Note that thehigh back unrounded vowelʉoften is pronounced as a high central[ɨ]when unstressed. Though this change produces someminimal pairs,it is the destressing, rather than the vowel change, that produces the change in meaning and thus[ɨ]is excluded from the orthography.

Phonological processes

Ute has several phonological processes that affect the realization of underlying phonemes. Below is a representative sample.

• achanges to [e] or [æ] (usually for younger and older speakers respectively) when neary, i,or ɵ,such as inɵæ-qaru,'yellow', or'ura-'æy,'is'. Althoughaoften makes the alternation when directly preceding or followingy,i,orɵ,it does not have to be directly next to one of those phonemes, such as insinaævi,'wolf'
• ɵbecomes [o] when directly preceding or following [ʁ], [q], or [χ]—however,kbecomes [q] and [qh] between two as or directly preceding or following [o], so the precise mechanism is unknown.qhoqh,'bull-snake', is one word where this process occurs
• gbecomes [ʁ] when between twoas or directly preceding or following [o], such as inpagha-'ni,'walking about'
• wis inserted aftergandkif thegorkdirectly followu,[o], orɵ,such as intagu-kwa,'s/he was thirsty'
  • yis also inserted if directly followi,such as inini-kya's/he did'
• vowels are sometimes devoiced in unstressed word-initial or word-final syllables, or unstressed syllables that begin with a voiceless consonant, nasal consonant, or glide, such as inwhcaay,'swirl'. In marginal pairs, they may be considered distinct, such as intʉkápi'food (nominative)' andtʉkápi̱'food (accusative)'.

Morphology

Ute ispolysynthetic.Affixes are mostlysuffixes,but there are three major types ofprefixesfor verbs and one for nouns.

Nouns

Most nouns in Ute obligatorily have suffixes. Inanimate nouns usually take the suffix -pu/-vu.However, this suffix can also sometimes denote animate nouns or body parts. Animate nouns usually take the-chisuffix, but can also take-vi/-pior-tu/-ru.The consonant pairs p/v and t/r were once allophones, but are no longer predictable; this produces the suffixes separated by a slash. Some older animate nouns have a silent final vowel rather than an explicit suffix.

-puis also used to derive inanimate nouns from verbs, such aspiki-pu"rotten thing" frompiki-"be rotten".-tu/-ruare used for animate nouns that derive from verbs or possession: thus,kaá-mi-tu"singer" derives fromkaá-miya"sings" andpiwa-gha-tu"married person, spouse" derives frompiwa-n"my spouse".

There are three ways plurality can be marked, and only animate nouns are marked for plurality.-uis the most common plural suffix, and-muis usually used for plural nouns that derive from verbs or possession. These suffixes are placed after the obligatory noun suffix. Finally, some nouns show plurality byreduplicationof the first syllable in combination with the-usuffix, such as intáa-ta'wa-chi-u"men" fromta'wa-chi.In this case,-uwithout reduplication would create the dual form: "two men".

Verbs

Ute verbs can take many suffixes and several prefixes. Negation is marked with both the suffix-waand prefixka-.Alternatively, instead of the prefix, the full formkách-can appear as a separate word somewhere before the verb being negated.

First syllable reduplication in verbs denotes thedistributive case.Thus,táa-pugay-'u"[s/he] kicked him (once)" becomesta-táa-pugay-'u"[s/he] kicked him repeatedly".

Incorporationcan take place at the leftmost prefix position to add the meanings of the incorporated word to the verb. For example,'apagha-y"[s/he] is talking" andpia-'apagha-y"[s/he] is sweet-talking".

Verbs usually take the suffix-kaafter the stem when the subject is plural.-kacan also be realized as-qa, -kwa, -kya,etc. according to the phonological processes above. Many suffixes are used to denotetense, aspect, and modality.Some of the more common of these suffixes include-yfor the present tense,-vaa-nifor the future, and-miya.for the habitual. Other suffixes include-ti, -ku,and-ta,which mark the causative,benefactive,andpassivecase respectively.

Syntax

Word order in Ute is flexible and determined primarily by discourse pragmatics, although speakers will mostly use SOV order when producing isolated clauses.

Case marking

Ute marks nouns for nominative and oblique case. The former category contains subjects and predicates, and the latter contains objects and genitives. In most cases, the final vowel of the entire noun is devoiced in the nominative case and voiced in the oblique case. For example, "woman" in the nominative ismama-chiand in the oblique ismama-chi.In some pronouns, the (voiced) suffix-yis added to mark the oblique case, as in singular "you", which is'úmuin the nominative and'úmu-yin the oblique.

Noun incorporation

As described above in morphology, nouns and other words can be incorporated as prefixes of verbs to specify the method of action: for example,wii-chi-m tuka-y-aqh,"s/he eats it with a knife" can incorporatewii-chi-m,"knife", into the verbtuka-y-aqh,"eats" to producewii-tuka-y-aqh,"s/he is knife-eating it".

Switch reference

Switch referenceuses the independent pronoun'uwas,"s/he", or'umus,"they", to refer to a previously-introduced subject when there are multiple previously-introduced parties, to indicate that the subject of the current clause is different from the previously-mentioned subject. For example, in'áa-gha máy-kya-pugay-ku,'ú-vwaa pagha'ni-puga'uwas,"as they were whispering (amongst themselves),hepaced around there ", when the sentence begins, the subject is" they ", and the independent pronoun is used when the subject changes to" he ", a previously introduced character.