Numic languages
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Numic ( or ) is the northernmost branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family. It includes seven languages spoken by Native American peoples traditionally living in the Great Basin, Colorado River basin, Snake River basin, and southern Great Plains. The word "Numic" comes from the cognate word in all Numic languages for "person", which reconstructs to Proto-Numic as . For example, in the three Central Numic languages and the two Western Numic languages, the word for "person" is . In Kawaiisu, it is , and in Colorado River, it is , , and .
Numic ( or ) is the northernmost branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family. It includes seven languages spoken by Native American peoples traditionally living in the Great Basin, Colorado River basin, Snake River basin, and southern Great Plains. The word "Numic" comes from the cognate word in all Numic languages for "person", which reconstructs to Proto-Numic as . For example, in the three Central Numic languages and the two Western Numic languages, the word for "person" is . In Kawaiisu, it is , and in Colorado River, it is , , and .
Vowels
Proto-Numic had an inventory of five vowels.
Consonants
Proto-Numic had the following consonant inventory: In addition to the above simple consonants, Proto-Numic also had nasal-stop/affricate clusters and all consonants except , , , and could be geminated. Between vowels, short consonants were lenited.
Major Central Numic consonant changes
The major difference between Proto-Central Numic and Proto-Numic was the phonemic split of Proto-Numic geminate consonants into geminate consonants and preaspirated consonants. The conditioning factors involve stress shifts and are complex. The preaspirated consonants surfaced as voiceless fricatives, often preceded by a voiceless vowel. Shoshoni and Comanche have both lost the velar nasals, merging them with or turning them into velar nasal-stop clusters. In Comanche, nasal-stop clusters have become simple stops, but and from these clusters do not lenite intervocalically. This change postdates the earliest record of the Comanche from 1786, but precedes the 20th century. Geminated stops in Comanche have also become phonetically preaspirated.
Major Southern Numic consonant changes
Proto-Southern Numic preserved the Proto-Numic consonant system fairly intact, but the individual languages have undergone several changes. Modern Kawaiisu has reanalyzed nasal-stop clusters as voiced stops, although older recordings preserve some of these clusters. Geminated stops and affricates are voiceless, and non-geminated stops and affricates are voiced fricatives. The velar nasals have fallen together with the alveolar nasals. The dialects of the Colorado River east of Chemehuevi have lost . The dialects east of Kaibab have collapsed the nasal-stop clusters with the geminated stops and affricates.
Major Western Numic consonant changes
Proto-Western Numic changed the nasal-stop clusters of Proto-Numic into voiced geminate stops. In Mono and all Northern Paiute dialects except Southern Nevada, these voiced geminate stops have become voiceless.
Sample Numic cognate sets
The following table shows some sample Numic cognate sets illustrating the changes above. Forms in the daughter languages are written in broad phonetic transcription rather than phonemic transcription that sometimes masks differences between forms. Italicized vowels and sonorants are voiceless.
Text derived from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1351112706 under CC BY-SA 4.0; modifications have been made.