Юто-Ацтек тілдерінің Нумик тармағының фонетикалық ерекшеліктері

Uto Aztecan language branch of US

Numic 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 it is In Kawaiisu it is and in Colorado River , and .

The sound system of Numic is set forth in the following tables.

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 Comanche from 1786, but precedes the 20th century. Geminated stops in Comanche have also become phonetically preaspirated.

Proto Southern Numic preserved the Proto Numic consonant system fairly intact, but the individual languages have undergone several changes. Modern Kawaiisu has reanalyzed the nasal stop clusters as voiced stops, although older recordings preserve some of the 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 Colorado River east of Chemehuevi have lost The dialects east of Kaibab have collapsed the nasal stop clusters with the geminated stops and affricate.

Proto Western Numic changed the nasal stop clusters of Proto Numic into voiced geminate stops. In Mono and all dialects of Northern Paiute except Southern Nevada, these voiced geminate stops have become voiceless.