Gosiute dialect

Last updated
Gosiute
Native to United States
Region Great Basin
Ethnicity Goshute
Native speakers
30 (2017) [1]
Uto-Aztecan
Language codes
ISO 639-3 –
Glottolog gosi1242   Gosiute
Goshute map-01.svg
Distribution of Gosiute
Territory of the two Goshute communities: the Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation and the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians Goshute rez map.svg
Territory of the two Goshute communities: the Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation and the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians

Gosiute is a dialect of the endangered Shoshoni language historically spoken by the Goshute people of the American Great Basin in modern Nevada and Utah. Modern Gosiute speaking communities include the Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation and the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians. [2] [3] [4]

Contents

Gosiute place names in the Great Salt Lake area Goshute placenames.svg
Gosiute place names in the Great Salt Lake area

Status

Historical

20th century

Research by Wick R. Miller documenting the use of Gosiute in family settings on the Goshute Reservation in the 1960s reported the dialect to remain in use as primary means of communication and described comparatively low displacement by English, a fact attributed to the reservation's geographic isolation. [6] Miller additionally reported that younger speakers tended to use Gosiute most, though noted that such a tendency could be a function of the development of English proficiency with age. Monolingual speakers of Gosiute were reported as recently as 1970. [7]

By 1994, language transmission to youth on the under 18 on the Goshute Reservation had become uncommon although fluent speakers represented the majority of the tribal members over 26 years of age. [8]

21st century

An estimated 20 to 30 fluent speakers of the dialect remain including only four in the Skull Valley band, though a number more are passive speakers. [3] [4] Although a few children in Goshute communities continue to learn the dialect as their first language, the majority of fluent speakers are over 50. [9] [10]

Phonology

Distinct from other dialects of Shoshoni is the Gosiute use of the interdental affricate [t̪θ] in the place of the strident alveolar affricate [ts]. [11] Speakers of Gosiute may also drop the initial [h]. [12]

Documentation

A great deal of early documentation of Gosiute was carried out by ethnobotanist and ethnographer Ralph Chamberlin who compiled and published Gosiute plant, animal, and place names in the first decades of the 20th century. [13] [14]

Linguist Wick R. Miller published a number of works on Shoshoni including a 1972 dictionary and collection of texts that includes several Gosiute texts. [15]

The description of Shoshoni in Volume 17 of the Handbook of North American Indians is based on the Gosiute dialect. [16]

Revitalization efforts

A 1997 plan to store nuclear waste on the Skull Valley Reservation allotted funds to develop a cultural center with language programs however the plans were halted. [17]

The Ibapah primary school taught classes in Gosiute in the 2000s although such courses have since stopped. [18] [19]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shoshoni language</span> Uto-Aztecan language spoken in western US

Shoshoni, also written as Shoshoni-Gosiute and Shoshone, is a Numic language of the Uto-Aztecan family, spoken in the Western United States by the Shoshone people. Shoshoni is primarily spoken in the Great Basin, in areas of Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and Idaho.

The Shoshone or Shoshoni are a Native American tribe with four large cultural/linguistic divisions:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Goshute</span> Tribe of Western Shoshone Native Americans

The Goshutes are a tribe of Western Shoshone Native Americans. There are two federally recognized Goshute tribes today:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Indigenous peoples of the Great Basin</span> Cultural classification of Native Americans

The Indigenous peoples of the Great Basin are Native Americans of the northern Great Basin, Snake River Plain, and upper Colorado River basin. The "Great Basin" is a cultural classification of indigenous peoples of the Americas and a cultural region located between the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada, in what is now Nevada, and parts of Oregon, California, Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah. The Great Basin region at the time of European contact was ~400,000 sq mi (1,000,000 km2). There is very little precipitation in the Great Basin area which affects the lifestyles and cultures of the inhabitants.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Uto-Aztecan languages</span> North American language family

The Uto-Aztecan languages are a family of indigenous languages of the Americas, consisting of over thirty languages. Uto-Aztecan languages are found almost entirely in the Western United States and Mexico. The name of the language family reflects the common ancestry of the Ute language of Utah and the Nahuan languages of Mexico.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Keres language</span> Language isolate of New Mexico, United States

Keres, also Keresan, is a Native American language, spoken by the Keres Pueblo people in New Mexico. Depending on the analysis, Keres is considered a small language family or a language isolate with several dialects. If it is considered a language isolate, it would be the most widely spoken language isolate within the borders of the United States. The varieties of each of the seven Keres pueblos are mutually intelligible with its closest neighbors. There are significant differences between the Western and Eastern groups, which are sometimes counted as separate languages.

Timbisha (Tümpisa) or Panamint is the language of the Native American people who have inhabited the region in and around Death Valley, California, and the southern Owens Valley since late prehistoric times. There are a few elderly individuals who can speak the language in California and Nevada, but none are monolingual, and all use English regularly in their daily lives. Until the late 20th century, the people called themselves and their language "Shoshone." The tribe then achieved federal recognition under the name Death Valley Timbisha Shoshone Band of California. This is an Anglicized spelling of the native name of Death Valley, tümpisa, pronounced, which means "rock paint" and refers to the rich sources of red ochre in the valley. Timbisha is also the language of the so-called "Shoshone" groups at Bishop, Big Pine, Darwin, Independence, and Lone Pine communities in California and the Beatty community in Nevada. It was also the language spoken at the former Indian Ranch reservation in Panamint Valley.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Numic languages</span> 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Western Shoshone</span> Grouping of Shoshone tribes in the Great Basin

Western Shoshone comprise several Shoshone tribes that are indigenous to the Great Basin and have lands identified in the Treaty of Ruby Valley 1863. They resided in Idaho, Nevada, California, and Utah. The tribes are very closely related culturally to the Paiute, Goshute, Bannock, Ute, and Timbisha tribes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation</span> Indian reservation in Utah and Nevada, United States

The Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation is located in Juab County, Utah, Tooele County, Utah, and White Pine County, Nevada, United States. It is one of two federally recognized tribes of Goshute people, the other being the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians of Utah.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mono language (California)</span> Native American language of California

Mono is a Native American language of the Numic group of Uto-Aztecan languages, the ancestral language of the Mono people. Mono consists of two dialects, Eastern and Western. The name "Monachi" is commonly used in reference to Western Mono and "Owens Valley Paiute" in reference to Eastern Mono. In 1925, Alfred Kroeber estimated that Mono had 3,000 to 4,000 speakers. As of 1994, only 37 elderly people spoke Mono as their first language. It is classified as critically endangered by UNESCO. It is spoken in the southern Sierra Nevada, the Mono Basin, and the Owens Valley of central-eastern California. Mono is most closely related to Northern Paiute; these two are classified as the Western group of the Numic branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family.

The Skull Valley Indian Reservation is located in Tooele County, Utah, United States, approximately 45 miles (72 km) southwest of Salt Lake City. It is inhabited by the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians of Utah, a federally recognized tribe. As of 2017 the tribe had 134 registered members and 15-20 people living on the reservation.

The Timbisha are a Native American tribe federally recognized as the Death Valley Timbisha Shoshone Band of California. They are known as the Timbisha Shoshone Tribe and are located in south central California, near the Nevada border. As of the 2010 Census the population of the Village was 124. The older members still speak the ancestral language, also called Timbisha.

The Center for American Indian Languages (CAIL) was a research and outreach arm of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Utah. Its mission was to assist community members in the maintenance and revitalization of endangered languages, to document these languages, and to train students to do this sort of work.

The Paiute-Shoshone Indians of the Lone Pine Community of the Lone Pine Reservation is a federally recognized tribe of Mono and Timbisha Native American Indians near Lone Pine in Inyo County, California. They are related to the Owens Valley Paiute.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eastern Shoshone</span> Native American tribe in Wyoming

Eastern Shoshone are Shoshone who primarily live in Wyoming and in the northeast corner of the Great Basin where Utah, Idaho and Wyoming meet and are in the Great Basin classification of Indigenous People. They lived in the Rocky Mountains during the 1805 Lewis and Clark Expedition and adopted Plains horse culture in contrast to Western Shoshone that maintained a Great Basin culture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kucadikadi</span> Ethnic group

The Kucadɨkadɨ are a band of Eastern Mono Northern Paiute people who live near Mono Lake in Mono County, California. They are the southernmost band of Northern Paiute.

Proto-Uto-Aztecan is the hypothetical common ancestor of the Uto-Aztecan languages. Authorities on the history of the language group have usually placed the Proto-Uto-Aztecan homeland in the border region between the United States and Mexico, namely the upland regions of Arizona and New Mexico and the adjacent areas of the Mexican states of Sonora and Chihuahua, roughly corresponding to the Sonoran Desert and the western part of the Chihuahuan Desert. It would have been spoken by Mesolithic foragers in Aridoamerica, about 5,000 years ago.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Northern Shoshone</span> Indigenous people of North America

Northern Shoshone are Shoshone of the Snake River Plain of southern Idaho and the northeast of the Great Basin where Idaho, Wyoming and Utah meet. They are culturally affiliated with the Bannock people and are in the Great Basin classification of Indigenous People.

References

  1. ↑ Brown, Heeni. "Native Americans here to get language revitalisation tips", Te Ao - Māori News, Auckland, 10 October 2017. Retrieved on 21 September 2019.
  2. ↑ Cox, Paul Alan (2000-01-07). "Will Tribal Knowledge Survive the Millennium?". Science. 287 (5450): 44–45. doi:10.1126/science.287.5450.44. ISSN   0036-8075. PMID   10644221. S2CID   36334363.
  3. 1 2 Davies, Lincoln (2009-01-01). "Skull Valley Crossroads: Reconciling Native Sovereignty and the Federal Trust". Maryland Law Review. 68 (2): 290. ISSN   0025-4282.
  4. 1 2 Fedarko, Kevin (2000-05-01). "In the Valley of the Shadow". Outside Online. Retrieved 2019-09-22.
  5. ↑ Fowler, Don D. (1971). "Anthropology of the Numa: John Wesley Powell's Manuscripts on the Numic Peoples of Western North America, 1868-1880". Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology (14). Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press: 1–307. doi:10.5479/si.00810223.14.1. S2CID   162581418.
  6. ↑ Miller, Wick (1996). "Language Socialization and Differentiation in Small Societies: The Shoshoni and Guarijío". Social Interaction, Social Context, and Language: Essays in Honor of Susan Ervin-Tripp. Psychology Press. ISBN   9780805814989.
  7. ↑ Miller, Wick R. (1971). "The Death of Language or Serendipity among the Shoshoni". Anthropological Linguistics. 13 (3): 114–120. ISSN   0003-5483. JSTOR   30029285.
  8. ↑ Defa, Dennis R.; Begay, David; Defa, Dennis; Duncan, Clifford; Holt, Ronald; Maryboy, Nancy; McPherson, Robert S.; Parry, Mae; Tom, Gary (2000), Cuch, Forrest S. (ed.), "The Goshute Indians of Utah", History Of Utah's American Indians, University Press of Colorado, pp. 73–122, ISBN   9780913738481, JSTOR   j.ctt46nwms.6
  9. ↑ Asher, R. E.; Moseley, Christopher (2018-04-19). Atlas of the World's Languages. Routledge. ISBN   9781317851080.
  10. ↑ "Shoshoni". Ethnologue. Retrieved 2019-09-21.
  11. ↑ Elzinga, Dirk Allen (1999). "The consonants of Gosiute".{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  12. ↑ McLaughlin, John E. (1992). "A Counterintuitive Solution in Central Numic Phonology". International Journal of American Linguistics. 58 (2): 158–181. doi:10.1086/ijal.58.2.3519754. ISSN   0020-7071. JSTOR   3519754. S2CID   148250257.
  13. ↑ Construction and Operation of an Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation on the Reservation of the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians and the Related Transportation Facility in Tooele County, Utah: Environmental Impact Statement. 2001.
  14. ↑ Minnis, Paul E.; Elisens, Wayne J. (2001-08-01). Biodiversity and Native America. University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN   9780806133454.
  15. ↑ Wick R. Miller. 1972. Newe Natekwinappeh: Shoshoni Stories and Dictionary. University of Utah Anthropological Papers Number 94. Salt Lake City, Utah: University of Utah Press.
  16. ↑ Wick R. Miller. 1996. Sketch of Shoshone, a Uto-Aztecan Language. In Ives Goddard (ed.), Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 17, Languages, 693-720. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution.
  17. ↑ Rosier, Paul C. (2003). Native American Issues. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN   9780313320026.
  18. ↑ "Native languages must be saved, educators say". The Salt Lake Tribune. Retrieved 2019-09-23.
  19. ↑ Dalrymple, Carol (February 17, 2009). "WE SHALL REMAIN THE GOSHUTE" (PDF). KUED.
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