Cocopah language

Cocopah
Kwikapa
Native to	Mexico, USA
Region	Baja California, Arizona, Sonora
Ethnicity	Cocopah
Native speakers	350  (1998)
Language family	Yuman Delta–Californian Cocopah
Language codes
ISO 639-3	coc

Cocopah is a Delta language of the Yuman language family spoken by the Cocopah. In an effort to keep the language alive, which was spoken by fewer than 400 people at the turn of the 21st-century, the Cocopah Museum began offering Cocopah language classes to children in 1998.

The language had no alphabet until the 1970s when a scholar developed one for a university dissertation. It proved to be less than ideal, and a new alphabet was developed by the tribe in the early 2000s. As the revival of the language has progressed, it has been necessary to find words for modern objects that didn't exist in the ancient language. These issues are referred to the elders of the tribe for a decision.

Sounds

Consonants

Cocopah has 21 consonants:

		Bilabial	Alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar		Glottal
						plain	labial
Nasal		m	n		ɲ
Stop		p	t	ʈ	tʃ	k	kʷ	ʔ
Fricative	central		s	ʂ	ʃ	x	xʷ
	lateral				ɬʲ
Approximant	central				j		w
	lateral		l		lʲ
Rhotic			r

• /r/ is usually a trill [r] but sometimes is a flap [ɾ].
• /tʃ, ɲ, ʃ/ are postalveolar (palato-alveolar). /lʲ, ɬʲ/ are palatalized alveolar consonants.
• /ɬʲ/ is usually palatalized, but unlike /lʲ/ it does not contrast with a non-palatalized [ɬ].

Vowels

Cocopah has 4 vowels.

	Front	Back
High	i / iː	u / uː
Non-High	e / eː	a / aː

Cocopah has both short and long vowels.

Syllable & phonotactics

The Cocopah syllable:

(C)(C)(C)V(ː)(C)(C)

• Word-initial two-consonant clusters usually consist of a fricative plus another consonant, e.g. /sp, ʂm, ʃp, xt͡ʃ/. Rarer two-consonant clusters start with a lateral or a stop consonant, e.g. /lt͡ʃ, ɬʲt͡ʃ, ps, t͡ʃp/.
• Three-consonant clusters are rare, recorded examples include /pxk, pxkʷ, spx/.

Bibliography

• Crawford, James M. (1970). Cocopa Baby Talk. International Journal of American Linguistics, 36, 9-13.
• Crawford, James M. (1978). More on Cocopa Baby Talk. International Journal of American Linguistics, 44, 17-23.
• Crawford, James M. (1989). Cocopa Dictionary. University of California Publications in Linguistics (Vol. 114). Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-09749-1.
• Crawford, James M. (1983). Cocopa Texts. University of California Publications in Linguistics (Vol. 100). Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-09652-5.
• Crawford, James M. (1998). Classificatory Verbs in Cocopa. In Hinton, L. & Munro, P. (Eds.), American Indian Languages: Description and Theory (pp. 5–9). Berkeley: University of California.
• Mithun, Marianne. (1999). The Languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-23228-7 (hbk); ISBN 0-521-29875-X.
• Wares, Alan C. (1968). A Comparative Study of Yuman Consonantism. Janua Linguarum, Series Practica (No. 57). The Hauge: Mouton.

External links

• "Native American Audio Collections: Cocopa". American Philosophical Society. 
• Cocopa Swadesh vocabulary list (from Wiktionary)
• Cocopa dictionary on Google Books
• Cocopah language audio Bible stories and lessons - free mp3 downloads
• Cocopah basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database