Ventureño language

Ventureño
Region	Southern Californian coastal areas
Extinct	mid 20th century
Language family	Chumashan Southern Central Ventureño
Language codes
ISO 639-3	veo

Ventureño is a member of the extinct Chumashan languages, a group of Native American languages previously spoken by the Chumash people along the coastal areas of Southern California from as far north as San Luis Obispo to as far south as Malibu. Ventureño was spoken from as far north as present-day Ventura to as far south as present-day Malibu and the Simi Hills, California. Dialects probably also included Castac and Alliklik (Campbell 1997:126).

Ventureño is, like its sister Chumashan languages, a polysynthetic language, having larger words composed of a number of morphemes. Ventureño has separate word classes of verb, noun, and oblique adjunct; with no separate word class for adjectives or adpositions. Nouns and verbs are often heavily affixed (mostly prefixed) in Ventureño, affixing being a way to denote those meanings often conveyed by separate words in more analytic languages. Verbs play a primary role in Ventureño with utterances often composed only of a verb with clitics. Chumash word order is VSO/VOS, or VS/VO (as per Dryer 1997).

Sounds

Ventureño has a similar phonemic inventory to other Chumash languages. Ventureño consists of 30 consonants and 6 vowels.

Vowels

Ventureño consists of a regular 5-vowel inventory with a sixth vowel transcribed as ⟨ə⟩. In Barbareño transcriptions, ⟨ɨ⟩ is used. It is not known whether these two phones are the same in both languages (and the difference in transcription merely one of convention), or whether the sounds were in fact different enough for Harrington to use different symbols.

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i	ə	u
Mid	e		o
Open		a

Consonants

		Bilabial	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Nasal	plain	m	n
	glottalized	m̰	n̰
Plosive	plain	p	t			k	q	ʔ
	ejective	pʼ	tʼ			kʼ	qʼ
	aspirated	pʰ	tʰ			kʰ	qʰ
Affricate	plain		t͡s	t͡ʃ
	ejective		t͡sʼ	t͡ʃʼ
	aspirated		t͡sʰ	t͡ʃʰ
Fricative	plain		s	ʃ		x		h
	aspirated		sʰ	ʃʰ
Approximant	plain	w	l (ɬ)1		j
	glottalized	w̰			j̰

Orthography

Ventureño has been written in several different ways by different linguists. John Peabody Harrington, who compiled most of the data on Ventureño, used a modified version of the International Phonetic Alphabet. Harrington differed from the International Phonetic Alphabet in the following symbols: a kappa ⟨к⟩ (small-cap 'k') for [q], a ⟨q⟩ for [x], a slanted bar ⟨ł⟩ for [ɬ], a reversed apostrophe ⟨‘⟩ for aspiration, and a right-turned (standard) apostrophe ⟨’⟩ for a glottal stop (this symbol was also used for ejectives and glottalized sonorants).

The Buenaventura Band of Mission Indians has adopted an Americanist form of transcription for Ventureño based on the work done by Harrington: ⟨š⟩ for [ʃ], ⟨ł⟩ for [ɬ], ⟨x⟩ for [x], ⟨ʰ⟩ for aspiration, ⟨y⟩ for [j], and ⟨q⟩ for [q]. A standard apostrophe ⟨’⟩ continues to be used for a glottal stop [ʔ] and for denoting ejectives. Glottalized sonorants [m̰, n̰, w̰, j̰] are written with a combining apostrophe over the symbol. This transcription is in keeping with most current Chumashists (such as Wash below) except that alveolar affricates ([t͡s]) are written as <ts> in Ventureño, where other Chumashists write them as <c>. Likewise, Ventureño writes postalveolar affricates ([t͡ʃ]) as ⟨tš⟩, where other Chumashists write this sound as ⟨č⟩.

Morphology

Chumash morphology is fairly polysynthetic. This applies especially to the verbs of the language, which has over 15 distinct morphological slots (when counting nominalized verbs). This is illustrated in the table below by the nominalized verb meaning "your wanting to make fun of us".

Word	lošipałtšuyašuqonišpiyiyuw
Parse	lo-	si-	p-	ʔal-	suya-	su-	qoniš	-pi	-iyuw.REDUP
Gloss	DEM-	ART-	2-	NZ-	DES-	CAUS-	make.fun.of	-APL.LOC	-1PL.REDUP
Translation	"your wanting to make fun of us"

Numbers

The Chumash languages exhibit a quaternary numeral system. The numbers 1-16 exhibit certain characteristics which are different from the method of counting from 17-32. In all places, however, the factor of 4 usually has a unique term. Ventureño Chumash has the most complete, native Chumash system of numbers on record.

Numbers 1-16

pakeʼet	ʼiškom̓	masǝx	tskumu
one	two	three	four
yǝtipake’es	yǝti’iškom̓	yǝtimasǝx	malawa
five	six	seven	eight
tspa	ka’aškom	tǝlu	masǝx tskumu
nine	ten	eleven	twelve
masǝx tskumu kampake’et	’iškom̓ laliet	pake’et siwe (tšikipš)	tšikipš
thirteen	fourteen	fifteen	sixteen

Numbers 17-32

tšikipš kampake’et	’iškom̓ siwe tskumu’uy	pake’et siwe tskumu’uy	tskumu’uy
seventeen	eighteen	nineteen	twenty
tskumu’uy kampake’et	’iškom̓ siwe itsmaxmasǝx	pake’et siwe itsmaxmasǝx	itsmaxmasǝx
twenty-one	twenty-two	twenty-three	twenty-four
itsmaxmasǝx kampake’et	’iškom̓ siwe yitimasǝx	pake’et siwe yitimasǝx	yitimasǝx
twenty-five	twenty-six	twenty-seven	twenty-eight
yitimasǝx kampake’et	’iškom̓ siwe ’iškom̓ tšikipš	pake’et siwe ’iškom̓ tšikipš	’iškom̓ tšikipš
twenty-nine	thirty	thirty-one	thirty-two

References

• Dryer, M. S. (1997). On the Six-Way Word Order Typology, Studies in Language 21(1): 69-103.
• Harrington, J. P. (1981). The Papers of John Peabody Harrington in the Smithsonian 1907-1957: A Guide to the Field Notes: Native American History, Language, and Culture of Southern California/Basin, vol. 3. Elaine L. Mills and Ann J. Brockfield, eds. Microfilm reels 69, 89, and 94 on Ventureño.
• Henry, Timothy P. (2012). A Pedagogical Grammar of Ventureño Chumash: Implementing Grammatical Theory in Grammar Writing. Santa Barbara: University of California, Santa Barbara.
• Wash, Suzanne M. (2001). Adverbial Clauses in Barbareño Chumash Narrative Discourse. Santa Barbara: University of California, Santa Barbara.

External links

• Ventureño language overview at the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages
• "Chumash Ventureño Sound Recording". Collections Search Center, Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved 2012-07-20.
• OLAC resources in and about the Ventureño language
• Ventureño at the California Language Archive

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