Atsugewi language

Atsugewi is a moribund Palaihnihan language of northeastern California spoken by the Hat Creek and Dixie Valley people. As of 1962, there were four speakers out of an ethnic group of 200, all elderly. It is now extinct.

Astugewi is related to Achumawi. They have long been considered as part of the hypothetical Hokan stock, and it has been supposed that within that stock they comprise the Palaihnihan family.

The name properly is Atsugé, to which the -wi of the Achumawi or Pit River language was erroneously suffixed.

Sounds

Consonants

Atsugewi has 32 consonants. Most of these form pairs of plain and glottalized. Stops and affricates also have a third, aspirated member of the series (except for the single glottal stop). In the table belo, these are represented as C, C’ and Cʰ respectively.

		Bilabial	Alveolar	Postalveolar or palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Stops and affricates		p p’ pʰ	t t’ tʰ	ʧ ʧ’ ʧʰ	k k’ kʰ	q q’ qʰ	ʔ
Nasals		m m’	n n’
Rhotics			r r’
Fricatives			s s’				h ĥ
Approximants	Central	w w’		j j’
	Lateral		l l’

Vowels

Atsugewi language has basically only three vowels: /a/, /o/, and /i/. /e/ is the same as /a/ and /o/ is the same as /u/.

External links

• Atsugewi Phonology

Bibliography

• Bright, William. (1965). [Review of A history of Palaihnihan phonology by D. L. Olmstead]. Language, 41 (1), 175-178.
• Good, Jeff. (2004). A sketch of Atsugewi phonology. Boston, MA. (Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas, January 8–11).
• Good, Jeff; McFarland, Teresa; & Paster, Mary. (2003). Reconstructing Achumawi and Atsugewi: Proto-Palaihnihan revisited. Atlanta, GA. (Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas, January 2–5).
• Mithun, Marianne. (1999). The languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-23228-7 (hbk); ISBN 0-521-29875-X.
• Olmstead, David L. (1954). Achumawi-Atsugewi non-reciprocal intelligibility. International Journal of American Linguistics, 20, 181-184.
• Olmstead, David L. (1956). Palaihnihan and Shasta I: Labial stops. Language, 32 (1), 73-77.
• Olmstead, David L. (1957). Palaihnihan and Shasta II: Apical stops. Language, 33 (2), 136-138.
• Olmstead, David L. (1958). Atsugewi phonology. International Journal of American Linguistics, 24, 215-220.
• Olmstead, David L. (1959). Palaihnihan and Shasta III: Dorsal stops. Language, 35 (4), 637-644.
• Olmstead, David L. (1961). Atsugewi morphology I: Verb Inflection. International Journal of American Linguistics, 27, 91-113.
• Olmstead, David L. (1964). A history of Palaihnihan phonology. University of California publications in linguistics (Vol. 35). Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Talmy, Leonard. (n.d.). Midway phonological analysis of Atsugewi. (Unpublished notes).
• Talmy, Leonard. (1972). Semantic structures in English and Atsugewi. (Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Berkeley).