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The Kawaiisu language^[3] is an Uto-Aztecan language spoken by the Kawaiisu people of California. Kawaiisu is a member of the Southern Numic division of the Uto-Aztecan language family, and the remaining Kawaiisu speakers live in the Tehachapi area of California. The language is now classified as an 8b on the language endangerment scale, meaning that it is now spoken only by a few isolated speakers.

Kawaiisu is the most linguistically divergent member of the Southern Numic branch of languages, which also includes Chemehuevi, Southern Paiute and Ute.^:xi-xii Kawaiisu is typologically notable for its highly complex word structure.^:3

Linguistic environment

The Kawaiisu homeland was bordered by speakers of non-Numic Uto-Aztecan languages: the Kitanemuk to the south spoke Takic, the Tubatulabal to the north spoke Tubatulabal, the Yokuts to the west were non-Uto-Aztecan. Because they shared the Southern Numic language, the Chemehuevi to the east are considered the closest relatives to Kawaiisu.

In comparison to their northern neighbors the Tübatulabal, the Kawaiisu people and language have been historically understudied^:vii

Revitalization

When the Kawaiisu language was first studied by the linguist Maurice Zigmond in the 1930s, he estimated the total number of speakers to be about one hundred.^:ix In 1994, the language was severely endangered, with perhaps fewer than 20 remaining speakers.^[4]

In 2011, The Kawaiisu Project received the Governor’s Historic Preservation Award for its efforts to document the Kaiwaiisu language and culture, including "the Handbook of the Kawaiisu, language teaching and the Kawaiisu Language and Cultural Center [and] the Kawaiisu exhibit at the Tehachapi Museum."^{[5] [6]} As of 2012, the Kawaiisu Language and Cultural Center offers language classes and DVDs for home learning, as well as training for other groups seeking to create language learning programs and materials.^[7]

Phonology

Vowels

Kawaiisu has a typical Numic vowel inventory of six vowels.

	front	back unrounded	back rounded
High	i	ɨ [ɯ]	u
Non-High	e	a	o

The vowel phoneme /a/ is sometimes heard as [ə] in Kawaiisu, even when in a stressed position.^:5

Some vocalic changes occur across clitic boundaries. A table of these changes is shown below.^:11

Vocalic Changes in Clitics^:11-12

Clitic Boundary	Altered Vowel	Example Before Change	Example After Change
a=i	ee	kaʔa-na=ina	kaʔanaéena
ɨ=a	aa	pɨkee-dɨ=aka	pɨkeedáaka
ɨ=i	ii	pɨkee-dɨ=ika	pɨkeedíika
u=a	oo	karɨ-gu=su=ana	karɨgušóona
u=i	ii	karɨ-gu=su=ina	karɨgušíina
a=u	uu	hivi-taʔa=aka=umi	hivi-taʔaakúumi

Consonants

Kawaiisu has 25 total consonant phonemes.^:5 Kawaiisu has an atypical Numic consonant inventory in that many of the predictable consonant alternations in other Numic languages are no longer predictable in Kawaiisu. The Kawaiisu consonant inventory, therefore, is much larger than the typical Numic language.

		Bilabial	Coronal	Palatal	Velar		Glottal
					plain	lab.
Nasal		m	n		ŋ
Stop	voiceless	p	t		k	kw [kʷ]	ʔ
	voiced	b	d
Affricate			c [ts]	č [tʃ]
Fricative	voiceless		s	š [ʃ]			h / hw [hʷ]
	voiced	v [β]	z	ž [ʒ]	g [ɣ]	gw [ɣʷ]
Approximant			l	y [j]		w
Flap			r [ɾ]

The phonemes /l/, /ŋ/ and /h^w/ are rare, with /l/ and /ŋ/ only appearing in loanwords from languages like Spanish, Tübatulabal and Kitanemuk.^:6

Alternations

Alternations between the sounds /s/ and /š/, /z/ and /ž/, as well as /c/ and /č/ are common in the environment of front vowels.^:7

hana-sɨbi

who-IRR

hini-šɨbi

what-IRR^:7

Alternations between /p/, /v/ or /b/, between /t/, /r/ or /d/, and finally between /k/ or /k^w/ and /g/ or /g^w/ are common, especially in compounding and reduplication, but do not seem to be rule-governed. They appear to be largely lexicalized.^:8

toci

head

"head"

cɨga-roci

rough-head

"tangle-haired"^:8

Syllable Structure

The typical syllable structure of a word in Kawaiisu is CV, with stems canonically appearing as CVCV and affixes as CV. Consonant clusters never occur at the beginning of native words, although they do occur internally with some frequency, as well as occasionally at the beginning of Spanish loanwords. No words begin with vowels in Kawaiisu, although the V syllable structure is possible for affixes and clitics.^:6

Syllable Structure

Template	Instantiation	Translation
V	=a.na	"his" (clitic):6
CV	pu.gu.zi	"dog":7
CCV	hwee.si	"judge" (Spanish loanword):6
CVCV (stem)	ʔɨ.kɨ-ci	"little hat":7

Stress

Stress usually falls on the second-to-last mora for words in Kawaiisu. The exception to this rule is words with final long vowels, in which the stress falls on the final syllable. Also, when a word has a vowel-initial disyllabic clitic, this clitic is treated as one mora.^:6 Thus, in the following example, stress is placed on the penultimate syllable "pɨ".

ka.ʔa.pɨ=a.na

food=his

his food ^:6

Morphology

Kawaiisu is an agglutinative language, in which words use suffix complexes for a variety of purposes with several morphemes strung together.

Inflectional Affixes

Absolutive (Non-Case) Suffixes

Kawaiisu has several different absolutive suffixes, occurring on the majority of nouns in the language. The presence or absence of these suffixes, however, has no relation to syntactic case.^:39 They are often dropped before a plural suffix, a possessor clitic, a postposition, or in compounds.^:40

While the particular absolutive suffix used for a given noun is lexically specified, each of them has different distributional properties. These are laid out in the table below.^:40

Absolutive Suffix	Distributional Properites
/-ci/ /-či/ /-zi/ /ža/	Weak diminutive force (because it's homophonous with the diminutive suffix)
/-bi/ /-pi/ /-vi/	Selects the /-ta/ accusative suffix, and can derive a plant name from the functional part of the plant
/-bɨzi/ /-pɨzi/ /-vɨzi/	Used on names and place names

Plural Marking

Plural marking is Kawaiisu is shown through the addition of the suffix "-mɨ" or "-wɨ," sometimes in combination with reduplication of the first syllable of the noun. If a noun has an absolutive suffix, it drops this suffix in the plural. Some nouns without absolutives, however, add an absolutive in their plural form.^:40-41

Varieties of Plural Construction

Representation of	Singular	Plural	Translation
Reduplication in first syllable	momoʔo	mo-momoʔo-mɨ	"woman/women"
Dropping an absolutive	taʔni-pɨzi	taʔni-mɨ	"man/men"
Adding an absolutive	conoʔo	conoʔo-vi-mɨ	"twin/twins"

Case

Kawaiisu makes use of a nominative/accusative case system. In the nominative case, nouns simply appear in their citation form. In the accusative case, one of the following suffixes is used.^:41

Varieties of Accusative Suffixation

Phonetic Environment	Accusative Case Suffix
Standard	-a
After /a/	-ya
After /-bi/, /-pi/ or /-vi/	-ta
After consonant-final name	-ia

Derivational Affixes

Nominalizers and Complementizers

Main-clause verbs in Kawaiisu have one of two types of final suffixes: a nominalizers or a complementizers.^:81 The former does not show subject agreement with a suffixed possessor clitic, while the former does.^:81-82

The most common nominalizers are /-dɨ/ and /-rɨ/.^:82

yozi-di

fly-NOM

"flyer, airplane"^:82

The most common complementizer is /-na/.^:82

ʔuwa-na=aka

rain-CMP=its

"it's raining"^:86

Postpositions

In Kawaiisu, postpositions are suffixed to nouns or pronominal/demonstrative bases.^:54

kahni-rukwa

house-under

"under the house"^:55

čurči-vaʔa-na

church-at-CMP

"at the church"^:26

Clitics

Clitics are frequently used in Kawaiisu. The example below shows two uses of clitics: as an indicator of possession, and as an emphatic construction.^:29

nɨʔɨ=su maha-ka-dɨ nɨwɨa-ya=ni

I=EMPH wash-R-NMR body-ACC=my

"I (myself) alone washed myself"^:29

Other Morphological Processes

Reduplication

When the first CV syllable of a stem is reduplicated in Kawaiisu, it can signal either an inceptive or a repetitive meaning.

Inceptive:

ka-gaʔa-na=ina

RDP-eat-CMP=his

"he's starting to eat"^:76

Repetitive Motion:

ko-koʔo-rɨ

RDP-cut-NMR

"slicing" (repeatedly)^:77

Compounds

Compounds can be formed in Kawaiisu by combining two nouns or a noun and an adjective.^:71-72

Noun-noun compounds typically involve the first noun semantically modifying the second.^:71

ʔavi-gahni

chalk-house

"white-washed house"^:71

Adjective-noun compounds typically form nouns with more specialized meanings.^:72

sagwa-muupiži

blue-fly

"blue-fly"^:72

Syntax

The basic word order of Kawaiisu is relatively free, although SOV is the dominant type.^:14-15 The following sentence is an example of this SOV word order:

taʔnipizi   momoʔo-a       pikee-ri=ina

man           woman-ACC     see-NMR=her

"The man saw the woman"^:14

The following three sentences are examples of different word orders that are also acceptable in Kawaiisu. They demonstrate the free word order that characterizes the language.

VOS:

pikee-ka-di=ina      taʔnipizi-a   niʔi

see-R-NMR=him   man-ACC     I

"I saw the man"^:15

SVO:

wiigara     ʔuna    wizi-n-pigadi=ika               ʔuwa-ya      ʔedi-a=vimi

red:racer    that     put:down-MOM-PERF=it      that-ACC     bow-ACC=own

"Red Racer put down his bow"^:163

OVS:

paʔavi-ta     kaʔa-kwee-kee-na=ina=ina    puguzi

meat-ACC    eat-RSLTV-R-CMP=his=him    dog

"The dog ate the meat"^:47

WH Questions

In a WH question in Kawaiisu, the question word typically appears first.^:32

hana-ya pɨkee-na=mi  ?

who-ACC see-CMP=your

"Whom do you see?"^:33

The exception to this case is when a focused element (often translated with contrastive stress in English) appears before a WH word.^:33

ʔimi haniya-na=mi

you say:what-CMP=your

"What did you say?"^:33

Negative Sentences

Negative sentences in Kawaiisu normally begin with "yuwaatɨ," translated as "no" or "it is not so." The SOV word order is sometimes relaxed, but the subject usually precedes the object.^:111-112

yuwaatɨ taʔnipɨzi-a pɨkee-kee-na=ina=ana momoʔo-na

NEG man-ACC see-R-CMP=her=his woman-ACC

"The man didn't see the woman."^:111