Yana language

The article is about a Californian language. For the Chinese city, see Yan'an.

Yana
Native to	USA
Region	California
Ethnicity	Yana
Extinct	1916, with death of Ishi
Language family	Hokan? Yana
Dialects	Yahi
Language codes
ISO 639-3	ynn
Linguist List	ynn
Glottolog	yana1271
Pre-contact distribution of the Yana language

Yana (also Yanan) is an extinct language formerly spoken by the Yana people, who lived in north-central California between the Feather and Pit rivers in what is now the Shasta and Tehama counties.

The language perished in 1916 with the death of Ishi, who spoke the Yahi dialect. Yana is fairly well-documented (mostly by Edward Sapir) compared to other extinct American languages.

The names Yana and Yahi are derived from the word for "people" in the respective dialects.

Regional variation

There are four known dialects:

• Northern Yana
• Central Yana
• Southern Yana
  • South Yana
  • Yahi

Classification

Yana is often classified as a branch of the Hokan family. Sapir suggested a grouping of Yana within a Northern Hokan sub-family with Karuk, Chimariko, Shastan, Palaihnihan, and Pomoan. Contemporary linguists generally consider Yana to be a language isolate.

Characteristics

Yana was polysynthetic and agglutinative, with a subject-verb-object word order. Unlike other languages of the region, Yana had different word forms for males and females.

Bibliography

• Campbell, Lyle. (1997). American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509427-1.
• Goddard, Ives (Ed.). (1996). Languages. Handbook of North American Indians (W. C. Sturtevant, General Ed.) (Vol. 17). Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution. ISBN 0-16-048774-9.
• Mithun, Marianne. (1999). The languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-23228-7 (hbk); ISBN 0-521-29875-X.
• Sapir, Edward. 1910. Yana Texts. University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology, vol. 1, no. 9. Berkeley: University Press. (Online version at the Internet Archive).
• Sturtevant, William C. (Ed.). (1978–present). Handbook of North American Indians (Vol. 1–20). Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution. (Vols. 1–3, 16, 18–20 not yet published).

External links

• Yana language overview at the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages
• "Yana – California Language Archive". Retrieved 2012-07-30.
• "OLAC resources in and about the Yana language". Retrieved 2012-07-30.
• Yana basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database