Kiowa is a Kiowa-Tanoan language spoken by the Kiowa Tribe.

Sounds

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Consonants

The 21 consonants of Kiowa:

		Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stop	voiced
	voiceless
	aspirated
	ejective
Affricate	voiceless
	ejective
Nasal
Fricative	voiceless
	voiced
Approximant	central
	lateral

Vowels

The 24 vowels of Kiowa:

		Front		Back
		short	long	short	long
High	oral
	nasal
Mid	oral
	nasal
Low	oral
	nasal

Kiowa has phonemic oral, nasal, short, and long vowels.

Kiowa also has four diphthongs of the form vowel + .

	Front	Back
High
Mid
Low

Grammar

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Number

Kiowa, like other Kiowa-Tanoan languages, is characterized by an inverse number system. Kiowa has four noun classes. Class I nouns are inherently singular/dual, Class II nouns are inherently dual/plural, Class III nouns are inherently dual, and Class IV nouns are mass or noncount nouns. If the number of a noun is different from its class' inherent value, the noun takes the suffix -g (or a variant).

class	singular	dual	plural
I	-	-	-
II	-	-	-
III	-	-	-
IV	(n/a)	(n/a)	(n/a)

Mithun gives as an example tsẽ:, "horse/two horses," (Class I) made plural with the addition of -g: tsẽ:g, "horses." On the other hand, the Class II noun t^hõ:se, "bones/two bones" is made singular by suffixing -g: t^hõ:seg, "bone."

References

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• Campbell, Lyle. (1997). American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509427-1.
• Crowell, Edith. (1949). A preliminary report on Kiowa structure. International Journal of American Linguistics, 15, 163-167.
• Hale, Kenneth. (1962). Jemez and Kiowa correspondences in reference to Kiowa-Tanoan. International Journal of American Linguistics, 28, 1-5.
• Harrington, John P. (1947). Three Kiowa texts. International Journal of American Linguistics, 12, 237-242.
• Hickerson, Nancy P. (1985). Some Kiowa terms for currency and financial transactions. International Journal of American Linguistics, 51, 446-449.
• McKenzie, Parker; & Harrington, John P. (1948). Popular account of the Kiowa Indian language. Sante Fe: University of New Mexico Press.
• Merrill, William; Hansson, Marian; Greene, Candace; & Reuss, Frederick. (1997). A guide to the Kiowa collections at the Smithsonian Institution. Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology 40.
• Merrifield, William R. (1959). The Kiowa verb prefix. International Journal of American Linguistics, 25, 168-176.
• Merrifield, William R. (1959). Classification of Kiowa nouns. International Journal of American Linguistics, 25, 269-271.
• Miller, Wick R. (1959). A note on Kiowa linguistic affiliations. American Anthropologist, 61, 102-105.
• Mithun, Marianne. (1999). The languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-23228-7 (hbk); ISBN 0-521-29875-X.
• Sivertsen, Eva. (1956). "Pitch problems in Kiowa." International Journal of American Linguistics, 22, 117-30.
• Takahashi, Junichi. (1984). Case marking in Kiowa. CUNY. (Doctoral dissertation).
• Trager, George L.; & Trager, Edith. (1959). Kiowa and Tanoan. American Anthropologist, 61, 1078-1083.
• Trager, Edith C. (1960). The Kiowa language: A grammatical study. University of Pennsylvania. (Doctoral dissertation, University of Pennsylvania).
• Trager-Johnson, Edith C. (1972). Kiowa and English pronouns: Contrastive morphosemantics. In L. M. Davis (Ed.), Studies in linguistics, in honor of Raven I. McDavid. University of Alabama Press.
• Watkins, Laurel J. (1990). Noun phrase versus zero in Kiowa discourse. International Journal of American Linguistics, 56, 410-426.
• Watkins, Laurel J. (1993). The discourse functions of Kiowa switch reference. International Journal of American Linguistics, 59, 137-164.
• Watkins, Laurel J.; & McKenzie, Parker. (1984). A grammar of Kiowa. Studies in the anthropology of North American Indians. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0-8032-4727-3.
• Wonderly, William; Gibson, Lornia; & Kirk, Paul. (1954). Number in Kiowa: Nouns, demonstratives, and adjectives. International Journal of American Linguistics, 20, 1-7.

Kiowa-Tanoan languages | Languages of the United States | Indigenous languages of the North American Plains

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