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The Tonkawa language was spoken in Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico by the Tonkawa people. A language isolate, with no known related languages, Tonkawa is now extinct, and the members of the Tonkawa tribe now speak only English.
Sounds
Vowels
Tonkawa has 10 vowels:
| Front | Back | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| short | long | short | long | short | long | |
| High | i | u | ||||
| Mid | e | o | ||||
| Low | a | |||||
- The vowels occur in five pairs that have differing vowel lengths (i.e. short vowels vs. long vowels).
- In the front and the mid back vowel pairs, the short vowels are phonetically lower than their high counterparts: , , .
- The low vowels vary between central and back articulations: .
Consonants
Tonkawa has 15 consonants:
| Bilabial | Dental | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| central | lateral | plain | labial | ||||
| Plosive | p | t | k | ||||
| Affricate | |||||||
| Fricative | s | x | h | ||||
| Nasal | m | n | |||||
| Approximant | l | j | w | ||||
- The affricate and fricative vary freely between dental and postalveolar articulations, i.e. and . There is a tendency for to occur at the end of words (but no tendency for ).
- The velar obstruents are palatal before front vowels :
Phonological processes
An interesting feature of Tonkawan phonology is that the vowels in even-numbered syllables are reduced. That is, long vowels are shortened, while short vowels disappear.
Grammar
Writing system
The orthography used on the Tonkawa Tribe's website is very similar to Americanist phonetic notation.
| Alphabet | Pronunciation | Alphabet | Pronunciation |
| c | a | /a/ | |
| h | /h/ | a• | |
| k | /k/ | e | /e/ |
| e• | |||
| l | /l/ | i | /i/ |
| m | /m/ | i• | |
| n | /n/ | o | /o/ |
| p | /p/ | o• | |
| s | /s/ | u | /u/ |
| t | /t/ | u• | |
| w | /w/ | ||
| x | /x/ | ||
| y | /j/ | ||
| ' or ? |
Long vowels are indicated with a following middle dot < • >. The affricate is written as < c >. The glottal stop is written as either an apostrophe < ' > or with a superscript question mark < ? >. The palatal glide is written as < y >.
The phonemic orthography used in Hoijer's Tonkawa Texts is a later version of Americanist transcription. It uses a colon for long vowels < : > and the traditional glottal stop symbol < >.
Example
The following text is the first four sentences of Coyote and Jackrabbit, from Hoijer's Tonkawa Texts.
- ha•csokonayla ha•nanoklakno?o xam?al?a•y?ik. ?e•ka tanmaslaka•low hecne•laklakno?o lak. ha•csokonayla "?o•c!" noklakno?o. "?ekanesxaw sa•ken nenxales!" noklakno?o. ?e•ta tanmaslaka•lowa•?a•lak hewleklakno?o.
Gloss:
- Coyote / he was going along, S / on the prairie. When he did so / Jackrabbit / he was lying, S / (accus.). Coyote / "Oho!" / he said, S. "Horse /my / I have found it!" / he said, S. And then / that Jackrabbit afm / he caught him, S.
In this gloss, S is an abbreviation for "it is said", and afm for "the aforementioned".
References
- Hoijer, Harry. (1933). Tonkawa: An Indian language of Texas. New York: Columbia University. (Extract from Handbook of American Indian languages, Vol. 3).
- Hoijer, Harry. (1946). Tonkawa. in Harry Hoijer et al., Linguistic Structures of Native America, 289-311.
- Hoijer, Harry. (1949). An Analytical Dictionary of the Tonkawa Language. Berkeley, CA: University of California Publications in Linguistics 5.
- Hoijer, Harry. (1972). Tonkawa Texts. Berkeley, CA: University of California Publications in Linguistics 73.
- Mithun, Marianne. The Languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
- "The Tonkawa Language: Pronunciation Key." Internet:
External links
- Ethnologue report for Tonkawa
- Tonkawa resources at the Rosetta Project
- The Tonkawa Language — Includes online Tonkawa dictionary
Language isolates | Extinct languages | Indigenous languages of the North American Plains
"Tonkawa language"