Nisenan language
Nisenan is a nearly extinct Maiduan language spoken by the Nisenan people of central California in the foothills of the Sierras, in the whole of the American, Bear and Yuba river drainages.
Ethnologue states that there is only one speaker left. However, it is believed that there are a few other speakers left, although the number is not known. Most speakers also speak one or more of the four different dialects.
There has recently been a small effort at language revival. Most notably the release of the "Nisenan Workbook" put out by Alan Wallace, which can be found at the California State Indian Museum in Sacramento and the Maidu Interpretive Center in Roseville.
As the Nisenan were not a unified nation but a collection of independent tribes which are grouped together primarily on linguistic similarity, there were many dialects to varying degrees of variation. This has led to some degree of inconsistency in the available linguistic data, primarily in regard to the phonemes.
Phonology
The phonology of Nisenan is similar to both Konkow and Maidu. Taking into account the various dialects, there appears to be a fair amount of allophones across the dialects.Consonants
The single affricate consonant has been most commonly described as alveolar, though some sources describe it as postalveolar. According to the Nisenan Workbook by Alan Wallace, and appear in complementary distribution. For example, the word for 'ten' is transcribed as 'maacam' in Workbook #1 and 'maatsam' in Workbook #2. Similar allophony occurs between and.have been listed as ejectives while other sources have labeled them simply as emphatic not specifying further as to how they contrast with the plain plosives. The Nisenan Workbooks depict these in transcription, though the sound guides have yet to distinguish them from the plain plosives.
One source noted an audible click with /b/ and /d/ among some older speakers of at least one dialect of one of the Maiduan languages. The sound guides in the Nisenan Workbooks hold /b/ and /d/ as voiced plosives as in English.
Some words have a double consonant but it has not been made clear as to whether this is due to gemination as the double consonants in Japanese, or just simply the same consonant being on the end of one syllable and the start of the next.
Vowels
All vowels come in long/short pairs.| Front | Central | Back | |
| Close | |||
| Mid | |||
| Open |
Long vowels are indicated by a doubling of the vowel.
is a bit lower, level with, somewhere between cardinal and.
is sometimes further back, closer to cardinal.
and are a bit lower and more centralized than the cardinal forms transcribed.
Grammar
Nouns
In common with other Maiduan languages, Nisenan has an extensive case system. There are eight inflected cases, all of which are suffixed to the head of the noun phrase. Nouns are divided into two classes, human and non-human; human nouns can be inflected for number and lack locative, allative, and instrumental case forms, while non-human nouns cannot be inflected for number and lack comitative case forms. The limited evidence of Nisenan means that not all case forms are attested.| Suffix | tynys- "old woman" | mom- "water" | pitcaak'a- "lizard" | |
| Nominative | -im | tynysim | momim | pitcaak'am |
| Accusative | -i | tynysi | momi | pitcaak'a |
| Genitive | -ik | tynysik | pitcaak'ak | |
| Ablative | -naan | tynysnaan | momnaan | |
| Locative | -di | momdi | ||
| Allative | -na | momna | ||
| Comitative | -k'an | tynysk'an | ||
| Instrumental | -ni | momim |
Number marking for human nouns is optional. The dual suffix is -wysa and the plural is -wyse. Both are placed between the noun root and the case suffix, e.g. tynys-wysa-im "two old women".
All adjectives and determiners in the noun phrase take the nominative case, while possessors take the genitive:
Pronouns
Personal, demonstrative, and interrogative / indefinite pronouns are all attested. They are inflected with some irregularities in the nominative, accusative, and genitive cases. In particular, the first and second person pronouns lack the characteristic -im nominative suffix. Ablative and comitative forms are regularly derived from the same suffixes as full nouns.The first person dual alternates between naas and nisaam, which may denote inclusive and exclusive respectively. The non-singular second person forms are not attested in the genitive, but may be reconstructed on the basis of their first and third person counterparts.
In addition, there is a third-person non-human pronoun myj, which inflects regularly in the oblique cases. As in many other languages, this third-person pronoun is similar to the demonstrative "that".
Pronouns of location include the emphatic demonstrative myjdyk "right there" and hededyk "right here", as well as hodo "that, there" and hede "this, here".
Interrogative and indefinite pronouns are also attested, albeit in only a few case-forms. Human and non-human indefinite pronouns each have two sets; the distinction between them is unclear.
Possession
In general, possession is marked by placing the possessor in the genitive case before the possessed: mysaak hadyky "their things". However, a few kinship terms instead take a possessive prefix: nik-ne "my mother", min-ne "your mother", my-ne "his, her, their mother".Verbs
Verbs in Nisenan are inflected for tense, mood, aspect, person, and number. However, the verbal paradigm is remarkably defective. The full slate of pronominal inflection is used only in the optative mood and with auxiliary verbs; realis predicates rely on auxiliaries, explicit subjects, or context.Infinitives
The unmarked infinitive is -i: ydawi 'to come'. It is replaced by the negative suffix -men, e.g. ydawmen 'to not come', or any tense/aspect suffix, for which see below.Tense and aspect
Several tense/aspect suffixes are demonstrated in Eatough. The most common of these in narrative texts is -mukum, a simple past: e-mukum 'saw'. An alternative past tense, perhaps with an inchoative sense and generally co-occurring with an auxiliary, is -haa: pooloj-haa mi "you got sick". Also attested are the perfective -ii, -ji, a progressive -im, a future tense -wis, and a stative -u.Auxiliary verbs
There are two interrogative auxiliary verbs, be 'be' and ka 'do'. Their meanings do not align very closely with these English translations; be appears to be used more in questions relating to the present and ka in those relating to the past.| First | Second | Third | |
| Singular | bes | bemi | be |
| Dual | behaas | bemaam | be |
| Plural | behees | bemeem | be |
Examples of the interrogative pronouns are mink'i be 'is it yours?' and menem ka bonda 'who fell down?'.
The affirmative auxiliary da, also glossed as 'do', is used to make positive assertions: myji dani aanik'i "I want it". It has a similar pattern of inflection except for the aberrant first-person singular dani. Its stative counterpart is my, glossed as 'be': nik'i syym my wennem syym 'my dog is a good dog'.
In addition to these, there is a root ha-, glossed as 'do' but not listed among the auxiliary verbs. This root is used extensively in narrative texts. Unlike the auxiliaries above, it does not entail explicit person marking but is rather marked for same / different subject: ha-n 'do ', ha-ce 'do '.
Optative
The optative mood indicates that the verb's result is desired by the speaker, e.g. homaa pa-is "I want to eat something", huujo-p e-men-bo "hide it so he doesn't see". The optative agreement suffixes are as follows. Second-person optatives can mark the absence or presence of a speaker for the assumed result, where an additional suffix -ka implies the speaker will be absent, while a distinct form -benes implies the speaker will be present.Cautionary
The cautionary mood is the opposite of the optative, indicating that something might go wrong as a result of the verb: bonobys "I might get lost". The cautionary suffixes are as follows.| Person | |
| First | -bys |
| Second | -no |
| Third | -by |