Picuris language
Picuris is a language of the Northern Tiwa branch of Tanoan spoken in Picuris Pueblo, New Mexico.
Classification
Picuris is partially mutually intelligible with Taos dialect, spoken at Taos Pueblo. It is slightly more distantly related to Southern Tiwa.Phonology
- The consonants are only found in recent Spanish loanwords.
- G. Trager analyzed Picuris as also having aspirated stops, ejective stops, and labialized. These are considered by F. Trager to be sequences of,, and.
- Velar has strong frication.
- Stops are unaspirated while may be slightly aspirated.
- The affricate freely varies with a more forward articulation : for example, F. Trager recorded the word "witch" with an initial but the related word "witch chief" with initial.
- The sequence is only found in a single word.
- Alveolar has an assimilated velar variant when it precedes labio-velar.
- Nasal in a low-toned syllable is partially devoiced and denasalized before a glottal stop, as in "chokecherry" which is phonetically.
- Fricative freely varies between a lateral fricative and a median–lateral fricative sequence
- Lateral is palatalized before the high front vowel.
- Only the sonorants can occur in syllable coda position.
Vowels
Picuris has 6 vowels. Picuris also has nasalized counterparts for each vowel.Picuris has three degrees of stress: primary, secondary, and unstressed. Stress affects the phonetic length of syllable rimes.
Additionally, there are three tones: high, mid, and low — the mid tone being the most frequent.