Yana language


The Yana language is an extinct language that was 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 last speaker of the southernmost dialect, which is called Yahi, was Ishi, who died in 1916. When the last fluent speaker of the other dialects died is not recorded. Yana is fairly well documented, mostly by Edward Sapir.
The names Yana and Yahi are derived from ya "people" plus an obligatory suffix, -na in the northern two dialects and -hi or -xi in the southern two dialects.

Regional variation

There are four known dialects:
  • Northern Yana
  • Central Yana
  • Southern Yana
  • * Yahi
Northern Yana, Central Yana, and Yahi were well recorded by Edward Sapir through work with Betty Brown, Sam Batwi, and Ishi respectively. Only a small collection of words and phrases of Southern Yana were recorded by Sapir in his work with Sam Batwi, who spoke the dialect only in his childhood. Because Southern Yana is poorly attested, it is unclear how many additional subdialects there may have been.
Northern and Central Yana are close, differing mainly in phonology, and Southern Yana and Yahi are similarly close. The two pairs differ from each other in phonological, lexical, and grammatical elements, and can only be understood by the other side with difficulty.

Classification

Yana is often classified in the Hokan superstock. 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 employs 22 consonants and 5 vowels. It is polysynthetic and agglutinative, with a subject-verb-object word order. Verbs contain much meaning through affixation. Like some other California languages, direction is very important: All verbs of motion must contain a different directional affix.
Unlike other languages of the region, Yana has different word forms used by male and female speakers. This is not used in the Yahi dialect, however.
The body of linguistic work on Yana is fortunate to include a number of texts and stories. Linguist Jean Perry writes that:

Phonology

Consonants

Vowels

Yana has five vowels, /i, ɛ, a, ɔ, u/; Sapir's comparanda with vowels of English, French and German clearly indicate that the mid vowels are lower mid. Each vowel occurs with phonemic vowel length.