Central Numic (Uto-Aztecan) Comparative Phonology and Vocabulary
John E. McLaughlin
Utah State University
The Central Numic branch of the Numic language family of the Uto-Aztecan stock comprises three closely-related languages—Timbisha, Shoshoni, and Comanche. Timbisha and Comanche are spoken by less than a handful of L1 speakers each in eastern California and southwestern Oklahoma. Shoshoni is spoken by fewer than a dozen L1 speakers scattered across Nevada, Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming. All three languages are still spoken in parts of the regions where they lived at the time of contact. A very rough estimate of the time depth of Proto-Central Numic is about a millennium. Timbisha and Shoshoni have an underlying obstruent system which consists of voiceless stops /p, t, k, kw/, two voiceless fricatives /s, h/, and a voiceless affricate /ts/, but a surface phonetic system that includes voiced and voiceless stops, fricatives, and affricates in all the places of articulation of the underlying stops and affricates. This system of underlying and surface obstruents has been partially restructured in Comanche. John E. McLaughlin, Associate Professor of English at Utah State University, has published on the Central Numic languages since 1980.
ISBN 9783969391488. LINCOM Studies in Native American Linguistics 86. 66pp. 2023.
