The Lake Miwok language is a moribund (or possibly extinct) language of Northern California, traditionally spoken in an area adjacent to the Clear Lake. It is one of the languages of the Clear Lake Linguistic Area, along with Patwin, East

Eastern Pomo language

Eastern Pomo is a moribund Pomoan language, spoken around Clear Lake in Lake County, California by one of the several Pomo peoples. It is not mutually intelligible with the other Pomoan languages...

 and Southeastern Pomo

Southeastern Pomo language

Southeastern Pomo, also known as Lower Lake Pomo, is a Pomoan language of Northern California. It was spoken along the eastern coast of Clear Lake, in Northern California.-External links:...

, and Wappo

Wappo language

Wappo is an extinct language that was spoken in the Alexander Valley north of San Francisco by the Wappo Native Americans. The last fluent speaker, Laura Fish Somersal, died in 1990. Wappo's language death is attributed to the use of English in schools and economic situations such as the workplace...

.

Vowels

	Short Vowel length In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. Often the chroneme, or the "longness", acts like a consonant, and may etymologically be one, such as in Australian English. While not distinctive in most dialects of English, vowel length is an important phonemic factor in...		Long Vowel length In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. Often the chroneme, or the "longness", acts like a consonant, and may etymologically be one, such as in Australian English. While not distinctive in most dialects of English, vowel length is an important phonemic factor in...
	Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also...	Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark...	Front	Back
High (close)	i	u	iː	uː
Mid Mid vowel A mid vowel is a vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned mid-way between an open vowel and a close vowel...	e	o	eː	oː
Low (open)	a		aː

Consonants

		Labial Bilabial consonant In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...	Dental	Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth...	Post-alveolar	Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate...	Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....	Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider...
Plosive	plain	p	t [t̻]		ṭ [t̺]		k	ʔ
	aspirated Aspiration (phonetics) In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. To feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of one's mouth, and say pin ...	pʰ	tʰ [t̻ʰ]		ṭʰ [t̺ʰ]		kʰ
	ejective Ejective consonant In phonetics, ejective consonants are voiceless consonants that are pronounced with simultaneous closure of the glottis. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated or tenuis consonants...	pʼ	tʼ [t̻ʼ]		ṭʼ [t̺ʼ]		kʼ
	voiced	b		d [d̺]
Fricative	voiceless			s	ṣ [ʃ]	ł		h
	ejective Ejective consonant In phonetics, ejective consonants are voiceless consonants that are pronounced with simultaneous closure of the glottis. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated or tenuis consonants...					ƛʼ
Affricate Affricate consonant Affricates are consonants that begin as stops but release as a fricative rather than directly into the following vowel.- Samples :...	voiceless			c [t͡s]	č [t͡ʃ]
	ejective Ejective consonant In phonetics, ejective consonants are voiceless consonants that are pronounced with simultaneous closure of the glottis. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated or tenuis consonants...			cʼ [t͡sʼ]	čʼ [t͡ʃʼ]
Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...		m		n
Approximant Approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no...		w		l (r)		j

The consonant inventory of Lake Miwok differs substantially from the inventories found in the other Miwok languages

Miwok languages

The Miwok or Miwokan languages, also known as Moquelumnan, are a group of endangered languages spoken in central California in the Sierra Nevada. There are a few dozen speakers of the three Sierra Miwok languages, and as of 1994, two speakers of Lake Miwok...

. Where the other languages only have one series of plosives, Lake Miwok has four: plain, aspirated

Aspiration (phonetics)

In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. To feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of one's mouth, and say pin ...

, ejective

Ejective consonant

In phonetics, ejective consonants are voiceless consonants that are pronounced with simultaneous closure of the glottis. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated or tenuis consonants...

 and voiced. Lake Miwok has also added the affricates č, c, čʼ, ƛʼ and the liquids r and ł. These sounds appear to have been borrowed through loanwords from other, unrelated languages in the Clear Lake area, after which they spread to some native Lake Miwok words.

Grammar

The word order of Lake Miwok is relatively free, but SOV (subject–object–verb) is the most common order.

Subject prefixes

	Singular	Dual	Plural
1st person	ka-	ʔic-	ma-, ʔim-
2nd person	ʔin-	moc-	mon-
3d person non-reflexive	ʔi-	koc-	kon-
3d person reflexive	hana-	hanakoc-	hanakon-
indefinite	ʔan-

In her Lake Miwok grammar, Callaghan reports that one speaker distinguishes between 1st person dual inclusive

Clusivity

In linguistics, clusivity is a distinction between inclusive and exclusive first-person pronouns and verbal morphology, also called inclusive "we" and exclusive "we"...

 -ʔoc and exclusive

Clusivity

In linguistics, clusivity is a distinction between inclusive and exclusive first-person pronouns and verbal morphology, also called inclusive "we" and exclusive "we"...

 ʔic-. Another speaker also remembers that this distinction formerly was made by older speakers.

Case inflection

Nouns can be inflected for ten different cases:

• the Subjective case
  Nominative case
  The nominative case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or the predicate noun or predicate adjective, as opposed to its object or other verb arguments...
  
   marks a noun which functions as the subject
  Subject (grammar)
  The subject is one of the two main constituents of a clause, according to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle and that is associated with phrase structure grammars; the other constituent is the predicate. According to another tradition, i.e...
  
   of a verb. If the subject noun is placed before the verb, the Subjective has the allomorph
  Allomorph
  In linguistics, an allomorph is a variant form of a morpheme. The concept occurs when a unit of meaning can vary in sound without changing meaning. The term allomorph explains the comprehension of phonological variations for specific morphemes....
  
   -n after vowel (or a vowel followed by /h/), and -Ø after consonants. If it is placed after the verb, the Subjective is -n after vowels and -nu after consonants.

{| style="text-align: left;"

|kukú||-n||ʔin-||tíkki||-t||mékuh
|-
|flea||||||forehead||||sit
|-
| colspan=6 | "A flea is sitting on your forehead."
|-
|}

• the Possessive case is -n after vowels and -Ø after consonants

{| style="text-align: left;"

|ʔóle||-n||ṣúluk||táj||-Ø||ṣáapa
|-
|coyote||||skin||man||||hair
|-
| colspan=3 | "coyote skin"||colspan=3|"the man's hair"
|-
|}

• the Objective case
  Accusative case
  The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of prepositions...
  
   marks a noun which functions as the object
  Object (grammar)
  An object in grammar is part of a sentence, and often part of the predicate. It denotes somebody or something involved in the subject's "performance" of the verb. Basically, it is what or whom the verb is acting upon...
  
   of a verb. It has a the allomorph -u (after a consonant) or -Ø (after a vowel) when the noun is placed immediately before a verb which contains the 2nd person prefix ʔin- (which then has the allomorph -n attached to the noun preceding the verb; compare the example below) or does not contain any subject prefix at all.

{| style="text-align: left;"

|káac||-u||-n||ʔúṭe?
|-
|fish||||-2||see
|-
|colspan=4| "Did you see the fish?"
|-
|}

It has the allomorph -Ø before a verb containing any other subject prefix:

{| style="text-align: left;"

|kawáj||-Ø||ka-||ʔúṭe
|-
|horse||||1-||see
|-
|colspan=4| "I saw the horse"
|-
|}

If the object noun does not immediately precede the verb, or if the verb is in the imperative, the allomorph of the Objective is -uc:

{| style="text-align: left;"

|káac||-uc||jolúm||-mi
|-
|fish||||eat||-
|-
|colspan=4| "Eat the fish"
|-
|}

• the allative case
  Allative case
  Allative case is a type of the locative cases used in several languages. The term allative is generally used for the lative case in the majority of languages which do not make finer distinctions.-Finnish language:In the Finnish language, the allative is the fifth of the locative cases, with the...
  
   is -to or -t depending on the environment. It has a variety of meaning, but often expresses direction towards a goal.
• the locative case
  Locative case
  Locative is a grammatical case which indicates a location. It corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by"...
  
   -m gives a less specific designation of locality than the Allative, and occurs more rarely.
• the ablative case
  Ablative case
  In linguistics, ablative case is a name given to cases in various languages whose common characteristic is that they mark motion away from something, though the details in each language may differ...
  
   is -mu or -m depending on the context, and marks direction out of, or away from, a place.
• the instrumental case
  Instrumental case
  The instrumental case is a grammatical case used to indicate that a noun is the instrument or means by or with which the subject achieves or accomplishes an action...
  
   -ṭu marks instruments, e.g. tumáj-ṭu "(I hit him) with a stick".
• the comitative case
  Comitative case
  The comitative case , also known as the associative case , is a grammatical case that denotes companionship, and is used where English would use "in company with" or "together with"...
  
   -ni usually translates as "along with", but can also be used to coordinate
  Coordination
  Coordination is the act of coordinating, making different people or things work together for a goal or effect to fulfill desired goals in an organization.Coordination is a managerial function in which different activities of the business are properly adjusted and interlinked.Coordination may also...
  
   nouns, as in kaʔunúu-ni kaʔáppi-ni "my mother and my father".
• the vocative case
  Vocative case
  The vocative case is the case used for a noun identifying the person being addressed and/or occasionally the determiners of that noun. A vocative expression is an expression of direct address, wherein the identity of the party being spoken to is set forth expressly within a sentence...
  
   only occurs with a few kinship terms, e.g. ʔunúu "mother " from ʔúnu "mother".
• the Appositive case is the citation form of nouns.

Possessive prefixes

Lake Miwok uses possessive prefixes to indicate the possessor of a noun. Except for the 3d person singular, they have the same shape as the subject prefixes, but show no allomorphy.

	Singular	Dual	Plural
1st person	ka-	ʔic-	ma-
2nd person	ʔin-	moc-	mon-
3d person non-reflexive	ʔiṭi-	koc-	kon-
3d person reflexive	hana-	hanakoc-	hanakon-
indefinite	ʔan-

The reflexive hana-forms have the same referent as the subject of the same clause, whereas the non-reflexive forms have a different referent, e.g.:

• hanaháju ʔúṭe – “He sees his own dog”

• ʔiṭiháju ʔúṭe – “He sees (sombody else’s) dog”

External links

• Lake Miwok language overview at the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages
  Survey of California and Other Indian Languages
  The Survey of California and Other Indian Languages at the University of California at Berkeley documents, catalogs, and archives the indigenous languages of the Americas...
  
  
• Lake Miwok audio recordings at the California Language Archive (login required)
• Ethnologue entry