Seri language
Encyclopedia
Seri is a language isolate
spoken by the Seri people
by between 716 and 900 people in two villages on the coast of Sonora
, Mexico
.
with Seri as its only living member; related languages have disappeared in the last couple of centuries. Attempts have been made to link it to the Yuman family, to the now-extinct Salinan language
of California, and to the much larger hypothetical Hokan
family. These hypotheses came out of a period when attempts were being made to group all of the languages of the Americas into families. In the case of Seri, however, very little evidence has ever been produced. Until such evidence is presented and evaluated, the language is most appropriately considered an isolate.
The name used within the Seri community itself, for the language, is Cmiique Iitom, which contrasts with Cocsar Iitom ("Spanish language
") and Maricaana Iitom ("English language
"). The expression is a noun phrase that is literally "(that) with which a Seri person speaks". The word Cmiique (phonetically [ˈkw̃ĩːkːɛ]) is the singular noun for "Seri person". The word iitom is the oblique nominalization of the intransitive verb caaitom ("talk"), with the prefix i- (third person possessor) and the null prefix for the nominalizer with this class of root. Another similar expression that one hears occasionally for the language is Cmiique Iimx, which is a similar construction based on the transitive verb quimx ("tell") (root = amx).
The name chosen by the Seri committee for the name of the language used in the title of the recent dictionary was Comcaac quih Yaza, which is the plural version of Cmiique Iitom. It was appropriate for a project of that type, although it is not a commonly used term. Comcaac (phonetically [koŋˈkɑːk]) is the plural form of Cmiique and yaza is the plural nominalized form corresponding to iitom. (ooza is the plural root, y- (with an accompanying vowel ablaut) is the nominalizer; the prefix for third person possessor elides before the y. The word quih is a singular article (which combines with the plural noun to refer to the Seri community).
The language was erroneously referred to as Kunkaak as early as the beginning of the twentieth century (as in Hernández 1904), and this mistake has been repeated up to the present day by people who confuse the name of an ethnic group with the name of its language (which are often the same in Spanish and English). The lexeme Comcaac is used in the Seri language only to refer to the people.
Vowel length
is contrastive only in stressed syllables. The low front vowels /ɛ, ɛː/ are phonetically between open-mid
and near-open, and have also been transcribed as /æ æː/.
The non-rounded
vowels /i ɛ ɑ/ may be realized as diphthong
s [iu̯ ɛo̯ ɑo̯] when followed by the rounded
consonants /kʷ xʷ χʷ/, but this small phonetic detail is not written in the community-based writing system.
/ɾ/ occurs only in loanword
s. /l/ occurs in loanwords and in a few native words, where it may alternate with /ɬ/ depending on the word and the individual speaker. Other consonants may occur in recent loans, such as [ɡ] in hamiigo ("friend" from Spanish
amigo), and [β] in hoova ("grape" from Spanish
uva).
The labial fricative /ɸ/ may be labiodental
[f] for some speakers, and the postalveolar fricative /ʃ/ may be retroflex
[ʂ].
In unstressed syllables, /m/ assimilates to the place of articulation
of the following consonant. This assimilation may take place over word boundaries in connected speech. When /m/ is preceded by /k/ or /kʷ/, it becomes a nasalized approximant [w̃] and the following vowel becomes nasalized, e.g. cmiique /kmiːkɛ/ "person; Seri" is pronounced [ˈkw̃ĩːkːɛ] or [ˈkw̃ĩːkːi]. For some speakers, word-final /m/ may become [ŋ] at the end of a phrase or sentence, or when said in isolation. It can be documented, by careful examination of word lists collected in the nineteenth century, that some of these phonetic rules have arisen fairly recently.
in this respect, which allows three-consonant combinations like spray and acts. Unlike English, however, the specific combinations which may occur are much less restricted. For example, English allows spr- but disallows *ptk-, which Seri does allow, as in ptcamn, ("Cortez spiny lobster
", Panulirus inflatus).
Rarely, clusters of four consonants can occur, e.g. /kʷsχt/ in cösxtamt, ..., "there were many, ..."; /mxkχ/ in ipoomjc x, ... "if s/he brings it, ...", (with enclitic x)
is contrastive in Seri. Although it usually falls on the first syllable of a root, there are many words where it does not. These are mostly nouns, as well as a small class of common verbs whose stress may fall on a prefix rather than on the root. An alternative analysis, recently proposed and with fewer exceptions, assigns stress to the penultimate syllable of the root of a word (since suffixes are never stressed and prefixes receive stress only as a result of phonological fusion with the root). This rule is also sensitive to syllable weight. A heavy final syllable in the root attracts stress. A heavy syllable is one that has a long vowel or vowel cluster or a final consonant cluster. (A single consonant in the syllable coda is typically counted as extrametrical
in Seri.)
Consonants following a stressed syllable are lengthened, and vowels separated from a preceding stressed vowel by a single consonant are also lengthened, so that e.g. cootaj /ˈkoːtɑx/ ("ant") is pronounced [ˈkoːtːɑːx]. Such allophonically
lengthened vowels may be longer than the phonemically long vowels found in stressed syllables. This lengthening does not occur if the following consonant or vowel is part of a suffix (e.g. coo-taj, the plural of coo ("shovelnose guitarfish
"), is [ˈkoːtɑx], without lengthening) if the stressed syllable consists of a long vowel and a short vowel (caaijoj, a kind of manta ray
, is [ˈkɑːixox], without lengthening), or if the stressed vowel is lengthened to indicate intensity. It also doesn't affect most loanwords.
Kinship terms and body part nouns inflect for possessors through prefixes (with slightly different prefix sets). Compare ma-sáac 'your son' (of man) and mi-lít 'your head'. As they are obligatorily possessed nouns, a special prefix appears when no possessor is specified, and kinship terms sometimes have additional material at the end as well. Compare ha-sáac-at 'one's son', and ha-lít 'one's head'. Some nouns have an additional plural form to distinguish between singular and plural possessors: itoj 'his/her eye', itoj 'his/her eyes', itolcoj 'their eyes'.
For object person (which is written as a separate word in the orthography although it is really just a prefix), compare ma hyooho 'I saw you (sg.)', mazi hyooho 'I saw you (pl.)', and ihyóoho 'I saw him/her/it/them'.
For indirect object (also written as a separate word except in third person), compare me hyacóhot 'I showed it to you (sg. or pl.)', cohyacóhot 'I showed it to him/her/them'.
The verb "tenses" divide between medial forms and final forms, irrealis and realis. Some examples: popánzx (irrealis, medial, third person) '(if) it/she/he runs', tpanzx (realis, medial, third person) '(as) it/she/he ran', yopánzx (distal realis, final, third person) 'it/she/he ran', impánzx (proximal realis, final, third person) 'it/she/he ran', spánxz aha (irrealis, final, third person) 'it/she/he will run'.
A verb may also be negative and/or passive.
A transitive verb may be detransitivized through a morphological operation, and causative verbs may be formed morphologically.
, which follow the noun.
The singular indefinite article (a, an) is zo before consonants, and z before vowels (it presumably is historically related to the word for "one", which is tazo). The plural indefinite article (roughly equivalent to some) is pac.
There are several different definite article
s (the), depending on the position and movement of the object:
These articles are derived historically from nominalized forms (as appear in relative clauses in Seri) of verbs: quiij ("that which sits"), caap ("that which stands"), coom ("that which lies"), quiih ("that (especially soft item like cloth) which is located"), moca ("that which comes"), contica ("that which goes"), and caahca ("that which is located"; root -ahca)
The compound demonstratives are formed by added a deictic element to an article. Examples include himcop ("that (standing far off)"), ticop ("that (standing closer)"), hipcop ("this (standing)"), himquij ("that (sitting far off)"), himcom ("that (lying far off)"), etc. These compound demonstratives may be used either as adjectives (at the end of the noun phrase) or as pronouns.
terminology is among the most extensive and complicated that has been documented in the world.
Seri has a small number of loanword
s, most ultimately from Spanish
, but via other languages such as O'odham
.
Many ideas are expressed not with single words, but with fixed expressions consisting of several words. For example, "newspaper" is hapaspoj cmatsj (literally, "paper that tells lies"), "compass" is ziix hant iic iihca quiya (literally, "thing that knows where places are"), and "radio" is ziix haa tiij coos (literally, "thing that sitting there sings"). This kind of phrase formation is deeply ingrained in the lexicon; it has been used in the past to create new terms for lexical items that became taboo
due to the death of a person whose nickname
was based on that word.
.
⟨Qu⟩ represents /k/ before the vowels e and i, while c is used elsewhere, as in Spanish
. Long vowels are indicated by doubling the vowel letter. The voiced lateral /l/ is indicated by placing an underline under ⟨l⟩, i.e. ⟨⟩. Stress is generally not indicated, but can be marked by placing an acute accent
⟨´⟩ over the stressed vowel. The representation of the rounded back consonants using a digraph which includes o-dieresis serves to visually unite morphemes that have allomorphs containing the full vowel o, the historical source of the rounded consonants. Example: xeecoj /χɛːkox/ ("wolf"), xeecöl /χɛːkʷɬ/ ("wolves").
The letters B, D, G, Gü, and V occur in some loanword
s.
The Seri alphabet was developed in the 1950s by Edward W.
and Mary B. Moser
, and later revised by a committee of Seri men and women working with Stephen Marlett. In particular:
Juan Carlos Pérez Jiménez to name a newly discovered species of smooth-hound shark
in the Gulf of California
(Mustelus hacat
).
Language isolate
A language isolate, in the absolute sense, is a natural language with no demonstrable genealogical relationship with other languages; that is, one that has not been demonstrated to descend from an ancestor common with any other language. They are in effect language families consisting of a single...
spoken by the Seri people
Seri
The Seris are an indigenous group of the Mexican state of Sonora. The majority reside on the Seri communal property , in the towns of Punta Chueca and El Desemboque on the mainland coast of the Gulf of California...
by between 716 and 900 people in two villages on the coast of Sonora
Sonora
Sonora officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Sonora is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided into 72 municipalities; the capital city is Hermosillo....
, Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
.
Classification
The term Serian family may be used to refer to a language familyLanguage family
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term 'family' comes from the tree model of language origination in historical linguistics, which makes use of a metaphor comparing languages to people in a...
with Seri as its only living member; related languages have disappeared in the last couple of centuries. Attempts have been made to link it to the Yuman family, to the now-extinct Salinan language
Salinan language
Salinan was the indigenous language of the Salinan people of the central coast of California. It has been extinct since the death of the last speaker in 1958....
of California, and to the much larger hypothetical Hokan
Hokan languages
The Hokan language family is a hypothetical grouping of a dozen small language families spoken in California, Arizona and Mexico. In nearly a century since Edward Sapir first proposed the "Hokan" hypothesis, little additional evidence has been found that these families were related to each other...
family. These hypotheses came out of a period when attempts were being made to group all of the languages of the Americas into families. In the case of Seri, however, very little evidence has ever been produced. Until such evidence is presented and evaluated, the language is most appropriately considered an isolate.
The name of the language
The name Seri is an exonym for this people that has been used since the first contacts with the Spaniards (sometimes written differently, as ceres). Gilg reported in 1692 that it was a Spanish name, but surely it was the name used by another group of the area to refer to the Seris. Nevertheless, modern claims that it is a Yaqui term that means something like "people of the sand" or an Opata term that means "people who run fast" are lacking in factual basis; no evidence has been presented for the former and no credible evidence has been presented for the latter.The name used within the Seri community itself, for the language, is Cmiique Iitom, which contrasts with Cocsar Iitom ("Spanish language
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
") and Maricaana Iitom ("English language
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
"). The expression is a noun phrase that is literally "(that) with which a Seri person speaks". The word Cmiique (phonetically [ˈkw̃ĩːkːɛ]) is the singular noun for "Seri person". The word iitom is the oblique nominalization of the intransitive verb caaitom ("talk"), with the prefix i- (third person possessor) and the null prefix for the nominalizer with this class of root. Another similar expression that one hears occasionally for the language is Cmiique Iimx, which is a similar construction based on the transitive verb quimx ("tell") (root = amx).
The name chosen by the Seri committee for the name of the language used in the title of the recent dictionary was Comcaac quih Yaza, which is the plural version of Cmiique Iitom. It was appropriate for a project of that type, although it is not a commonly used term. Comcaac (phonetically [koŋˈkɑːk]) is the plural form of Cmiique and yaza is the plural nominalized form corresponding to iitom. (ooza is the plural root, y- (with an accompanying vowel ablaut) is the nominalizer; the prefix for third person possessor elides before the y. The word quih is a singular article (which combines with the plural noun to refer to the Seri community).
The language was erroneously referred to as Kunkaak as early as the beginning of the twentieth century (as in Hernández 1904), and this mistake has been repeated up to the present day by people who confuse the name of an ethnic group with the name of its language (which are often the same in Spanish and English). The lexeme Comcaac is used in the Seri language only to refer to the people.
Vowels
| 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... |
|
|---|---|---|
| High | i, iː | o, oː |
| Low | ɛ, ɛː | ɑ, ɑː |
Vowel length
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...
is contrastive only in stressed syllables. The low front vowels /ɛ, ɛː/ are phonetically between open-mid
Open-mid vowel
An open-mid vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of an open-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned two-thirds of the way from an open vowel to a mid vowel...
and near-open, and have also been transcribed as /æ æː/.
The non-rounded
Roundedness
In phonetics, vowel roundedness refers to the amount of rounding in the lips during the articulation of a vowel. That is, it is vocalic labialization. When pronouncing a rounded vowel, the lips form a circular opening, while unrounded vowels are pronounced with the lips relaxed...
vowels /i ɛ ɑ/ may be realized as diphthong
Diphthong
A diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel...
s [iu̯ ɛo̯ ɑo̯] when followed by the rounded
Labialisation
Labialization is a secondary articulatory feature of sounds in some languages. Labialized sounds involve the lips while the remainder of the oral cavity produces another sound. The term is normally restricted to consonants. When vowels involve the lips, they are called rounded.The most common...
consonants /kʷ xʷ χʷ/, but this small phonetic detail is not written in the community-based writing system.
Consonants
| Labial Labial consonant Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. This precludes linguolabials, in which the tip of the tongue reaches for the posterior side of the upper lip and which are considered coronals... |
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... |
Postalveolar Postalveolar consonant Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate... |
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).... |
Uvular Uvular consonant Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. Uvulars may be plosives, fricatives, nasal stops, trills, or approximants, though the IPA does not provide a separate symbol for the approximant, and... |
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... |
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Central | Lateral Lateral consonant A lateral is an el-like consonant, in which airstream proceeds along the sides of the tongue, but is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth.... |
Plain | Rounded | Plain | Rounded | ||||||
| Stop | p | t | k | kʷ | ʔ | ||||||
| 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 | |||||||||
| Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or... |
ɸ | s | ɬ | ʃ | x | xʷ | χ | χʷ | |||
| Flap Flap consonant In phonetics, a flap or tap is a type of consonantal sound, which is produced with a single contraction of the muscles so that one articulator is thrown against another.-Contrast with stops and trills:... |
(ɾ) | ||||||||||
| 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... |
(l) | j |
/ɾ/ occurs only in loanword
Loanword
A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
s. /l/ occurs in loanwords and in a few native words, where it may alternate with /ɬ/ depending on the word and the individual speaker. Other consonants may occur in recent loans, such as [ɡ] in hamiigo ("friend" from Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
amigo), and [β] in hoova ("grape" from Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
uva).
The labial fricative /ɸ/ may be labiodental
Labiodental consonant
In phonetics, labiodentals are consonants articulated with the lower lip and the upper teeth.-Labiodental consonant in IPA:The labiodental consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...
[f] for some speakers, and the postalveolar fricative /ʃ/ may be retroflex
Retroflex consonant
A retroflex consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the hard palate. They are sometimes referred to as cerebral consonants, especially in Indology...
[ʂ].
In unstressed syllables, /m/ assimilates to the place of articulation
Place of articulation
In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation of a consonant is the point of contact where an obstruction occurs in the vocal tract between an articulatory gesture, an active articulator , and a passive location...
of the following consonant. This assimilation may take place over word boundaries in connected speech. When /m/ is preceded by /k/ or /kʷ/, it becomes a nasalized approximant [w̃] and the following vowel becomes nasalized, e.g. cmiique /kmiːkɛ/ "person; Seri" is pronounced [ˈkw̃ĩːkːɛ] or [ˈkw̃ĩːkːi]. For some speakers, word-final /m/ may become [ŋ] at the end of a phrase or sentence, or when said in isolation. It can be documented, by careful examination of word lists collected in the nineteenth century, that some of these phonetic rules have arisen fairly recently.
Phonotactics
Seri generally allows up to three consonants to occur together at the beginning or end of a syllable. It is like EnglishEnglish language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
in this respect, which allows three-consonant combinations like spray and acts. Unlike English, however, the specific combinations which may occur are much less restricted. For example, English allows spr- but disallows *ptk-, which Seri does allow, as in ptcamn, ("Cortez spiny lobster
Spiny lobster
Spiny lobsters, also known as langouste or rock lobsters, are a family of about 45 species of achelate crustaceans, in the Decapoda Reptantia...
", Panulirus inflatus).
Rarely, clusters of four consonants can occur, e.g. /kʷsχt/ in cösxtamt, ..., "there were many, ..."; /mxkχ/ in ipoomjc x, ... "if s/he brings it, ...", (with enclitic x)
Stress
StressStress (linguistics)
In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word, or to certain words in a phrase or sentence. The term is also used for similar patterns of phonetic prominence inside syllables. The word accent is sometimes also used with this sense.The stress placed...
is contrastive in Seri. Although it usually falls on the first syllable of a root, there are many words where it does not. These are mostly nouns, as well as a small class of common verbs whose stress may fall on a prefix rather than on the root. An alternative analysis, recently proposed and with fewer exceptions, assigns stress to the penultimate syllable of the root of a word (since suffixes are never stressed and prefixes receive stress only as a result of phonological fusion with the root). This rule is also sensitive to syllable weight. A heavy final syllable in the root attracts stress. A heavy syllable is one that has a long vowel or vowel cluster or a final consonant cluster. (A single consonant in the syllable coda is typically counted as extrametrical
Extrametricality
In linguistics, extrametricality is a tool for prosodic analysis of words in a language. In certain languages, a particular segment or prosodic unit of a word may be ignored for the purposes of determining the stress structure of the word...
in Seri.)
Consonants following a stressed syllable are lengthened, and vowels separated from a preceding stressed vowel by a single consonant are also lengthened, so that e.g. cootaj /ˈkoːtɑx/ ("ant") is pronounced [ˈkoːtːɑːx]. Such allophonically
Allophone
In phonology, an allophone is one of a set of multiple possible spoken sounds used to pronounce a single phoneme. For example, and are allophones for the phoneme in the English language...
lengthened vowels may be longer than the phonemically long vowels found in stressed syllables. This lengthening does not occur if the following consonant or vowel is part of a suffix (e.g. coo-taj, the plural of coo ("shovelnose guitarfish
Shovelnose guitarfish
The shovelnose guitarfish, Rhinobatos productus, is a ray that becomes sexually mature at an estimated seven to eight years. Males are between 90–100 cm, while females are around 99 cm at this time. The ray can live up to 11 years, and full grown sizes are around 120 cm for males,...
"), is [ˈkoːtɑx], without lengthening) if the stressed syllable consists of a long vowel and a short vowel (caaijoj, a kind of manta ray
Manta ray
The manta ray is the largest species of the rays. The largest known specimen was more than across, with a weight of about . It ranges throughout waters of the world, typically around coral reefs...
, is [ˈkɑːixox], without lengthening), or if the stressed vowel is lengthened to indicate intensity. It also doesn't affect most loanwords.
Nouns
Nouns inflect for plurality, through suffixation. Compare noosi 'mourning dove' and noosi-lc 'mourning doves'. Pluralization is very complicated; for this reason, each noun is listed in the dictionary with its plural form. Some nouns ostensibly use an infix to indicate plural: caatc 'grasshopper', caatjc 'grasshoppers'. A few nouns have completely suppletive plural forms: cmiique 'Seri person', comcáac 'Seri people', ziix 'thing', xiica 'things'.Kinship terms and body part nouns inflect for possessors through prefixes (with slightly different prefix sets). Compare ma-sáac 'your son' (of man) and mi-lít 'your head'. As they are obligatorily possessed nouns, a special prefix appears when no possessor is specified, and kinship terms sometimes have additional material at the end as well. Compare ha-sáac-at 'one's son', and ha-lít 'one's head'. Some nouns have an additional plural form to distinguish between singular and plural possessors: itoj 'his/her eye', itoj 'his/her eyes', itolcoj 'their eyes'.
Verbs
Finite verbs obligatorily inflect for number of the subject, person of the subject, direct object and indirect object and tense/mood. For subject person and number, compare ihpyopánzx 'I ran', inyopánzx 'you (sg.) ran', yopanzx 'it ran, she ran, he ran', hayopáncojc 'we ran', mayopáncojc 'you (pl.) ran', yopáncojc 'they ran'.For object person (which is written as a separate word in the orthography although it is really just a prefix), compare ma hyooho 'I saw you (sg.)', mazi hyooho 'I saw you (pl.)', and ihyóoho 'I saw him/her/it/them'.
For indirect object (also written as a separate word except in third person), compare me hyacóhot 'I showed it to you (sg. or pl.)', cohyacóhot 'I showed it to him/her/them'.
The verb "tenses" divide between medial forms and final forms, irrealis and realis. Some examples: popánzx (irrealis, medial, third person) '(if) it/she/he runs', tpanzx (realis, medial, third person) '(as) it/she/he ran', yopánzx (distal realis, final, third person) 'it/she/he ran', impánzx (proximal realis, final, third person) 'it/she/he ran', spánxz aha (irrealis, final, third person) 'it/she/he will run'.
A verb may also be negative and/or passive.
A transitive verb may be detransitivized through a morphological operation, and causative verbs may be formed morphologically.
Postpositions
The postpositions of Seri inflect for the person of their complement: hiti 'on me', miti 'on you', iti 'on her/him/it'. Some of them have suppletive stems to indicate a plural complement; compare miihax 'with you (sg.)' and miicot 'with you (pl.)'.Grammar
The Seri language is a head-final language. The verb typically occurs at the end of a clause (after the subject and direct object, in that order), and main clauses typically follow dependent clauses. The possessor precedes the possessum. The language does not have many true adjectives; adjective-like verbs follow the head noun in the same kind of construction and with the same kind of morphology as verbs in the language. The words that correspond to prepositions in languages like English are usually constrained to appear before the verb; in noun phrases they appear following their complement.Articles
Seri has several articlesArticle (grammar)
An article is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. Articles specify the grammatical definiteness of the noun, in some languages extending to volume or numerical scope. The articles in the English language are the and a/an, and some...
, which follow the noun.
The singular indefinite article (a, an) is zo before consonants, and z before vowels (it presumably is historically related to the word for "one", which is tazo). The plural indefinite article (roughly equivalent to some) is pac.
| Cótotaj | zo | hant | z | iti | poop... |
| boojum tree Boojum tree Fouquieria columnaris, the Boojum tree or cirio is a tree in the family Fouquieriaceae, whose other members include the ocotillos. It is nearly endemic to the Baja California Peninsula, with only a small population in the Sierra Bacha of Sonora, Mexico... |
a | place | a | in | if there is |
| If there is a boojum tree Boojum tree Fouquieria columnaris, the Boojum tree or cirio is a tree in the family Fouquieriaceae, whose other members include the ocotillos. It is nearly endemic to the Baja California Peninsula, with only a small population in the Sierra Bacha of Sonora, Mexico... in a place... |
|||||
| Comcaac | pac | yoozcam. |
| Seris | some | came. |
| Some Seris arrived. | ||
There are several different definite article
Definite Article
Definite Article is the title of British comedian Eddie Izzard's 1996 performance released on VHS. It was recorded on different nights at the Shaftesbury Theatre...
s (the), depending on the position and movement of the object:
- Quij (singular) and coxalca (plural) are used with seated objects.
- Cap/cop (sg.) and coyolca (pl.) are used with standing objects. Cap and cop are dialectal variants.
- Com (sg.) and coitoj (pl.) are used with objects lying down.
- Hipmoca (sg.) and hizmocat (pl.) are used with close, approaching objects.
- Hipintica (sg.) and hipinticat (pl.) are used with close objects going away.
- Timoca (sg.) and tamocat (pl.) is used with distant, approaching objects.
- Tintica (sg.), tanticat (pl.), himintica (sg.), and himinticat (pl.) are used with distant objects going away.
- Hac (sg. & pl.) are used with locations and verbal nounVerbal nounIn linguistics, the verbal noun turns a verb into a noun and corresponds to the infinitive in English language usage. In English the infinitive form of the verb is formed when preceded by to, e.g...
s. Hac is pronounced [ʔɑk] after vowels and [ɑk] after consonants. - Quih (sg.) and coi (pl.) are unspecified. Quih is pronounced [kiʔ] before consonants, [kʔ] before vowels, and [k] at the end of an utterance.
These articles are derived historically from nominalized forms (as appear in relative clauses in Seri) of verbs: quiij ("that which sits"), caap ("that which stands"), coom ("that which lies"), quiih ("that (especially soft item like cloth) which is located"), moca ("that which comes"), contica ("that which goes"), and caahca ("that which is located"; root -ahca)
Demonstratives
Four simple demonstrative pronouns occur, plus a large set of compound demonstrative adjectives and pronouns. The simple demonstratives are tiix ("that one"), taax ("those, that (mass)"), hipíix ("this one"), and hizáax ("these, this (mass)").The compound demonstratives are formed by added a deictic element to an article. Examples include himcop ("that (standing far off)"), ticop ("that (standing closer)"), hipcop ("this (standing)"), himquij ("that (sitting far off)"), himcom ("that (lying far off)"), etc. These compound demonstratives may be used either as adjectives (at the end of the noun phrase) or as pronouns.
Personal Pronouns
Two personal nonreflexive pronouns are in common use: he (first person, "I", "we") and me (second person, "you" (singular or plural). These pronouns may have singular or plural referents; the difference in number is indicated in the verb stem. The reflexive pronouns are hisoj "myself", misoj "yourself", isoj "herself, himself, itself", hisolca "ourselves", misolca "yourselves" and isolca "themselves".Lexicon
The Seri language has a rich basic lexicon. The usefulness of the lexicon is multiplied many times over by the use of idiomatic expressions. The expression for 'I am angry' is hiisax cheemt iha, literally 'my.spirit stinks (Declarative)', for example. (The kinshipKinship
Kinship is a relationship between any entities that share a genealogical origin, through either biological, cultural, or historical descent. And descent groups, lineages, etc. are treated in their own subsections....
terminology is among the most extensive and complicated that has been documented in the world.
Seri has a small number of loanword
Loanword
A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
s, most ultimately from Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, but via other languages such as O'odham
O'odham language
O'odham is an Uto-Aztecan language of southern Arizona and northern Sonora where the Tohono O'odham and Pima reside. As of the year 2000, there were estimated to be approximately 9750 speakers in the United States and Mexico combined, although there may be more due to underreporting...
.
Many ideas are expressed not with single words, but with fixed expressions consisting of several words. For example, "newspaper" is hapaspoj cmatsj (literally, "paper that tells lies"), "compass" is ziix hant iic iihca quiya (literally, "thing that knows where places are"), and "radio" is ziix haa tiij coos (literally, "thing that sitting there sings"). This kind of phrase formation is deeply ingrained in the lexicon; it has been used in the past to create new terms for lexical items that became taboo
Taboo
A taboo is a strong social prohibition relating to any area of human activity or social custom that is sacred and or forbidden based on moral judgment, religious beliefs and or scientific consensus. Breaking the taboo is usually considered objectionable or abhorrent by society...
due to the death of a person whose nickname
Nickname
A nickname is "a usually familiar or humorous but sometimes pointed or cruel name given to a person or place, as a supposedly appropriate replacement for or addition to the proper name.", or a name similar in origin and pronunciation from the original name....
was based on that word.
Writing system
Seri is written in the Latin alphabetLatin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
.
| A a | C c | Cö cö | E e | F f | H h | I i | J j | Jö jö | L l | M m |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| /ɑ/ | /k/ | /kʷ/ | /ɛ/ | /ɸ/ | /ʔ/ | /i/ | /x/ | /xʷ/ | /ɬ/ | /m/ |
| N n | O o | P p | Qu qu | R r | S s | T t | X x | Xö xö | Y y | Z z |
| /n/ | /o/ | /p/ | /k/ | /ɾ/ | /s/ | /t/ | /χ/ | /χʷ/ | /j/ | /ʃ/ |
⟨Qu⟩ represents /k/ before the vowels e and i, while c is used elsewhere, as in Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
. Long vowels are indicated by doubling the vowel letter. The voiced lateral /l/ is indicated by placing an underline under ⟨l⟩, i.e. ⟨⟩. Stress is generally not indicated, but can be marked by placing an acute accent
Acute accent
The acute accent is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts.-Apex:An early precursor of the acute accent was the apex, used in Latin inscriptions to mark long vowels.-Greek:...
⟨´⟩ over the stressed vowel. The representation of the rounded back consonants using a digraph which includes o-dieresis serves to visually unite morphemes that have allomorphs containing the full vowel o, the historical source of the rounded consonants. Example: xeecoj /χɛːkox/ ("wolf"), xeecöl /χɛːkʷɬ/ ("wolves").
The letters B, D, G, Gü, and V occur in some loanword
Loanword
A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
s.
The Seri alphabet was developed in the 1950s by Edward W.
Edward W. Moser
Edward W. Moser was an American linguist and expert in the Seri language and culture working with the Summer institute of Linguistics.-Life and career:...
and Mary B. Moser
Mary B. Moser
Mary Margaret Beck Moser is an American field linguist and Bible translator who worked on behalf of the Seri people of Mexico for more than fifty years...
, and later revised by a committee of Seri men and women working with Stephen Marlett. In particular:
- The rounded velar stop /kʷ/ was written both ⟨cu⟩ and ⟨cö⟩, but is now only written ⟨cö⟩.
- The diphthongs [ao̯] [iu̯] [eo̯] were written ⟨ao⟩ ⟨iu⟩ ⟨eo⟩ respectively, but are now considered to be allophones of /a i e/ before rounded consonants, e.g. Tahéojc → Tahejöc.
- The velar nasal [ŋ] was written ⟨ng⟩, but is now considered an allophone of /m/ and written ⟨m⟩, e.g. congcáac → comcaac.
- Nasalized vowels were marked with an underline, but are now considered allophones occurring after /km/, e.g. → cmaam.
- Lengthening of vowels and consonants that follow a stressed syllable were written double, but are now considered allophonic, e.g. hóoppaatj → hóopatj. Long vowels and consonants in other situations are still written double.
- Word boundaries sometimes changed, with cliticCliticIn morphology and syntax, a clitic is a morpheme that is grammatically independent, but phonologically dependent on another word or phrase. It is pronounced like an affix, but works at the phrase level...
s being often originally written solid with the adjacent words, but now written separately.
Literature
A growing body of Seri literature is being published. Some of the stories that were recorded, transcribed and published earlier are now being re-edited and published. New material is also being prepared by several writers.Trivia
The Seri word for "shark", which is hacat, was chosen by ichthyologistIchthyology
Ichthyology is the branch of zoology devoted to the study of fish. This includes skeletal fish , cartilaginous fish , and jawless fish...
Juan Carlos Pérez Jiménez to name a newly discovered species of smooth-hound shark
Smooth-hound
The smooth-hounds are a genus, Mustelus, of sharks in the family Triakidae. The name of the genus comes from the Latin mustela meaning weasel.A smooth-hound can grow up to 5 ft. 3 in...
in the Gulf of California
Gulf of California
The Gulf of California is a body of water that separates the Baja California Peninsula from the Mexican mainland...
(Mustelus hacat
Mustelus hacat
Mustelus albipinnis, the White-margin fin smooth-hound, is a smooth-hound shark species from the Gulf of California off the coast of Mexico. The shark is slender, dark grey-brown and grows up to 1.2 metre long....
).