Yokuts, formerly known as Mariposa, is an endangered language spoken in the interior of Northern and Central California in and around the San Joaquin Valley by the Yokuts people. The speakers of Yokuts were severely affected by disease, missionaries, and the Gold Rush. While descendants of Yokuts speakers currently number in the thousands, all constituent dialects apart from Valley Yokuts are now extinct.
Almost all Yokuts dialects are extinct, as noted above. Those that are still spoken are endangered.
Until recent years, Choinimni, Wikchamni, Chukchansi, Kechayi, Tachi and Yawelmani all had a few fluent speakers and a variable number of partial speakers. Choynimni went extinct in 2017. Wikchamni, Chukchansi, Tachi, and Yawelmani were being taught to at least a few children during the first decade of the twenty-first century.
Chukchansi is now a written language, with its own alphabet developed on a federal grant. Chukchansi also has a phrase book and dictionary that are partially completed. In May 2012, the Linguistics Department of Fresno State University received a $1 million grant to compile a Chukchansi dictionary and grammar texts,[3] and to "provide support for scholarships, programs, and efforts to assemble native texts and create a curriculum for teaching the language so it can be brought back into social and ritual use."[4]
Genetic relations
Yokuts is a key member in the proposed Penutian language stock. Some linguists consider most relationships within Penutian to be undemonstrated (cf. Campbell 1997[5]). Others consider a genetic relationship between Yokuts, Utian, Maiduan, Wintuan, and a number of Oregon languages to be definite (cf. DeLancey and Golla 1997[6]). Regardless of higher-order disagreement, Callaghan (1997) provides strong evidence uniting Yokuts and the Utian languages as branches of a Yok-Utian language family.[7]
The term "Delta Yokuts" has recently been introduced in lieu of the longer "Far Northern Valley Yokuts" for the dialect spoken by the people in the present Stockton and Modesto vicinities of San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties, California, prior to their removal to Mission San Jose between 1810 and 1827. Of interest, Delta Yokuts contains a large number of words with no cognates in any of the other dialects, or for that matter in the adjacent Utian languages, although its syntax is typically Northern Valley Yokuts.[8] This anomaly has led Whistler (cited by Golla 2007[9]) to suggest, "The vocabulary distinctive of some of the Delta Yokuts dialects may reflect substratal influence from pre-proto-Yokuts or from an extinct Yok-Utian language." Golla[10] suggests that a "pre-proto-Yokuts" homeland was in the Great Basin, citing a rich plant and animal vocabulary for a dry environment and a close connection between Yokuts basketry styles and those of prehistoric central Nevada.
Proto-language
Proto-Yokuts
Reconstruction of
Yokuts languages
Proto-Yokuts reconstructions from Whistler and Golla (1986):[2]
Adisasmito-Smith, Niken and Guekguezian, Peter and Wyatt, Holly (2022). "Chukchansi Yokuts". Illustrations of the IPA. Journal of the International Phonetic Association: 1–30. doi:10.1017/S0025100321000268{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link), with supplementary sound recordings.
Callaghan, Catherine (1997). "Evidence for Yok-Utian". International Journal of American Linguistics. 63: 121–133. doi:10.1086/466313. S2CID144374174.
Callaghan, Catherine (2001). "More Evidence for Yok-Utian: A Reanalysis of the Dixon and Kroeber Sets". International Journal of American Linguistics. 67 (3): 313–345. doi:10.1086/466461. S2CID145406834.
Campbell, Lyle (1997). American Indian Languages: The Historical Linguistics of Native America. New York: Oxford University Press.
DeLancey, Scott; Golla, Victor (1997). "The Penutian Hypothesis: Retrospect and Prospect". International Journal of American Linguistics. 63: 171–202. doi:10.1086/466318. S2CID143844592.
Golla, Victor (1964). Bright, William (ed.). "Comparative Yokuts Phonology". Studies in Californian Linguistics. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Golla, Victor (2007). Jones, Terry L.; Klar, Kathryn A. (eds.). "Linguistic Prehistory". California Prehistory: Colonization, Culture, and Complexity. New York: Altamira Press: 71–82. ISBN978-0-7591-0872-1.
Hockett, Charles (1973). "Yokuts As a Testing Ground for Linguistic Methods". International Journal of American Linguistics. 39 (2): 63–79. doi:10.1086/465244. S2CID143585441.
Kroeber, A. L. (1959). "Northern Yokuts". Anthropological Linguistics. 1 (8): 1–19. JSTOR30022216.
Kroeber, A. L. (1963). "Yokuts Dialect Survey"(PDF). University of California Anthropological Records. 11 (3): 177–251.
Newman, Stanley S. (1946). Osgood, Cornelius (ed.). "The Yawelmani Dialect of Yokuts"(PDF). Linguistic Structures of Native America. Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology (6). New York: 222–248.
Powell, John Wesley (1891). "Indian Linguistic Families of America, North of Mexico". Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1885-1886. Washington: Government Printing Office.
