Maricopa language
Maricopa or Piipaash is spoken by the Native American Maricopa people on two reservations in Arizona: the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community and the Gila River Indian Community. Most speakers live in Maricopa Colony. The language is considered severely endangered by UNESCO.
Although the Maricopa now live among the Pima, their language is completely unrelated. It is a Yuman language, related to other languages such as Mohave, Cocopah, Havasupai, Yavapai and Kumeyaay, while the Pima speak a Uto-Aztecan language.
According to the Ethnologue, language shift is occurring at Maricopa Colony: "The child-bearing generation can use the language among themselves, but it is not being transmitted to children." At Salt River, it is nearly extinct: "The only remaining users of the language are members of the grandparent generation or older who have little opportunity to use the language.
There are about 100 speakers out of an ethnic population of 800. Salt River's cultural resources department estimates that there are around 15 fluent native speakers remaining in the Salt River community. There are many more with varying degrees of fluency, including many who can understand but not speak Maricopa.
The modern Maricopa people are actually an amalgamation of five separate but related groups, with different dialects. There are now two dialects of Maricopa, Piipaash, and Xalychidom. Most Piipaash reside at Maricopa Colony on the Gila River Indian Community, and most Xalychidom reside at Salt River. However, all remaining dialect differences are fairly minor. Xalychidom is the dialect spoken by the formerly distinct Xalychidom people.
There is a language revitalization program at Salt River, the O'odham Piipaash Language Program, offering immersion classes, language-based cultural arts classes, community language-based social activities, and assistance with translation, cultural information and language learning.
Phonology
All claims and examples in this section come from Gordon unless otherwise noted.Consonants
Phonemes and occur only in loanwords like kafe "coffee" and naraŋk "orange," both from Spanish. also occurs as an allophone of.Vowels
Maricopa has 10 phonemic vowels made up of 5 pairs of corresponding long and short vowels with the cross-linguistically common five-way quality contrast:| Front | Central | Back | |
| High | |||
| Mid | |||
| Low |
There are falling diphthongs that glide from one vowel sound into another. Diphthongs can also be long or short: and are both found.
Diphthongs are
as in and.
Stress and intonation
Stress within a word falls on the final root vowel :Declarative sentences have a falling intonation toward the end of the sentence.
Interrogative sentences have a rising intonation toward the end of the sentence.
Epenthesis
Epenthesis of vowels to relieve consonant clusters is a major and complicated issue in Maricopa. It is not completely understood, but some general statement can be made.Epenthetic vowels can have the quality of any other vowel as well as some reduced vowel qualities. However, the form is basically predictable from the local context:
- occur after palatal or alveolar consonants
- XX before the epenthetic
- occur elsewhere
Nasals and liquids are least likely to accompany epenthesis, as they often syllabify instead, particularly in the following circumstances:
- An initial nasal before a homorganic stop optionally becomes syllabic.
- An initial liquid before a clitic boundary optionally becomes syllabic.
- In sequences, the first n syllabifies.
Some final clusters are allowed, but others are broken up. The distinction seems to rest partially on the number of syllables in the word as well as the particular sequence of consonants:
Assimilation and other phonological changes
Non-initial sequences of identical oral consonants, other than, geminate:The sequence can surface as. Thus, may surface as or.
When follows any segment except and precedes any unstressed segment, it deaffricates to : surfaces as, but surfaces as.
For less conservative speakers, can surface as before any unstressed segment other than.
Unstressed high vowels can lower to the corresponding mid vowel.
is inserted between a rounded consonant and a round or labial consonant. A rounded consonant can delabialize before any other consonant.
assimilates to before a velar or post-velar consonant. After a morpheme boundary, is preceded by.
Between a back vowel and any following vowel, is inserted:
Between a front vowel and a background vowel, is inserted:
Morphology
Case marking
Maricopa has a subject marker -sh but no marker for the direct object.There are four other cases: comitative, adessive/allative, inessive/illative, and general locative or directional.
-m: comitative, instrumental.
-ii: locative with adessive and allative meanings.
-ly: locative with inessive and illative meanings.
-k: general locative and directional.
Case markers can be clitics in verbs as if they were applicative markers.
Negative
Verbs are negated by adding the circumfix aly-...-ma.In copulative sentences, the negative element is placed on the predicate noun.
The first element of the negative circumfix is sometimes omitted, such as a sentence with nominalization.
There are constructions with a variable placement of the negative morpheme. In reflexives, the reflexive morpheme mat- can precede or follow the first part of the negative circumfix.
Maricopa has no unique word for "never." The language uses the verb aly-'aa-ma-k and the event that did not occur as a subordinate clause.
There is a special verb kuvar, meaning "to be none," to express the meaning of "there isn't."
Negative adverbs vary in scope depending on their position relative to the negative circumfix. For example, the adverb -haay "still, yet" is outside of the scope of the negation if the order of the morphemes is ma-haay. On the other hand, "still" is inside of the scope of the negation if the order of the morphemes is haay-ma.
Interrogative words
The following is a summary of interrogative words:| mki 'who' | mki 'where' | mkip 'which' | kawish 'what' | |
| Subject | mkish | mkipsh | kawitsh | |
| Object | mkiny | mkip | kawish | |
| Commitative and instrumental | mkinym | mkipm | kawishm | |
| Adessive and allative | mkii | mkipii | ||
| Inessive and illative | mkily | mkiply | ||
| General locative | mkinyk | mkik | mkipk |
Syntax
Gender
Maricopa does not make a grammatical gender distinction.No word for ''and''
David Gil reports that the Maricopa managed quite well despite having no equivalent for and. The various relevant relations are solved by using different linguistic structures. However, whether the absence of a lexeme constitutes a lexical gap depends on not a theory but the shared verbal habits of the people using the relevant conceptualization.Accordingly, it is not valid to say that speakers of Maricopa lack the lexeme and. Rather, it is speakers of, for example, English who would experience the lack.
Word order
The basic word order for transitive sentences is subject–object–verb language. Intransitive sentences are subject-verb. ditransitive sentences are subject-dative-object-verb.Possessive words precede nouns. There are inalienable nouns such as clothing items, which must bear possessive markers.
Determiners are expressed as suffixes or independent words following the noun.
No independent adjective category
The language has no independent adjective category: "Intransitive verbs in their unmarked forms can be used as attributive adjectives with an NP." Furthermore, it appears that there is no difference between the attributive and the predicative form of adjectival forms.Yes/no questions
Questions are marked by "rising intonation and by the structure of the verb" For most verbs, the question suffix is -m or a zero morpheme.If a zero morpheme is used to mark the question and the root of the verb is consonant-final, an epenthetic -ii is added.
To form a question in the second person, some verbs can have a -k or -m for questions.