Ventureño language


Ventureño is a member of the extinct Chumashan languages, a group of Native American languages previously spoken by the Chumash people along the coastal areas of Southern California from as far north as San Luis Obispo to as far south as Malibu. Ventureño was spoken from as far north as present-day Ventura to as far south as present-day Malibu and the Simi Hills, California. Dialects probably also included Castac and Alliklik.
Ventureño is, like its sister Chumashan languages, a polysynthetic language, having larger words composed of a number of morphemes. Ventureño has separate word classes of verb, noun, and oblique adjunct; with no separate word class for adjectives or adpositions. Nouns and verbs are often heavily affixed in Ventureño, affixing being a way to denote those meanings often conveyed by separate words in more analytic languages. Verbs play a primary role in Ventureño with utterances often composed only of a verb with clitics. Chumash word order is VSO/VOS, or VS/VO.

Phonology

Ventureño has a similar phonemic inventory to other Chumash languages. Ventureño consists of 30 consonants and 6 vowels.

Vowels

Ventureño consists of a regular 5-vowel inventory with a sixth vowel transcribed as. In Barbareño transcriptions, is used. It is not known whether these two phones are the same in both languages, or whether the sounds were in fact different enough for Harrington to use different symbols.
FrontCentralBack
Close
Mid
Open

Consonants

Orthography

Ventureño has been written in several different ways by different linguists. John Peabody Harrington, who compiled most of the data on Ventureño, used a modified version of the International Phonetic Alphabet. Harrington differed from the International Phonetic Alphabet in the following symbols: a kappa for, a for, a slanted bar for, a reversed apostrophe for aspiration, and a right-turned apostrophe for a glottal stop.
The Barbareño/Ventureño Band of Mission Indians has adopted an Americanist form of transcription for Ventureño based on the work done by Harrington: for, for, for, for aspiration, for, and for. A standard apostrophe continues to be used for a glottal stop and for denoting ejectives. Glottalized sonorants are written with a combining apostrophe over the symbol. This transcription is in keeping with most current Chumashists except that alveolar affricates are written as in Ventureño, where other Chumashists write them as. Likewise, Ventureño writes postalveolar affricates as, where other Chumashists write this sound as.

Morphology

Chumash morphology is fairly polysynthetic. This applies especially to the verbs of the language, which has over 15 distinct morphological slots.
This is illustrated in the table below by the nominalized verb meaning "your wanting to make fun of us".

Numbers

The Chumash languages exhibit a quaternary numeral system. The numbers 1–16 exhibit certain characteristics which are different from the method of counting from 17 to 32. In all places, however, the multiple of 4 usually has a unique term. Ventureño Chumash has the most complete, native Chumash system of numbers on record.
1 pakeʼet2 ʼiškom̓3 masǝx4 tskumu
5 yǝtipake’es6 yǝti’iškom̓7 yǝtimasǝx8 malawa
9 tspa10 ka’aškom11 tǝlu12 masǝx tskumu
13 masǝx tskumu kampake’et14 ’iškom̓ laliet15 pake’et siwe 16 tšikipš
17 tšikipš kampake’et18 ’iškom̓ siwe tskumu’uy19 pake’et siwe tskumu’uy20 tskumu’uy
21 tskumu’uy kampake’et22 ’iškom̓ siwe itsmaxmasǝx23 pake’et siwe itsmaxmasǝx24 itsmaxmasǝx
25 itsmaxmasǝx kampake’et26 ’iškom̓ siwe yitimasǝx27 pake’et siwe yitimasǝx28 yitimasǝx
29 yitimasǝx kampake’et30 ’iškom̓ siwe ’iškom̓ tšikipš31 pake’et siwe ’iškom̓ tšikipš32 ’iškom̓ tšikipš