Cupeño language


Cupeño is an extinct Uto-Aztecan language, formerly spoken by the Cupeño people of Southern California, United States, who now speak English.
Roscinda Nolasquez was the last native speaker of Cupeño.

Region

The language was originally spoken in Cupa, Wilaqalpa, and Paluqla, San Diego County, California, and later around the Pala Indian Reservation.

Morphology

Cupeño is an agglutinative language, where words use suffix complexes for a variety of purposes with several morphemes strung together.
Cupeño inflects its verbs for transitivity, tense, aspect, mood, person, number, and evidentiality.
Evidentiality is expressed in Cupeño with clitics, which generally appear near the beginning of the sentence.
=ku'ut 'reportative'
=am 'mirative'
=$he 'dubitative'
There are two inflected moods, realis =pe and irrealis =e'p.

Pronouns

The pronominals of Cupeño appear in many different forms and structures. The following appear attached only to past-tense verbs.
PersonSingularPlural
1ne-chem-
2e-em-
3pe-pem-

Tense-Aspect system

Future simple verbs are unmarked. Past simple verbs have past-tense pronouns; past imperfect add the imperfect modifier shown below.
NumberPresentImperfectFut. ImpCustomary
Singular-qa-qal-nash-ne
Plural-we-wen-wene-wene

Phonology

Vowels

and appear largely in Spanish loanwords, but also as allophones of in native Cupeño words.
can also be realized as in closed syllables, and in some open syllables.
may reduce to schwa in unstressed syllables.
also appears as when long and stressed, after labials and, and as before.
is also realized as before uvulars.

Consonants

1 is realized as before unstressed or. and appear to be in free variation.
2 is realized as in syllable codas.
3,, and appear only in Spanish loanwords.