Keres language


Keresan, also Keres, is a Native American language, spoken by the Keres Pueblo people in New Mexico. Depending on the analysis, Keresan is considered a small language family or a language isolate with several dialects. The varieties of each of the seven Keres pueblos are mutually intelligible with its closest neighbors. There are significant differences between the Western and Eastern groups, which are sometimes counted as separate languages.

Family division

Keres is now considered a language isolate. In the past, Edward Sapir grouped it together with a Hokan–Siouan stock. Morris Swadesh suggested a connection with Wichita. Joseph Greenberg grouped Keres with Siouan, Yuchi, Caddoan, and Iroquoian in a superstock called Keresiouan. None of these proposals has been validated by subsequent linguistic research.

Phonology

Keresan has between 42 and 45 consonant sounds, and around 40 vowel sounds, adding up to a total of about 95 phonemes, depending on the analysis and the language variety. Based on the classification in the World Atlas of Language Structures, Keres is a language with a large consonant inventory.
The great number of consonants relates to the three-way distinction between voiceless, aspirated and ejective consonants, and to the larger than average number of fricatives and affricates, the latter also showing the three-way distinction found in stops.
The large number of vowels derives from a distinction made between long and short vowels, as well as from the presence of tones and voicelessness. Thus, a single vowel quality may occur with seven distinct realizations: / é è e̥ éː èː êː ěː /, all of which are used to distinguish words in the language.

Consonants

The chart below contains the consonants of the proto-Keresan from Miller & Davis based on a comparison of Acoma, Santa Ana, and Santo Domingo, as well as other features of the dialects compiled from The Language of Santa Ana Pueblo, Kansas Working Papers in Linguistics, and The Phonemes of Keresan, and the Grammar of Laguna Keres.

Vowels

Keresan vowels have a phonemic distinction in duration: all vowels can be long or short. Additionally, short vowels can also be voiceless. The vowel chart below contains the vowel phonemes and allophones from the information of the Keresan languages combined from The Language of Santa Ana Pueblo, The Phonemes of Keresan, and Kansas Working Papers in Linguistics.
Notes:
All Keresan short vowels may be devoiced in certain positions. The phonemic status of these vowels is controversial. Maring considers them to be phonemes of Áákʼu Keres, whereas other authors disagree. There are phonetic grounds for vowel devoicing based on the environment they occur, for instance word-finally, but there are also exceptions. Vowels in final position are nearly always voiceless and medial vowels occurring between voiced consonants, after nasals and ejectives are nearly always voiced.
Acoma Keres has four lexical tones: high, low, falling and rising. Falling and rising tones only occur in long vowels and voiceless vowels bear no tones:
Tonesexamplestranslation
High, here, matrilineal uncle
Lowyoung boy
Risingbecause
Falling, and, whole part

Syllable structure

Most Keresan syllables take a CV shape. The maximal syllable structure is CCVVC and the minimal syllable is CV. In native Keresan words, only a glottal stop /ʔ/ ⟨ʼ⟩ can close a syllable, but some loanwords from Spanish have syllables that end in a consonant, mostly a nasal
Due to extensive vowel devoicing, several Keresan words may be perceived as ending in consonants or even containing consonant clusters.
The only sequence of consonants that occurs in native Keresan words is a sequence of a fricative /ʃ ʂ/ and a stop or affricate. Clusters are restricted to beginnings of syllables. When the alveolo-palatal consonant /ʃ/ occurs as C1, it combines with alveolar and palatal C2, whereas the retroflex alveolar /ʂ/ precedes bilabial and velar C2s, which suggest a complementary distribution. Consonant clusters may occur both word-initially and word-medially.

Orthography

Traditional Keresan beliefs postulate that Keres is a sacred language that must exist only in its spoken form. The language's religious connotation and years of persecution of Pueblo religion by European colonizers may also explain why no unified orthographic convention exists for Keresan. However, a practical spelling system has been developed for Laguna and more recently for Acoma Keres, both of which are remarkably consistent.
In the Keres spelling system, each symbol represents a single phoneme. The letters ⟨c q z f⟩ and sometimes also ⟨v⟩ are not used. Digraphs represent both palatal consonants, and retroflex consonants, which are represented using a sequence of C and the letter ⟨r⟩. These graphemes used for writing Western Keres are shown between ⟨...⟩ below.

Consonant Symbols

Signage at Acoma Pueblo

Signs at Acoma Pueblo sometimes use special diacritics for ejective consonants that differ from the symbols above, as shown in the table:
General⟨pʼ⟩⟨tʼ⟩⟨kʼ⟩⟨sʼ⟩⟨tsʼ⟩⟨mʼ⟩⟨wʼ⟩⟨yʼ⟩⟨nʼ shʼ srʼ tyʼ⟩
Acoma signage⟨ṕ⟩⟨t́⟩⟨ḱ⟩⟨ś⟩⟨tś⟩⟨ḿ⟩⟨ẃ⟩⟨ý⟩?

Vowel Symbols

Vowel sounds are represented straightforwardly in the existing spellings for Keresan. Each vowel sound is written using a unique letter or digraph. However, there are two competing representations for the vowel /ɨ/. Some versions simply use the IPA ⟨ɨ⟩ whereas others use the letter ⟨v⟩. Voiceless vowels have also been represented in two ways; either underlined or with a dot below.

Diacritics for Tone

Tone may or may not be represented in the orthography of Keresan. When represented, four diacritics may be used above the vowel. Unlike the system used for Navajo, diacritics for tone are not repeated in long vowels.

Keres Alphabet and Alphabetical order

Although Keresan is not normally written, there exists only one dictionary of the language in which words are listed in any given order. In this of Western Keres, digraphs count as single letters, although ejective consonants are not listed separately; occurring after their non-ejective counterparts. Both the glottal stop ⟨ʼ⟩ and long vowels are not treated as separate letters.
ABCHCHʼDDRDYDZEGHIJKKʼMMʼNNʼNYNYʼP
PʼRRʼSSʼSHSHʼSRSRʼTTRTRʼTSTSʼTYTYʼUWWʼYYʼ

Sample texts

Orthography marking tone

Woodpecker and Coyote
Ái dítʼîishu srbígà kʼánâaya dyáʼâʼu. Shʼée srbígà ái dyěitsị ái náyáa shdyɨ dyáʼa.

Orthography without tone marking

Boas text
Baanaʼa, egu kauʼseeʼe, atsi sʼaama-ee srayutse.

Morphosyntax

Keresan is a split-ergative language in which verbs denoting states behave differently from those indexing actions, especially in terms of the person affixes they take. This system of argument marking is based on a split-intransitive pattern, in which subjects are marked differently if they are perceived as actors than from when they are perceived as undergoers of the action being described.
The morphology of Keresan is mostly prefixing, although suffixes and reduplication also occur. Keresan distinguishes nouns, verbs, numerals and particles as word classes. Nouns in Keresan do not normally distinguish case or number, but they can be inflected for possession, with distinct constructions for alienable and inalienable possession. Other than possession, Keresan nouns show no comprehensive noun classes.

Word order

Keresan is a verb-final language, though word order is rather flexible.
Laguna Keres

Negation

Negation is doubly marked in Keresan. In addition to the adverb dzaadi, verbs index negation through a suffix.
The verb is a central grammatical category in Keres, conveying the most information about events in communicative acts. Through its morphemes, Keresan verbs code not only person and number of the initiator of the action as is common in Indo-European languages, but also how the initiator is implicated in the action. For instance, the three verbs that describe Tammy's actions in 'Tammy kicked the ball' vs. 'Tammy jumped' vs. 'Tammy sneezed', where kicking, jumping and sneezing require different levels of effort from Tammy. The person and number of the undergoer of the action is also coded on the verb, as well as how the speaker assesses the action. Finally, the internal temporal structure of the action.
According to Maring, the Keresan verb is organized around the following grammatical categories
In Keres, the verbal prefix carries information from five different grammatical categories: argument role, modality, polarity, person and number. That is, a single Keresan verb prefix codes who initiated the action and how implicated that entity is, whom underwent the effects of the action, the speaker's assessment of the action and whether it occurred or not. On the other hand, information about when the action took place is expressed elsewhere in a clause, mostly by adverbs.
Number
Keresan verbs distinguish three numbers: singular, dual and plural ; and four persons: first, second, third and fourth persons. The plural and dual forms are often marked by reduplication of part of the stem.
Argument role
Languages encode two main types of actions: those in which the main participant initiates an action that produces change in an object ; and those in which the action produces no change in the world or that have no object. Actions that take an object are encoded by transitive verbs, whereas those that take no object are expressed via intransitive verbs.
Intransitive verbs
In Indo-European languages like English, all intransitive verbs behave similarly. In Keresan, actions that take no object are conceptualized in two distinct ways depending on how the initiator of the action is implicated. More active-like intransitive verbs are coded through one set of morphemes, whereas actions conceptualized as involving the initiator at a lesser degree are coded using a separate set of prefixes.
ActionsIntransitive verb type
Moreto write, to steal as a thief, to have diarrhea,
to leave, to whistle, to sweat 		Active
Lessto believe, to be born, to sleep,
to be afraid, to forget 		Inactive

Ideas expressed in Indo-European languages with adjectives are most often encoded by verbs in Keresan. That is, in Keresan one express the idea in the sentence ‘He is selfish’ by saying something along the lines of ‘He selfishes''’. In such “actions”, the entity that is characterized by them is not implicated in the action directly, and thus belong in the Inactive intransitive category. The different sets of prefixes are shown below:
Transitive verbs

Aspect

Aspect in Keresan is signalled by suffixes.

Time (tense) adverbials

The category of tense is expressed in Keresan via adverbs that indicate when the action about which one is speaking took place.

Lexicon

New words are coined through a number of roots that are combined to pre-existing ones. Compounding is a common strategy for word building, although derivation also occurs.

Numerals

The Keresan numeral system is a base 10 system. Numerals 11-19, as well as those between the multiple of tens, are formed by adding the word kʼátsi followed by the word dzidra. Numerals 20 and above are formed by adding a multiplicative adverb to the base number and the word kʼátsi''.

Loanwords from Spanish

arriving in the Southwest US brought with them material culture and concepts that were unknown to the peoples living in the area. Words for the new ideas introduced by Spaniards were often borrowed into Keres directly from Early Modern Spanish, and a large number of these persists in Modern Keresan.
Semantic domainModern Western KeresModern SpanishEnglish translation
Household itemskamárîita, kuchâaru, kujûuna, méesa, mendâan, kuwêetacamarita, cuchara, colchón, mesa, ventana, cubeta bed, spoon, mattress, table, window, bucket
Social structuregumbanêerụ, rái, murâatụ, merigâanạ, kumanirá, ninêerucompañero, rey, mulato, americano, comunidad, dineroworkmate, king, black person, white person, community house, money
Foodgéesu, arûusị, kawé, kurántụ, mantạgîiyụ, mandêegạqueso, arroz, café, cilantro, mantequilla, mantecacheese, rice, coffee, cilantro, butter, lard/butter
Animal husbandrykawâayu, kanêeru, kujíinu, kurá, dûura, wáakạshịcaballo, carnero, cochino, corral, toro, vacahorse, sheep, pen/corral, bull, cow
Religious conceptsmíisa, Háasus Kuríistị, nachạwêena, guréesimamisa, Jesús Cristo, Noche Buena, Cuaresmamass, Jesus Christ, Christmas, Lent
Days of the weektamîikụ, rûunishị, mâatịsị, mérikụsị, sruwêewesị, yêenịsị, sâawarudomingo, lunes, martes, miércoles, jueves, viernes, sábadoSunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday

Proto-language

Proto-Keresan reconstructions by Miller and Davis :

In popular media

Keres was one of the seven languages used in the Coca-Cola commercial called "It's Beautiful" broadcast during the 2014 Super Bowl.