Ventureño language

Ventureño
Mitsqanaqa'n
Native to	United States
Region	Southern Californian coastal areas
Extinct	mid-20th century
Language family	Chumashan Southern Central Ventureño
Language codes
ISO 639-3	veo
Glottolog	vent1242
Ventureño is classified as Extinct by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger

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 (mostly prefixed) 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 ⟨ə⟩. In Barbareño transcriptions, ⟨ɨ⟩ is used. It is not known whether these two phones are the same in both languages (and the difference in transcription merely one of convention), or whether the sounds were in fact different enough for Harrington to use different symbols.

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i	ə	u
Mid	e		o
Open		a

Consonants

		Bilabial	Alveolar		Postalveolar/ Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
			plain	sibilant
Plosive/ Affricate	plain	p	t	t͡s	t͡ʃ	k	q	ʔ
	ejective	pʼ	tʼ	t͡sʼ	t͡ʃʼ	kʼ	qʼ
	aspirated	pʰ	tʰ	t͡sʰ	t͡ʃʰ	kʰ	qʰ
Fricative	plain			s	ʃ	x		h
	aspirated			sʰ	ʃʰ
Lateral			l (ɬ)1
Sonorant	plain	m	n		j	w
	creaky voice	m̰	n̰		j̰	w̰

1. Ventureño has only one lateral, /l/. However, /l/ has a distinct allophone [ɬ] that Harrington includes in his transcriptions.

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 ⟨к⟩ (small-cap 'k') for [q], a ⟨q⟩ for [x], a slanted bar ⟨ł⟩ for [ɬ], a reversed apostrophe ⟨‘⟩ for aspiration, and a right-turned (standard) apostrophe ⟨’⟩ for a glottal stop (this symbol was also used for ejectives and glottalized sonorants).

The Barbareño/Ventureño Band of Mission Indians has adopted an Americanist form of transcription for Ventureño based on the work done by Harrington: ⟨š⟩ for [ʃ], ⟨ł⟩ for [ɬ], ⟨x⟩ for [x], ⟨ʰ⟩ for aspiration, ⟨y⟩ for [j], and ⟨q⟩ for [q]. A standard apostrophe ⟨’⟩ continues to be used for a glottal stop [ʔ] and for denoting ejectives. Glottalized sonorants [m̰, n̰, w̰, j̰] are written with a combining apostrophe over the symbol ⟨m̓⟩, ⟨n̓⟩, ⟨w̓⟩, ⟨y̓⟩. This transcription is in keeping with most current Chumashists (such as Wash below) except that alveolar affricates ([t͡s]) are written as ⟨ts⟩ in Ventureño, where other Chumashists write them as ⟨c⟩. Likewise, Ventureño writes postalveolar affricates ([t͡ʃ]) as ⟨tš⟩, where other Chumashists write this sound as ⟨č⟩.

Morphology

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

lošipałtšuyašuqonišpiyiyuw

lo-

DEM-

si-

ART-

p-

2-

ʔal-

NZ-

suya-

DES-

su-

CAUS-

qoniš

make fun of

-pi

-APL.LOC

-iyiyuw

-1PL.REDUP

lo- si- p- ʔal- suya- su- qoniš -pi -iyiyuw

DEM- ART- 2- NZ- DES- CAUS- {make fun of} -APL.LOC -1PL.REDUP

"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 pakeʼet
• 2 ʼiškom̓
• 3 masǝx
• 4 tskumu
• 5 yǝtipake’es
• 6 yǝti’iškom̓
• 7 yǝtimasǝx
• 8 malawa
• 9 tspa
• 10 ka’aškom
• 11 tǝlu
• 12 masǝx tskumu
• 13 masǝx tskumu kampake’et
• 14 ’iškom̓ laliet
• 15 pake’et siwe (tšikipš)
• 16 tšikipš
• 17 tšikipš kampake’et
• 18 ’iškom̓ siwe tskumu’uy
• 19 pake’et siwe tskumu’uy
• 20 tskumu’uy
• 21 tskumu’uy kampake’et
• 22 ’iškom̓ siwe itsmaxmasǝx
• 23 pake’et siwe itsmaxmasǝx
• 24 itsmaxmasǝx
• 25 itsmaxmasǝx kampake’et
• 26 ’iškom̓ siwe yitimasǝx
• 27 pake’et siwe yitimasǝx
• 28 yitimasǝx
• 29 yitimasǝx kampake’et
• 30 ’iškom̓ siwe ’iškom̓ tšikipš
• 31 pake’et siwe ’iškom̓ tšikipš
• 32 ’iškom̓ tšikipš

External links

• Ventureño language overview at the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages
• "Chumash Ventureño Sound Recording". Collections Search Center, Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved 2012-07-20.
• OLAC resources in and about the Ventureño language
• Ventureño at the California Language Archive Archived 2014-05-08 at the Wayback Machine