Ventureño language
Ventureño
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The Language
An Overview
Ventureño is one of the extinct Chumash languages, a group of Native American languages previously spoken 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. Ventureño, like its sister languages, is a polysynthetic language, having larger words composed of a number of morphemes. Ventureño has separate word classes of verb, noun, and oblique adjunct (Wash 2001); with no separate word class of adjective or adposition. Nouns and verbs are often heavily affixed (prefixed mostly) 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, or VS&VO (as per Dryer 1997).
A Sample of Some Words
====(see citation below on Harrington)
'aɬhašə'əš;: n. language; word
he'istək: v. to tip, as a canoe
kuku'u: n. people
k'uwe: conj. but
Dryer, Matthew S. 1997. “On the Six-Way Word Order Typology,” Studies in Language 21(1) 69-103.
Harrington, John Peabody. 1981. The Papers of John Peabody Harrington in the Smithsonian 1907-1957: A Guide to the Field Notes: Native American History, Language, and Culture of Southern California/Basin, vol. 3. Elaine L. Mills and Ann J. Brockfield, eds. Microfilm reels 69, 89, and 94 on Ventureño.
Wash, Suzanne. 2001. Adverbial Clauses in Barbareño Chumash Narrative Discourse. PhD diss., University of California, Santa Barbara.
--Alaquwel 07:26, 27 May 2006 (UTC)