Seri (language)

"Seri" as the Spanish exonym was officially fixed in 1692 (Gilg, 1692), but with high probability it appeared long before that moment. Presumably, this is one of the words of geographically closely spaced languages ​​to refer to a given people.

Сmiique iitom [kw̃ĩkˈiːtom] - the word сmiique ([ˈkw̃ĩːkːɛ]) is the singular form for a person from the Seri people. The word iitom is an indirect nominalization of the intransitive verb caaitom ('to speak') with the i- prefix (third party possessor) and the zero prefix in the nominal position for this class of foundations. Comcaac quih Yaza is a plural form of cmiique iitom.

Seri language exists in an isolated closed area. The language distribution area is limited to the two villages of Punta Chueca and El Desemboque (Sonora, Mexico). Formally about. Tiburon is also owned by the Seri, but at the moment (2012) he is completely devoid of any settlements.

At present, relatively little is known about the history of the language: it cannot be included both in the Uto-Aztec language family along with the rest of Sonora’s languages, and in the Oto-Manga family. There is a “generally accepted” hypothesis about the fact that the series belongs to the Juman languages, but the materials obtained during his last research allow us to question it. There have also been attempts to unite a number of North Indian isolates into a hypothetical Hokan family, but this theory has also not yet been confirmed. Sometimes a conditional Seri family is identified to a certain extent (Serian family), which includes the only language currently alive.

The long history of this language is confirmed by the existence in the lexicon of primordial words of a large number of names for various geographic objects in the region of the language existence (Father Tiburon and its environs).

Seri belongs to isolated languages, the number of contacts with the outside world is very small. The isolation of the language is due to the historical hostility between the Seri people and the Spaniards of Mexico, whose echoes are partially preserved to the present.

Due to the small influence on the language and culture of the seri by the Spanish language, the number of borrowed words is rather small. This is also hampered by a specific system of word formation of the language (nominal groups expressing the semantics of the term, instead of names). There is also an assumption that the language could have had a stronger impact in the Uto-Aztec period from the respective languages, as evidenced by a number of early borrowed words.

Writing

The writing series is based on the Latin alphabet. The writing was originally created by Edward and Mary B. Moser (Edward W. and Mary B. Moser) and later approved and supplemented by native speakers with Stephen Marlett.

〈Qu〉 is used to denote / k / before vowels e and i, while c is used in all other cases.

Long vowels are indicated by doubling the corresponding letter.

Voiced lateral / l / is indicated by underlining the letter 〈l〉, i.e. Ḻ ḻ〉.

The stress is not indicated in most cases, but it can be marked with a sharp stress 〈´〉 above the stressed vowel.

The letters B, D, G, Gü, and V are found in a number of borrowed words.

Type of expression of grammatical meanings

Refers to synthetic languages ​​(“more synthetic than isolating” (Marlett, 2005):

Character boundary between morphemes

Agglutination with elements of fusion:

An example of a formal fusion (third party possessor is not pronounced due to phonological rules, but can be restored to the “deep structure”):

An example of semantic fusion (cumulative expression of grammatical categories of number, person and possessiveness):

// [Ø] - removed as a result of phonological processes

// Ø - does not exist in the morpheme structure

Marking Type

Vertex marking in the noun group:

Vertex labeling in predication (the verb contains face and number indicators for Subj and DO, as well as a face indicator for IO, they do not have indicators):

Role Coding Type

Accurate role encoding:

In the transitional verb with the agent and the patient, expressed forms of the third person, a special direct addition marker (DO) is used.

In the transitional verb, the agent is marked, if it is expressed by a third-person pronoun, the patient is not marked

Agens at intransitive verb is not marked

Patient with intransitive verb is also unmarked.

Basic word order

The basic word order in Seri is SOV:

The dependent clause precedes the main clause:

The above rules and limitations, however, for interrogative sentences are significantly less so:

There are also pronouns of the following form:

Phonology

Phonological inventory Seri is relatively poor.

Vowels

The vowel system includes eight phonemes: four basic, opposed to the signs of a series and elevation, and four more opposed to them on the basis of longitude / shortness:

Consonants

The consonant system consists of eleven noisy deaf consonants and six sonorous sonorous (with the exception of the laryngeal smyku - an important element of the phonological system of the language).

Inventory noisy:

Inventory of sonor:

Structure of a syllable

The structure of the syllable in Seri is not strictly limited. In an attack and a syllable code there can be up to three consonants, in the core - up to three vowels:

ptcamn - [ptkamn]

tpanzx - [tpanʃχ]

atcz - [atkʃ]

ítaaptxö - [I'taaptχʷ]

c oopxöt - [koopχʷt]

Prosody

In most cases, the emphasis falls on the first vowel of the root of the word:

Ihpyopánzx. - 'I ran.' (root: -panzx)

Yopáncolxca. - 'They ran repeatedly.' (root: -pancolxca)

hapáh - 'what is put' (root: -ah)

hapáhtoj - 'what are put' (root: -ah-toj)

In composite constructions, the last significant word is usually percussive. The degree of stress and isolation of other words in the composite structure directly affects the semantics:

ziix cola hapáh (each word is distinctly isolated in the stream of speech) - “a thing that rises high”

ziix cola hapáh (less isolation, higher pronouncing speed, only one hit word) - “flag”

zixcolahapáh ( fluent pronunciation into one phonetic word) - “kite”

Morphology

General Information

The description of the morphology of the language is an extremely difficult task, since In addition to the rich and complex affixal language system (replacing most of the derivational morphology) in Seri, there are a large number of morphological and morphological alternations that affect both roots and affixes. Thus, it is rather difficult or (in some cases) impossible to unambiguously identify a particular morpheme that contains a specific value. In addition, with different roots, depending on some parameters, different invariants of identical affixes are used. All this complicates the procedure of glossing, so in some cases the selection of individual gloss is conditional.

Verb semantics often make them difficult to gloss over, because many shades of meaning are expressed using the root, rather than affixally:

caazi 'carry, carry'

quiip 'carry on head'

casóompx 'carry a long object under the inside of the shoulder fold'

cooi 'move in one go', csanj 'carry a man on someone's back'

Another characteristic feature of the language is inclined postpositions and affixes. Some of them may have singular and plural forms:

hiihax 'with me'

miihax 'with you'

hiicot 'with us'

timoca 'approaching. SG '

tamocat 'approaching. pl '

The main classes of words are nouns and verbs.

Verb

Verbs are the main class of Seri. In addition to the complex semantics of verbal roots (see the section Morphology), there is a large set of different postfixes and prefixes in the language:

causativeness: a- , ac- , ah

intransitiveness (to eliminate the position of one of the actants of the transitive verb): -o- , etc.

help (for creating an additional position of the actant verb with the helper meaning): -a- , etc.

experimenter (to create an additional position of an actant of a verb with the meaning of an experimenter): -ac- , etc.

liabilities

nominalization

denials

The only way to express denial in Seri is to label the verb with a negative prefix. No other non-lexical negative markers have been documented.

Quantifiers are often expressed using intransitive verbs.

Names

The system of nominal declension is relatively simple and is expressed through the choice between an absolutive prefix or the absence of an indicator and the form of a possessive prefix. An important feature of the Seri language is the presence of suppletive allomorphs of various morphemes, the choice between which is based on the transitivity of the clause:

hp- / h- (1.SG.SUBJ)

ica- / iha- (INF)

caa- / aa- (1.SG.RESTR)

The class of nouns is currently actively developing in the language, although its sources are still quite clearly visible. Practically all words of this class are multi-valued, and the choice of a specific meaning is determined by the postposition, for example: zaah quij 'sun' (spherical object), zaah cop 'day' (abstraction).

Language adjectivities are rare. At the moment, their morphology is underdeveloped, and most of them are identical to verbal forms in the position of intransitive predicates. Thus, adjective constructions in Seri can be viewed as relative clauses:

Determinants

The class of determinants is quite extensive, almost all of them historically were formed from nominalized forms of verbs with the semantics of place and movement, for example:

zo - 'general undefined. SG'

pac - 'general undefined. SG'

cop - 'standing. SG, also an abstract meaning'

quij - 'seated. sg'

com - 'lying.SG'

quih - 'common definite, also intra-causal verb for connecting homogeneous objects in the singular'

timoca - 'approaching. SG '

tintica - ' outgoing. PL '

tamocat - 'approaching. pl '

tanticat - ' retired. PL '

coi - 'common definite. pl'

Duality

Seri has a complex ternary prefixal expression of the distal parameter:

hip- 'close'

ti- 'remote'

him- 'strongly removed'

These prefixes can be combined both with the iix base thing, the subject for the formation of demonstrative pronouns ( hipíix 'this' , taax ' te ' ), and with postpositions of a class of determinants: hipcom ' close lying ' , ticop ' standing nearby ' , himcop ' far away . "

Other features

Seri language has an incredibly complex system of designation of degrees of kinship, which includes more than fifty basic bases. Differentiate the parameters of both gender and age:

aacaz 'her little brother'

apáac 'his older sister'

Vocabulary

Seri’s lexicon is rich and unique due to the almost complete absence of borrowed words, due to the historical hostility between Seri and other surrounding cultures. Its main feature is incredible productivity due to the presence of the system of lexicalization of nominal groups:

eenm an iauíijim 'mirror' (= ' metal in which you can see ')

eenm an iauíijim ziix cöimahnáxz 'glass' (= 'a mirror on which nothing is painted ')

ziix iitax iyas 'battery' (= ' liver of the motor ').

Historically, such a system arose due to the presence of taboo vocabulary in the lexicon, which led to the need to express it in an alternative, comprehensive way.

• Campbell, Lyle. American Indian languages ​​linguistics of native america. - Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
• Marlett, Stephen A. The Structure of Seri. - 1981.
• Marlett, Stephen A. The Syllable Structure of Seri (Eng.) // International Journal of American Linguistics : journal. - 1988. - July ( vol. 54 , no. 3 ). - P. 245-278 . - DOI : 10.1086 / 466086 .
• Marlett, Stephen A. One Less Crazy Rule (Neopr.) // Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session. - 1994. - V. 38 . - pp . 57-58 .
• Marlett, Stephen A. Reanalysis of Passive and Negative Prefixes in Seri (Eng.) // Linguistic Discovery: journal. - 2002. - Vol. 1 , no. 1 . - DOI : 10.1349 / PS1.1537-0852.A.1 .
• Marlett, Stephen A. A Typological Overview of the Seri Language (Neopr.) // Linguistic Discovery. - 2005. - Vol. 3 , No. 1 . - DOI : 10.1349 / PS1.1537-0852.A.282 .
• Marlett, Stephen A. (2006). "El acento, la extrametricalidad y la palabra mínima en seri". Encuentro de Lenguas Indígenas Americanas, Santa Rosa, La Pampa, Argentina .  
• Marlett, Stephen A. La situación sociolingüística de la lengua seri en 2006 // Situaciones sociolingüísticas de lenguas amerindias / Stephen A. Marlett, ed .. - Lima: SIL International y Universidad Ricardo Palma, 2006. [1]
• Marlett, Stephen A. Las relaciones entre las lenguas hokanas en México: ¿cuál es la evidencia? // Memorias del III Coloquio Internacional de Lingüística Mauricio Swadesh, / Cristina Buenrostro et al, eds.,. - Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico and Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas., 2007. - P. 165-192.
• Marlett, Stephen A. The Seri and Salinan connection revisited. (English) // International Journal of American Linguistics : journal. - 2008. - Vol. 74 , no. 3 P. 393-399 . - DOI : 10.1086 / 590087 .
• Marlett, Stephen A .; F. Xavier Moreno Herrera, Genaro G. Herrera Astorga. Illustrations of the IPA: Seri (Eng.) // Journal of the International Phonetic Association : journal. - 2005. - Vol. 35 , no. 1 . - P. 117-121 . - DOI : 10.1017 / S0025100305001933 .
• Moser, Mary B. Articles in Seri (Neopr.) // Occasional papers on linguistics. - 1978. - V. 2 . - p . 67-89 .
• Moser, Mary B. Comcáac quih yaza quih hant ihíip hac: Diccionario seri-español-inglés : [] . - Hermosillo, Sonora: Universidad de Sonora and Plaza y Valdés Editores, 2005.

• Ethnologue
• Seri bibliography
• Seri page at Lengamer.org
• Stephen Marlett's home page
• SIL Mexico
• Seri texts and recordings