Cocopa

From Freepedia

Cocopa is a Native American tribe that emigated from Baja California, Mexico, and settled on the lower reaches of the Colorado River. They are a Yuman people. About 600 members live on the 6000 acre (24 km²) Cocopah Reservation southwest of Yuma, Arizona, USA. There is a casino and bingo hall. Another Yuman tribe, the Quechan, lives in the adjacent Ft. Yuma Reservation.

Contents 1 Language 1.1 Sounds 1.1.1 Consonants 1.1.2 Vowels 1.1.3 Syllable & phonotactics 1.2 Grammar 2 External link 3 Bibliography

Language

Cocopa is a Delta Yuman language of the Yuman-Cochimí language family spoken by Cocopa peoples. It is still being learned by children.

Sounds

Consonants

Cocopa has 21 consonants:

		Bilabial	Alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar		Glottal
						plain	labial
Stop		p	t	ʈ		k	kʷ	ʔ
Affricate					ʧ
Trill			r
Fricative	central		s	ʂ	ʃ	x	xʷ
	lateral				ɬʲ
Nasal		m	n		ɲ
Approximant	central				j		w
	lateral		l		lʲ

• /r/ is usually a trill [r] but sometimes is a flap [ɾ].
• /ʧ, ɲ, ʃ/ are postalveolar (palato-alveolar). /lʲ, ɬʲ/ are palatalized alveolar consonants.
• /ɬʲ/ is usually palatalized but unlike /lʲ/ it does not contrast with a non-palatalized [ɬ].

Vowels

Cocopa has 4 vowels.

	Front	Back
High	i / iː	u / uː
Non-High	e / eː	a / aː

Cocopa has both short and long vowels.

Syllable & phonotactics

The Cocopa syllable:

(C)(C)(C)V(ː)(C)(C)

• Word-initial two-consonant clusters usually consist of a fricative plus another consonant, e.g. /sp, ʂm, ʃp, xʧ/. Rarer two-consonant clusters start with a lateral or a stop consonant, e.g. /lʧ, ɬʲʧ, ps, ʧp/.
• Three-consonant clusters are rare, recorded examples include /pxk, pxkʷ, spx/.

Grammar

External link

• http://www.cocopah.com/

Bibliography

• Crawford, James M. (1970). Cocopa baby talk. International Journal of American linguistics, 36, 9-13.
• Crawford, James M. (1978). More on Cocopa baby talk. International Journal of American linguistics, 44, 17-23.
• Crawford, James M. (1989). Cocopa dictionary. University of California publications in linguistics (Vol. 114). Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-5200-9749-1.
• Crawford, James M. (1983). Cocopa texts. University of California publications in linguistics (Vol. 100). Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-5200-9652-5.
• Crawford, James M. (1998). Classificatory verbs in Cocopa. In L. Hinton & P. Munro (Eds.), American Indian languages: Description and theory (pp. 5-9). Berkeley: University of California.
• Kelly, William H. (1977). Cocopa ethnography. Anthropological papers of the University of Arizona (No. 29). Tucson: University of Arizona Press. ISBN 0-8165-0496-2.
• Mithun, Marianne. (1999). The languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-23228-7 (hbk); ISBN 0-521-29875-X.
• Wares, Alan C. (1968). A comparative study of Yuman consonantism. Janua linguarum, Series practica (No. 57). The Hauge: Mouton.