Seri (referred to as cmiique iitom by the Seri people) is a language isolate spoken by the Seri people in two villages on the coast of Sonora, Mexico. Not to be confused with the NATO phonetic alphabet, which has also informally been called the “International Phonetic Alphabet”. For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words, see IPA chart for English. ... Sonora is a state in northwestern Mexico, bordering the states of Chihuahua to the east, Sinaloa to the south, and Baja California to the northwest. ... Current distribution of Human Language Families Most languages are known to belong to language families. ... A language isolate, in the absolute sense, is a natural language with no demonstrable genealogical (or genetic) relationship with other living languages; that is, one that has not been demonstrated to descend from an ancestor common to any other language. ... ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family. ... ISO 639-2 is the second part of the ISO 639 standard, which lists codes for the representation of the names of languages. ... ISO 639-3 is in process of development as an international standard for language codes. ... Not to be confused with the NATO phonetic alphabet, which has also informally been called the “International Phonetic Alphabet”. For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words, see IPA chart for English. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone meaning sound, voice) is the study of the sounds of human speech. ... Unicode is an industry standard designed to allow text and symbols from all of the writing systems of the world to be consistently represented and manipulated by computers. ... This chart shows concisely the most common way in which the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is applied to represent the English language. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... A language isolate, in the absolute sense, is a natural language with no demonstrable genealogical (or genetic) relationship with other living languages; that is, one that has not been demonstrated to descend from an ancestor common to any other language. ... SERI is an abbreviation of Samsung Economic Research Institute in South Korea. ... Sonora is a state in northwestern Mexico, bordering the states of Chihuahua to the east, Sinaloa to the south, and Baja California to the northwest. ...

Classification

The term Serian family may be used to refer to a language family with Seri as its only living member; related languages have disappeared in the last couple of centuries. Attempts have been made to link it to the Yuman family, to the now-extinct Salinan language of California, and to the much larger hypothetical Hokan family. These hypotheses came out of a period when attempts were being made to group all of the languages of the Americas into families. In the case of Seri, however, very little evidence has ever been produced. Until such evidence is presented and evaluated, the language is most appropriately considered an isolate. Current distribution of Human Language Families Most languages are known to belong to language families. ... Yuman-Cochimí languages Yuman-Cochimí is a family of languages spoken in Baja California and northern Sonora in Mexico and southern California and southwestern Arizona in the USA. Genetic relations The Yuman-Cochimí family consists of 11 languages: I. Cochimí 1. ... Salinan was the indigenous language of the Salinan people of the central coast of California. ... The Hokan language family is a hypothetical grouping of a dozen small language families spoken in California and Mexico. ...

The name of the language

The name Seri is an exonym for this people that has been used since the first contacts with the Spaniards (sometimes written differently, as ceres). Gilg reported in 1692 that it was a Spanish name, but surely it was the name used by another group of the area to refer to the Seris. Nevertheless, modern claims that it is a Yaqui or Opata name that means something like "people of the sand" or "people who run fast" are lacking in factual basis; no substantiation has been presented. An exonym is a name for a place or people that is created by people outside of that place and is different from the name used in the native language. ...

The name used within the Seri community itself, for the language, is cmiique iitom, which contrasts with cocsar iitom ("Spanish language") and maricaana iitom ("English language"). The expression is a noun phrase that is literally "(that) with which a Seri person speaks". The word cmiique (phonetically [ˈkw̃ĩːkːɛ]) is the singular noun for "Seri person". The word iitom is the oblique nominalization of the intransitive verb caaitom ("talk"), with the prefix i- (third person possessor) and the null prefix for the nominalizer with this class of root. Another similar expression that one hears occasionally for the language is cmiique iimx, which is a similar construction based on the transitive verb quimx ("tell") (root = amx).

The name chosen by the Seri committee for the name of the language used in the title of the recent dictionary was comcaac quih yaza, which is the plural version of cmiique iitom. It was appropriate for a project of that type, although it is not a commonly used term. Comcaac (phonetically [koŋˈkɑːk]) is the plural form of cmiique and yaza is the plural nominalized form corresponding to iitom. (ooza is the plural root, y- (with an accompanying vowel ablaut) is the nominalizer; the prefix for third person possessor elides before the y. The word quih is a singular article (which combines with the plural noun to refer to the Seri community).

Phonology

Vowels

Vowel length is contrastive only in stressed syllables. The low front vowels /ɛ, ɛː/ are phonetically low-mid, and have also been transcribed as /æ æː/. Vowels Near-close Close-mid Mid Open-mid Near-open Open Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel. ... A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. ... A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. ... An open vowel is a vowel sound of a type used in most spoken languages. ... In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. ... The open-mid vowels make a class of vowel sounds used in some spoken languages. ...

The non-rounded vowels /i ɛ ɑ/ are realized as diphthongs [iŭ ɛŏ ɑŏ] when followed by the rounded consonants /kʷ xʷ χʷ/. Vowels Near-close Close-mid Mid Open-mid Near-open Open Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel. ... In phonetics, a diphthong (Greek δίφθογγος, diphthongos, literally with two sounds, or with two tones) is a vowel combination in a single syllable involving a quick but smooth movement from one vowel to another, often interpreted by listeners as a single vowel sound or phoneme. ... Labialisation is secondary articulatory feature of sounds in a language, most usually used to refer to consonants. ...

Consonants

/ɾ/ occurs only in loanwords. /l/ occurs in loanwords and in a few native words, where it may alternate with /ɬ/ depending on the word and the individual speaker. Other consonants may occur in recent loans, such as [g] in hamiigo ("friend" from Spanish amigo), and [β] in hoova ("grape" from Spanish uva). In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. ... Dentals are consonants such as t, d, n, and l articulated with either the lower or the upper teeth, or both, rather than with the gum ridge as in English. ... Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli (the sockets) of the superior teeth. ... Postalveolar (or palato-alveolar) consonants are consonants articulated with the tip of the tongue between the alveolar ridge (the place of articulation for alveolar consonants) and the palate (the place of articulation for palatal consonants). ... Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate (the middle part of the roof of the mouth). ... Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate (the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum). ... Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. ... Glottal consonants are consonants articulated with the glottis. ... Laterals are L-like consonants pronounced with an occlusion made somewhere along the axis of the tongue, while air from the lungs escapes at one side or both sides of the tongue. ... Labialisation is a secondary articulatory feature of phonemes in a language, most usually used to refer to consonants. ... A stop or plosive or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. ... A nasal consonant is produced when the velum—that fleshy part of the palate near the back—is lowered, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. ... Fricatives (or spirants) are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. ... In phonetics, a flap or tap is a type of consonantal sound, which is produced with a single contraction of the muscles so that one articulator (such as the tongue) is thrown against another. ... Approximants are speech sounds that could be regarded as intermediate between vowels and typical consonants. ... A loanword (or loan word) is a word directly taken into one language from another with little or no translation. ...

The labial fricative /ɸ/ may be labiodental [f] for some speakers, and the postalveolar fricative /ʃ/ may be retroflex [ʂ]. In phonetics, labiodentals are consonants articulated with the lower lips and the upper teeth, or viceversa. ... Sub-apical retroflex plosive In phonetics, retroflex consonants are consonant sounds used in some languages. ...

In unstressed syllables, /m/ assimilates to the place of articulation of the following consonant. This assimilation may take place over word boundaries in connected speech. When /m/ is preceded by /k/ or /kʷ/, it becomes a nasalized approximant [w̃] and the following vowel becomes nasalized, e.g. cmiique /kmiːkɛ/ "person; Seri" is pronounced [ˈkw̃ĩːkːɛ] or [ˈkw̃ĩːkːi]. For some speakers, word-final /m/ may become [ŋ] at the end of a phrase or sentence, or when said in isolation. Places of articulation (passive & active): 1. ...

Phonotactics

Seri generally allows up to three consonants to occur together at the beginning or end of a syllable. It is like English in this respect, which allows three-consonant combinations like spray and acts Unlike English, however, the specific combinations which may occur are much less restricted. For example, English allows spr- but disallows *ptk-, which Seri does allow, as in ptcamn,("Cortez spiny lobster", Panulirus inflatus). The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Genera Jasus Linuparus Palinurus Panulirus Spiny lobsters, also known as rock lobsters are a family (Palinuridae) of about 45 species of achelate crustaceans, in the Decapoda Reptantia. ...

Rarely, clusters of four consonants can occur, e.g. /kʷsχt/ in cösxtamt, "there will be many..."; /mxkχ/ in ipoomjcx ("if he brings it...")

Stress

Stress is contrastive in Seri. Although it usually falls on the first syllable of a root, there are many words where it does not. These are mostly nouns, as well as a small class of common verbs whose stress may fall on a prefix rather than on the root. An alternative analysis, recently proposed and with fewer exceptions, assigns stress to the penultimate syllable of the root of a word (since suffixes are never stressed and prefixes receive stress only as a result of phonological fusion with the root). This rule is also sensitive to syllable weight. A heavy final syllable in the root attracts stress. A heavy syllable is one that has a long vowel or vowel cluster or a final consonant cluster. (A single consonant in the syllable coda is typically counted as extrametrical in Seri.) In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word. ...

Consonants following a stressed syllable are lengthened, and vowels separated from a preceding stressed vowel by a single consonant are also lengthened, so that e.g. cootaj /ˈkoːtɑx/ ("ant") is pronounced [ˈkoːtːɑːx]. Such allophonically lengthened vowels may be longer than the phonemically long vowels found in stressed syllables. This lengthening does not occur if the following consonant or vowel is part of a suffix (e.g. coo-taj, the plural of coo ("shovelnose guitarfish"), is [ˈkoːtɑx], without lengthening) if the stressed syllable consists of a long vowel and a short vowel (caaijoj, a kind of manta ray, is [ˈkɑːixox], without lengthening), or if the stressed vowel is lengthened to indicate intensity. It also doesn't affect most loanwords. Binomial name Rhinobatos productus Ayres, 1854 The shovelnose guitarfish, Rhinobatos productus, is a ray that ranges from central California down to the Sea of Cortez. ... Binomial name Manta birostris Dondorff, 1798 Hello wikipedia. ...

Morphology

Verbs, nouns and pospositions are inflected word categories in Seri.

Nouns

Nouns inflect for plurality, through suffixation. Compare noosi 'mourning dove' and noosi-lc 'mourning doves'. Pluralization is very complicated; for this reason, each noun is listed in the dictionary with its plural form. Some nouns ostensibly use an infix to indicate plural: caatc 'grasshopper', caatjc 'grasshoppers'. A few nouns have completely suppletive plural forms: cmiique 'Seri person', comcáac 'Seri people', ziix 'thing', xiica 'things'.

Kinship terms and body part nouns inflect for possessors through prefixes (with slightly different prefix sets). Compare ma-sáac 'your son' (of man) and mi-lít 'your head'. As they are obligatorily possessed nouns, a special prefix appears when no possessor is specified, and kinship terms sometimes have additional material at the end as well. Compare ha-sáac-at 'one's son', and ha-lít 'one's head'. Some nouns have an additional plural form to distinguish between singular and plural possessors: itoj 'his/her eye', itoj 'his/her eyes', itolcoj 'their eyes'.

Verbs

Finite verbs obligatorily inflect for number of the subject, person of the subject, direct object and indirect object and tense/mood. For subject person and number, compare ihpyopánzx 'I ran', inyopánzx 'you (sg.) ran', yopanzx 'it ran, she ran, he ran', hayopáncojc 'we ran', mayopáncojc 'you (pl.) ran', yopáncojc 'they ran'.

For object person (which is written as a separate word in the orthography although it is really just a prefix), compare ma hyooho 'I saw you (sg.)', mazi hyooho 'I saw you (pl.)', and ihyóoho 'I saw him/her/it/them'.

For indirect object (also written as a separate word except in third person), compare me hyacóhot 'I showed it to you (sg. or pl.)', cohyacóhot 'I showed it to him/her/them'.

The verb "tenses" divide between medial forms and final forms, irrealis and realis. Some examples: popánzx (irrealis, medial, third person) '(if) it/she/he runs', tpanzx(realis, medial, third person) '(as) it/she/he ran', yopánzx (distal realis, final, third person) 'it/she/he ran', impánzx (proximal realis, final, third person) 'it/she/he ran', spánxz aha (irrealis, final, third person) 'it/she/he will run'.

A verb may also be negative and/or passive.

A transitive verb may be detransitivized through a morphological operation, and causative verbs may be formed morphologically.

Postpositions

The postpositions of Seri inflect for the person of their complement: hiti 'on me', miti 'on you', iti 'on her/him/it'. Some of them have suppletive stems to indicate a plural complement; compare miihax 'with you (sg.)' and miicot 'with you (pl.)'.

Grammar

The Seri language is a head-final language. The verb typically occurs at the end of a clause (after the subject and direct object, in that order), and main clauses typically follow dependent clauses. The possessor precedes the possessum. The language does not have many true adjectives; adjective-like verbs follow the head noun in the same kind of construction and with the same kind of morphology as verbs in the language. The words that correspond to prepositions in languages like English are usually constrained to appear before the verb; in noun phrases they appear following their complement.

Articles

Seri has several articles, which follow the noun. An article is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. ...

The singular indefinite article (a, an) is zo before consonants, and z before vowels (it presumably is historically related to the word for "one", which is tazo). The plural indefinite article (roughly equivalent to some) is pac.

There are several different definite articles (the), depending on the position and movement of the object: Binomial name Fouquieria columnaris The boojum, Fouquieria columnaris, is a bizarre-looking tree native to Baja California, in the family Fouquieriaceae. ... Binomial name Fouquieria columnaris The boojum, Fouquieria columnaris, is a bizarre-looking tree native to Baja California, in the family Fouquieriaceae. ... Definite Article is the title of British comedian Eddie Izzards 1996 performance released on video and CD. The video/DVD and CD performances were both recorded on different nights at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London, England. ...

• Quij (singular) and coxalca (plural) are used with seated objects.
• Cap/cop (sg.) and coyolca (pl.) are used with standing objects. Cap and cop are dialectal variants.
• Com (sg.) and coitoj (pl.) are used with objects lying down.
• Hipmoca (sg.) and hizmocat (pl.) are used with close, approaching objects.
• Hipintica (sg.) and hipinticat (pl.) are used with close objects going away.
• Timoca (sg.) and tamocat (pl.) is used with distant, approaching objects.
• Tintica (sg.), tanticat (pl.), himintica (sg.), and himinticat (pl.) are used with distant objects going away.
• Hac (sg. & pl.) are used with locations and verbal nouns. Hac is pronounced [ʔɑk] after vowels and [ɑk] after consonants.
• Quih (sg.) and coi (pl.) are unspecified. Quih is pronounced [kiʔ] before consonants, [kʔ] before vowels, and [k] at the end of an utterance.

These articles are derived historically from nominalized forms (as appear in relative clauses in Seri) of verbs: quiij ("that which sits"), caap ("that which stands"), coom ("that which lies"), quiih ("that (especially soft item like cloth) which is located"), moca ("that which comes"), contica ("that which goes"), and caahca ("that which is located"; root -ahca) A verbal noun is a noun formed directly as an inflexion of a verb or a verb stem, sharing at least in part its constructions. ...

Demonstratives

Four simple demonstrative pronouns occur, plus a large set of compound demonstrative adjectives and pronouns. The simple demonstratives are tiix ("that one"), taax ("those, that (mass)"), hipíix ("this one"), and hizáax ("these, this (mass)"). Demonstratives are words that indicate which objects a sentence is referring to. ...

The compound demonstratives are formed by added a deictic element to an article. Examples include himcop ("that (standing far off)"), ticop ("that (standing closer)"), hipcop ("this (standing)"), himquij ("that (sitting far off)"), himcom ("that (lying far off)"), etc. These compound demonstratives may be used either as adjectives (at the end of the noun phrase) or as pronouns.

Vocabulary

Seri has a small number of loanwords, most ultimately from Spanish, but via other languages such as O'odham. A loanword (or loan word) is a word directly taken into one language from another with little or no translation. ... Oodham (often referred to by the names of its two nearly-identical main dialect groupings, Papago (Tohono) and Pima (Akimel)) is an Uto-Aztecan language of Southern Arizona and northern Sonora where the Tohono Oodham and Pima reside. ...

Many ideas are expressed not with single words, but with fixed expressions consisting of several words. For example, "compass" is ziix hant iic iihca quiya (literally, "thing that knows where places are"), and "radio" is ziix haa tiij coos (literally, "thing that sitting there sings").

Writing system

Seri is written in the Latin alphabet. The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ...

<Qu> represents /k/ before the vowels e and i, while c is used elsewhere, as in Spanish. Long vowels are indicated by doubling the vowel letter. The voiced lateral /l/ is indicated by placing an underline under <l>, i.e. <Ḻ ḻ>. Stress is generally not indicated, but can be marked by placing an acute accent <´> over the stressed vowel. The representation of the rounded back consonants using a digraph which includes o-dieresis serves to visually unite morphemes that have allomorphs containing the full vowel o, the historical source of the rounded consonants. Example: xeecoj /χɛːkox/ ("wolf"), xeecöl /χɛːkʷɬ/ ("wolves"). The acute accent (  ) is a diacritic mark used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin and Greek scripts. ...

The letters B, D, G, Gü, and V occur in some loanwords. A loanword (or loan word) is a word directly taken into one language from another with little or no translation. ...

The Seri alphabet was developed in the 1950s by Edward W. and Mary B. Moser, and later revised by Stephen Marlett. In particular: Edward W. Moser was an American linguist and expert in the Seri language and culture working with the Summer institute of Linguistics. ...

• The rounded velar stop /kʷ/ was written both <cu> and <cö>, but is now only written <cö>.
• The diphthongs [aŏ] [iŭ] [eŏ] were written <ao> <iu> <eo> respectively, but are now considered to be allophones occurring before rounded consonants, e.g. Tahéojc → Tahejöc.
• The velar nasal [ŋ] was written <ng>, but is now considered an allophone of /m/ and written <m>, e.g. congcáac → comcaac.
• Nasalized vowels were marked with an underline, but are now considered allophones occurring after /km/, e.g. cuá̱am → cmaam.
• Lengthening of vowels and consonants that follow a stressed syllable were written double, but are now considered allophonic, e.g. hóoppaatj → hóopatj. Long vowels and consonants in other situations are still written double.
• Word boundaries sometimes changed, with clitics being often originally written solid with the adjacent words, but now written separately.

In linguistics, a clitic is an element that has some of the properties of an independent word and some more typical of a bound morpheme. ...

Trivia

The Seri word for "shark", which is hacat, was chosen by ichthyologist Juan Carlos Pérez Jiménez to name a newly discovered species of smooth-hound shark in the Gulf of California (Mustelus hacat). Ichthyology is the branch of zoology devoted to the study of fish. ... Species See text. ... The Gulf of California (also known as the Sea of Cortez or Sea of Cortés; locally known in the Spanish language as Mar de Cortés or, much less frequently, Golfo de California) is a body of water that separates the Baja California Peninsula from the Mexican mainland. ... Binomial name Mustelus hacat Pérez Jiménez et al. ...

References

• Campbell, Lyle (1997). American Indian languages: the historical linguistics of Native America. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 
• Marlett, Stephen A. (1981). The Structure of Seri, Unpublished Ph.D. thesis. University of California, San Diego. 
• Marlett, Stephen A. (July 1988). "The Syllable Structure of Seri". International Journal of American Linguistics 54 (3): 245–278. 
• Marlett, Stephen A. (1994). "One Less Crazy Rule". Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session 38: 57–58. 
• Marlett, Stephen A. (2002). "Reanalysis of Passive and Negative Prefixes in Seri". Linguistic Discovery 1 (1). 

• Marlett, Stephen A. (2005). "A Typological Overview of the Seri Language". Linguistic Discovery 3 (1). 

• 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. (2006). "La situación sociolingüística de la lengua seri en 2006", in Stephen A. Marlett, ed.: Situaciones sociolingüísticas de lenguas amerindias. Lima: SIL International y Universidad Ricardo Palma.  [1]
• Marlett, Stephen A.; F. Xavier Moreno Herrera, Genaro G. Herrera Astorga (2005). "Illustrations of the IPA: Seri". Journal of the International Phonetic Association 35 (1): 117–121. DOI:10.1017/S0025100305001933. 
• Moser, Mary B. (1978). "Articles in Seri". Occasional papers on linguistics 2: 67–89. 

• Moser, Mary B.; Stephen A. Marlett (2005). Comcáac quih yaza quih hant ihíip hac: Diccionario seri-español-inglés (in Spanish and English). Hermosillo, Sonora: Universidad de Sonora and Plaza y Valdés Editores. 

A digital object identifier (or DOI) is a standard for persistently identifying a piece of intellectual property on a digital network and associating it with related data, the metadata, in a structured extensible way. ...

External links

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