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SOUNDS



Consonants


Wintu has 28 (to 30) Consonant s:


  • are nonnative phonemes borrowed from English.

  • is a rare phoneme that occurred in only one of Pitkin's informants (his main consultant). In other speakers, it has merged with .

  • Dental stops are denti-alveolar: . Younger speakers, however, have (apico-)alveolar articulations.

  • The lateral is usually a fricative but occasionally an affricate among McCloud speakers while Trinity speakers have only the affricate. It is interdental after non-low front vowels , post-dental after low , and retroflex after non-low back .

  • Postalveolar is retroflex adjacent to back vowels .

  • Velars are advanced before non-low front vowels and retracted before non-low back vowels . Younger speakers, however, do not have this retroflex variant.

  • Uvular is pronounced with frication: .

  • The trill is apico-postalveolar retroflex. It is occurs as a flap between vowels.



Vowels


Wintu has 10 (or 11) Vowel s:

  • Wintu has short and long vowels.

  • is a phoneme that only occurs in borrowed English words.

  • All vowels are slightly nasalized before the glottal stop .



SYLLABLE & PHONOTACTICS


Generic Syllable :

:

Consonant clusters result only as from conjoined closed syllables: CV(ː)C.CV(ː)C. Vowels may be long, but sequences of vowels do not occur.


GRAMMAR



SEE ALSO




BIBLIOGRAPHY


  • Pitkin, Harvey. (1984). ''Wintu grammar''. University of California publications in linguistics (Vol. 94). Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-5200-9612-6.

  • Pitkin, Harvey. (1985). ''Wintu dictionary''. University of California publications in linguistics (Vol. 95). Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-5200-9613-4.

  • Shepherd, Alice. (1989). ''Wintu texts''. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-5200-9748-3.