Kern River

Notes on the Shoshonean Dialects of Southern California, by A. L. Kroeber, [1909], at sacred-texts.com

KERN RIVER.

The Kern River branch, or Tübatulabal dialect, can only be mentioned here. The possessive my is expressed by -n, your by -ñ. This fact is of significance since of all other Shoshonean dialectic groups Ute-Chemehuevi alone suffixes the possessive pronominal elements. As Tübatulabal is territorially in contact with Kawaiisu, there is the possibility that one group has influenced the other in this respect. The Tübatulabal words for man, woman, and house show a curious form of reduplication to indicate the plural: datwal, adatwal; goim, ogogoim; hanil, ahanhanil. It does not follow that these cases are typical of the formation of the plural throughout the language. Most Shoshonean, and in fact most Uto-Aztekan, dialects show a certain amount of reduplication to express the plural without employing it as the regular or customary means. The word anawic-m, Pleiades, meaning girls and unquestionably plural in meaning, may contain the usual Shoshonean plural suffix -m. Compare anawic-bit, girl, in which -bit is the diminutive; and anabic, sweet. The name which the Tübatulabal apply to the Kawaiisu, Kawishm, and perhaps their designation of the Bankalachi, Toloim, ¹⁷ seem also to contain the plural suffix.

A comparison of the practically equivalent Tübatulabal and Bankalachi vocabularies shows several forms denoting parts of

p. 263

the body used in one case with possessive affix and in the other without. Such are cunan, my heart, and cunal, heart; buntcil and puntsin, eye, the latter really my eye; mupit and mupin, nose. It thus appears that in this dialectic group terms denoting parts of the body are provided with noun endings when they are not used with a possessive pronoun, in which respect the Kern River branch differs from the Southern California and Ute-Chemehuevi dialectic groups.

Footnotes

262:17 Present series, IV, 110, 124, 1907.