| Description:
The Pawnee language is a Caddoan language spoken by Pawnee Native Americans located in North central Oklahoma. Once the language of thousands of Pawnees, today Pawnee is spoken by a shrinking number of elderly speakers, and as more young people continue to learn English as their first language, the status of Pawnee declines towards extinction.
Two important dialect divisions are evident in Pawnee: South Band and Skiri. The distinction between the two dialects rests on differences in their respective phonetic inventory and lexicon.
The sounds described in this section belong to the South Band dialect of Pawnee.
Pawnee has eight consonant phonemes, and according to one analysis of medial- and final-position glottal stops, one may posit a ninth consonant phoneme.
Pawnee has four short vowel phonemes and four long counterparts (also phonemic).
Pawnee is a polysynthetic language and displays ergativity between nouns and verbs...... full article at Wikipedia |
