Tewa language

• The voiced postalveolar affricate /dʒ/ occurs in the Santa Clara dialect.
• All alveolars shown are apico-alveolar.
• /g/ and /k/ are dorso-prevelar [k̟, ɡ̟] before front vowels and dorso-velar [k, ɡ] before back vowels. Spirantization can also occur, causing /ɡ/ to be pronounced like [ɣ] or [ʁ].
• /t̪/ is apico-dental.
• /f/ ranges from [f] to [ɸ] to [pʰ].
• /θ/ ranges from apico-dental [θ] to [t̪].
• /x/ ranges from [x] to [kʰ].
• /v/ ranges from [v] to [β].
• /n/ is pronounced as [ŋ] if proceeding velar or glottal consonants, /w/, or an external transition.

• Vowels have both length and nasal differentiation.
• In syllables closed by nasal consonants or in final weak stressed syllables, /i/ occurs as [ɪˆ].
• /e/ is [e] when long, but is [eˇ] when short and [əˆ] when closed by a nasal consonant.
• /æ/, when following /m/ is realized a bit raised, and when following /n/ is realized as [əˆ].
• /u/ is realized as [ʊˆ] in syllables closed by a nasal vowel.
• The long nasalized variety of /a/ is, in some speakers, realized as [ɐ].

There are 9 types of syllables in Tewa: CV, CV:, CVN, CVh, CVʔ, CV', CVʔN, V, and VN.

N here stands for nasal, and as seen, there are some constructions where the only consonants available are :, h, or nasals, and as such these have been specified in order to create maximum specificity, instead of just referring to these constructions with just the C for consonant.

Tewa has three tones, high, low, and glide.

Within two-syllable words, the only combinations found are high-high, low-low, low-high, and high-low.

The use of stress in Tewa is still relatively unknown.

In two-syllable nouns with the pattern CVCV and the tone pattern high-high or low-low, there is heavier stress placed on the first syllable. Roots also tend to show heavier stress than affixes if each is the same syllable and tone type. A stronger stress is associated with a higher tone and greater vowel length. However, because of the complex use of tone, syllable type, and contour segments more research does need to be done.

Tewa has what are called both "free" and "bound" roots.

Free roots are defined as those roots which can be converted directly into a word, sometimes be the addition of a word superfix. Within free roots, there are two additional types, isolated and non-isolated free roots. There is a very small number of isolated free roots, as these are roots that are neither combinable with other roots nor affixable. Non-isolated free roots are roots that are combinable with other roots and/or are affixable. A limited non-isolated free root is one which can combine only with affixes, but not with other roots. A universal non-isolated free root is one which can combine both with other roots and affixes.

Bound roots are defined as those roots which cannot be converted directly into a word.

Tewa has 15 types of verbs, and a few example verbs and their conjugations are shown below.

Verbs can be divided into two classes, S and A, standing for stative and active, based of the pronomial prefixes which they contain. In general, S verbs deal with identity, quality, feeling, condition, position, and motion. Class A verbs are, in general, transitive verbs.

All known verb affixes are included in the chart below, showing where the affixes fall in particular constructions of words.

This affixes are used to delineate tense, subject, negation, and emphasis.

Nouns are divided into two classes: class N, which is affixed with set marker /-n/, and class non-N, which does not have this affix.

Class non-N is the larger of the two, containing almost all nouns in Tewa, which are, for the most part, mono- or di-syllabic.

Class N nouns are mostly designations for age-sex differentiation, kinship terms, and forms which translate as pronouns.

All known noun affixes are included in the chart below.

/-n2/ is different from /-n/ because of the occurrence of /-n2/ with singular, dual, and plural situations involving the same root, which is never the case for /-n/.

Class Z words are neither particles, verbs, or nouns. They are affixable with suffixes like /-á/, /-ân/, /-bo/, and /-ho'/, /-reʔ/, /-an/, /-we/, and /-ge/, but unlike nouns and verbs they do not occur with the specific affixes which delineate those classes (/wé:-/ or /pi-/ and /-ví/ respectively).

These compromise words whose English equivalents involve time, location, manner, interrogation, etc.

• Substitution:
  • /d/ becomes /r/, /d/ being the initial occurrence and following /n/.
  • /b/ becomes /v/ in similar vowels to the /d/ ~ /r/ substitution.
  • /n/ becomes /m/, with the latter occurring before labials and the latter elsewhere.
• Augmentation: Some suffixes occur with a longer form following /n/.
• Contraction: Certain suffixes occur preceding /-á/ series marker, /-á/ emphasizer, /-ân/ emphasizer, and /-an/ question marker.

Tewa is a subject-object-verb sentence, however there are simple sentences in Tewa such as "handiriho gi-c'u" (that's how we got in) that is simply a subject and a predicate.[9]

There are also many ways to say what would be translated as the same thing in English in Tewa. For example, there are three ways to say the sentence "The man in the woman are entering":

Tewa has a noun hierarchy in order to determine which noun phrase goes in which position, however this only influences passive sentences. In Tewa, this is a simple binary distinction between animate and nonanimate noun phrases.

However, unlike in other languages with a noun hierarchy, such as Navajo, Tewa also marks the subject with the postposition -dí, meaning that there is not a concrete need to adhere to the noun hierarchy as that information is already morphologically encoded into sentences. Because of this, younger Tewa speakers tend to not use the noun hierarchy and instead rely on the morphology present in passive sentences. [10]

Tewa, like other Tanoan languages, has a trepartite number system, which means that nouns can be counted through different syntactic constructions in three ways. In English, with morphosyntactic differences exist only for two numbers: singular and plural. Tewa, on the other hand differentiates between singular, dual, and plural nouns.

However, Tewa also appears to group its nouns into two categories: those of "sets" and "entities", with sets being marked by the affix /-n/ and entities the lack of said affix. Because of this, when creating plurality out of an entity, the affix /-n/ must be removed and the base root will be one not seen outside of plurality or duality.

Tewa also has what is called "inverse" numbering, which is a feature of many Tanoan languages. A chart of the indefinite articles for "a, some" can help show this phenomenon:

As seen, that which marks singular for one class marks plural for another class and vice versa.