Taos is a language of the Tiwa branch of the Tanoan language family and is mainly spoken in the unincorporated community of Taos Pueblo and the city of Taos, both of them being in New Mexico.
Sociolinguistics
In data collected in 1935 and 1937, George L. Trager (1946) notes that Taos was spoken by all members of the Taos Pueblo community. Additionally, most speakers were bilingual in either Spanish or English: speakers over 50 years of age were fluent in Spanish, adult speakers younger than 50 spoke Spanish and English, children around 5 years old could speak English but not Spanish—generally a decrease in age correlated with a decrease in Spanish fluency and an increase in English fluency. Pre-school children and a few very old women were monolingual Taos speakers.
A more recent report by Gomez (2003) notes that the language "until a few years ago remained viable only in age groups of thirty and older", a sign that Taos is being affected by language endangerment pressures. Nonetheless, it is one of 46 languages in North America that are being spoken by significant numbers of children as of 1995 (Goddard 1996). The most recent estimate is from 1980 with about 800 native speakers out of 1600 ethnic population (50% of the population).
Taos speakers have historically been reluctant to provide linguists with language data to work with and have preferred to keep their language secret from outsiders. G. Trager had to work with his consultants in private and keep their identities in confidence.G. Trager's primary consultants in 1935 and 1937 were young men of about 30 years of age. The tendency for secrecy is a continuing general Pueblo reaction starting in the 17th century in large part due to the oppressive persecution (including public executions and torture) of Pueblo religious practices by the colonial Spanish. The Taos community has been particularly guarded about revealing their language (and culture) to outsiders when compared with other eastern pueblos in New Mexico.For example, the Taos degree of Indian "blood" averaged around 95% in 1972. In 1970 only one Spanish-American female and 23 non-Taos Indians were living in Taos Pueblo. See Bodine (1979) and Eggan (1979). Due to secrecy practices, the details of language preservation are not known outside of the community.
Language variation
George L. Trager found no dialectal variation in the 1930 and 1940s.
Genealogical relations
Taos belongs to a northern sub-grouping on the Tiwa branch of the Tanoan language family. It is closely related to and partly mutually intelligible with Picurís (spoken at Picuris Pueblo).Sources on mutual intelligibility report conflicting information. Mithun (1999): "they [Taos and Picuris] are close but generally considered mutually unintelligible". But, G. Trager (1969): "The facts that there are considerable phonological differences between the two languages [Taos and Picuris], but that the grammatical systems are very much alike and that mutual intelligibility still persists...". G. Trager (1946): "The two Tiwa groups [Northern Tiwa and Southern Tiwa] are fairly homogeneous: Sandía and Isleta [of the Southern Tiwa group] differ very little and are mutually completely intelligible; Taos and Picurís [of the Northern Tiwa group] diverge more from each other. Further, the group as a whole is very similar: Taos and Picurís are each intelligible to the other three, and Sandía and Isleta are understood in the north, though with difficulty". G. Trager (1943): "Taos and Picurís are much alike, and mutually understandable. Sandía and Isleta are almost identical. A speaker of the southern languages can manage to understand the northern two, but the reverse is not true." F. Trager (1971): "[Picuris] is most closely related to Taos; these two languages are in part mutually intelligible." Harrington (1910) observed that an Isleta person (Southern Tiwa) communicated in "Mexican jargon" with Taos speakers as Taos and Southern Tiwa were not mutually intelligible. It is slightly more distantly related to Southern Tiwa (spoken at Isleta Pueblo and Sandia Pueblo).
History In 1994, the Taos High school stopped teaching the language after the Pueblo Council objected to the language being taught.
In July 2012, Taos Pueblo, which "does not formally encourage persons outside the tribe to learn their language", hosted a Tiwa Language Festival for tribal members to keep Tiwa from "going to sleep". The Cultural Education Committee hoped to incorporate the Tiwa language into Head Start in the fall.
In 2019, the Tiwa language of Taos Pueblo is taught at Enos Garcia Elementary.
Phonology
According to one analysis, Taos has 18 consonants:This list of consonants rests on Trager (1948). A different analysis is in Trager (1946) (and earlier publications). Both can be compared in Taos phonology.
{|class="wikitable" style="text-align: center" |- ! colspan="2" rowspan="2" | ! rowspan="2" | Bilabial ! colspan="2" | Dental ! rowspan="2" | Alveolar ! rowspan="2" | Palatal ! rowspan="2" | Velar ! rowspan="2" | Glottal |-class=small ! ! median ! lateral |- ! rowspan="2" | Plosive ! voiced
! voiceless
! colspan="2" | Affricate
! colspan="2" | Fricative
! colspan="2" | Nasal
! colspan="2" | Approximant
! colspan="2" | Flap
| ()
The alveolar flap is found in loanwords from New Mexican Spanish.
Taos has six vowels—five of these have an oral-nasal contrast. Taos has five (native) vowel clusters (i.e. diphthongs).
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: center" |+ Oral Vowels ! ! colspan="2" | Front ! colspan="2" | Back |- style="font-size: small;" ! ! oral ! nasal ! oral ! nasal |- ! High | | į | | ų |- ! Mid | e | ę | ə
! Low | a | ą | o | ǫ
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: center" |+ Vowel clusters |- ! ! colspan="4" | Final component |- ! style="line-height: 1em;" | Initialcomponent ! e !! ę !! a !! o |- ! i | ie || – || ia || – |- ! į | – || įę || – || – |- ! u | – || – || – || uo |- ! ə | – || – || – || əo
Taos has three degrees of stress: primary, secondary, and unstressed, as well as three tones: high, mid, and low.
Transcription
Taos has been transcribed by Trager in Americanist phonetic notation. However, his transcription differs between his earlier work exemplified by Trager (1946) and his later work following and explained in Trager (1948). The following chart lists the symbolization of Taos phonemes in Trager (1946) and Trager (1948) and also a corresponding IPA symbolization. However, the chart only lists symbols that differ between the three—if Trager (1946), Trager (1948), and the IPA all use the same symbol it is not listed in the chart below.
{| class="wikitable" ! Trager 1946 !! Trager 1948 !! IPA |- | ʔ || ’ || |- | c || c || |- | c’ || c’ || (1946), (1948) |- | fr || phr || |- | g || g || |- | k’ || k’ || (1946), |- | kw || kw || (1946), (1948) |- | kw’ || kw’ || (1946), (1948) |- | ł || ł || |- | p’ || p’ || (1946), (1948) |- | p‛ || ph || (1946), (1948) |- | r || r || |- | s || s || |- | t’ || t’ || (1946), (1948) |- | t‛ || th || (1946), (1948) |- | xw || xw || (1946), (1948) |- | y || y ||
Both Trager (1946) and Trager (1948) use the same vowel symbolization. This symbols have roughly approximate values of corresponding IPA symbols except that the vowel transcribed as by Trager is phonetically IPA and in Trager's phonemic categorizing a low back vowel (with rounding details irrelevant to the categorization).
More different is Trager's two ways of transcribing tone and stress. The table below shows the differences on the syllable ta.
{| class="wikitable" ! Stress + Tone combination !! Trager 1946 !! Trager 1948 !! IPA |- | primary stress + mid tone || tˈa || tá || |- | secondary stress + mid tone || tˌa || tà || |- | primary stress + high tone || tá || ta̋ || |- | secondary stress + high tone || tá || tǎ || |- | primary stress + low tone || tà || tâ || |- | secondary stress + low tone || tà || tȁ || |- | unstressed || ta || ta ||
The conflation between primary + high and secondary + high as well as primary + low and secondary + low in Trager (1946) was due to the belief that they were in complementary distribution. Trager rescinded this view in Trager (1948) and onward. In Trager's terminology, primary stress is called "loud" stress, secondary stress is "normal", and unstressed is "weak".
The orthography used in this article is essentially that of Trager (1948) with one modification: Trager (1948: 158) mentioned that the glottal stop ’ was not written when word-initial in the practical orthography he was teaching his informants—this practice is followed here.
Grammar
Nouns
Taos nouns are inflected according to grammatical number with the number suffixes. Additionally, they may be inflected for possession with prefixes that indicate the number and grammatical person of the possessor as well as agreeing with the number of noun stem.
Number inflection
Nouns are generally composed of a noun stem with a following number suffix. The number suffixes distinguish between singular and plural. However, in verbs, three numbers are distinguished—singular, dual, and plural—because of this distinction in verbs the plural suffixes on nouns are more appropriately duoplural (Trager uses the term "nonsingular"). The singular suffix is ‑na and the duoplural suffix is ‑ne.
Two other number suffixes ‑ną and ‑nemą can express either singular number or duoplural depending upon the grammatical class of noun. For example, the noun stem cupa‑ "judge" is duoplural with the addition of ‑ną: cùpáną "judges". On the other hand, the noun stem t’awa‑ "wheel" is singular with the addition of ‑ną: t’áwaną "wheel". Examples with ‑nemą include ká‑nemą "mothers" (duoplural) and cí‑nemą "eye" (singular). Following the terminology used for other Tanoan languages, these will be called here "inverse" number suffixes.In Kiowa and Jemez linguistic studies these suffixes are known as "inverse number" suffixes. In this type of analysis nouns belong to grammatical classes which have a default grammatical number specification. The inverse suffixes change (or toggle) to a non‑default number. These inverse suffixes effectively indicate the grammatical number opposite the other suffix that appears on a given noun. Thus, since the stem p’iane‑ "mountain" requires the plural suffix ‑ne in the duoplural form (namely, p’íane‑ne "mountains"), the inverse ‑nemą marks the singular in p’íane‑nemą "mountain". And, likewise, since the stem cibiki‑ "robin" requires the singular suffix ‑na in the singular form (namely, cìbikí‑na "robin"), the inverse ‑ną marks the duoplural in cìbíki‑ną "robins".
Number classes
Taos nouns can be grouped into four grammatical classes based on which number affixes are required for the singular and duoplural inflectional forms. Trager calls these noun classes "genders". One class requires the singular suffix ‑na in the singular form and an inverse suffix in the duoplural. Another class requires an inverse suffix in the singular and the duoplural suffix ‑ne in the duoplural. A third class requires the singular and duoplural suffixes for the singular and duoplural forms, respectively. A fourth class only occurs with the duoplural suffix ‑ne. The first two classes, which use an inverse suffix, can be separated into two subclasses based on whether inverse ‑ną or ‑nemą is used. These are summarized in the following table.
{| class="wikitable" |- ! Class !! Singular !! Duoplural !! Examples |- ! rowspan="2" | I | rowspan="2" | ‑na | ‑ną || (cupa‑) cùpána "judge", cùpáną "judges"(kayu‑) kàyúna "maternal aunt", káyuną "maternal aunts" |- | ‑nemą || (ka‑) kána "mother", kánemą "mothers"(t’oy‑) t’óyna "person", t’óynemą "persons" |- ! rowspan="2" | II | ‑ną | rowspan="2" | ‑ne | (tawa‑) t’áwaną "wheel", t’áwane "wheels"(ciatu‑) cìatúną "legging", cìatúne "leggings" |- | ‑nemą || (ci‑) cínemą "eye", cíne "eyes"(xo‑) xónemą "arm", xóne "arms" |- ! III