Document Type
Article
Publication Date
4-2021
Abstract
Northern Paiute (ISO 639-3, pao) is a Numic language of the Western branch and represents the northwestern-most extent of the Uto-Aztecan family. The language is described as consisting of two major dialects and numerous subdialects. Nichols (1974) refers to the southern Northern Paiute dialect as Nevada Northern Paiute (NNP, historically also called Paviotso) and the northern variety represented here as Oregon Northern Paiute (ONP, which includes Bannock). Speaker estimates are somewhat anecdotal but generally fall within the 400–700 range. Speakers are unevenly distributed across various reservation communities of the northern Great Basin region of the western United States. Speakers of ONP outnumber speakers of NNP groups, and the majority of all fluent first-language speakers live on the Fort McDermitt reservation on the Oregon-Nevada border.
The texts included here come from two very distinct speech genres (a legend and a voicemail phone message) and two distinct generations of speakers hailing from different reservation communities (Burns, in southeastern Oregon, and Owyhee [Duck Valley], on the Idaho-Nevada border). Both speak varieties of ONP.
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Publication Information
Lewis, Ruth Hoodie and Thornes, Timothy. (2021). "Northern Paiute". International Journal of American Linguistics, 87(S1), S13-S25. https://doi.org/10.1086/712458
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