Chimariko is an extinct language isolate formerly spoken in northern Trinity County, California, by the inhabitants of several independent communities. Although the total area claimed by these communities was small, Victor Golla has argued for the recognition of three distinct local dialects: Trinity River Chimariko, spoken along the Trinity River from the mouth of South Fork at Salyer as far upstream as Big Bar, with a principal village at Burnt Ranch; South Fork Chimariko, spoken around the junction of South Fork and Hayfork Creek, with a principal village at Hyampom; and New River Chimariko, spoken along New River on the southern slopes of the Trinity Alps, with a principal village at Denny.
Proposals linking Chimariko to other languages in various versions of the hypothetical Hokan family have been advanced. Roland Dixon suggested a relationship between Chimariko and the Shastan and Palaihnihan families. Edward Sapir's famous grouped Chimariko together with the Shastan, Palaihnihan, Pomoan, Karuk, and Yana languages in a Hokan sub-grouping known as Northern Hokan. A "Kahi" family consisting of Chimariko, Shastan, Palaihnihan, and Karuk has been suggested. Most specialists currently find these relationships to be undemonstrated, and consider Chimariko to be best considered an isolate.
Stephen Powers collected the first word list from Chimariko speakers in 1875. Soon after, Jeremiah Curtin documented a substantial amount of information. Roland Dixon began work on the Chimariko language in the early 1900s, when there were few remaining speakers. Dixon worked with two: Mrs. Dyer and a man who was named Friday. While doing work with nearby Hupa, Edward Sapir collected data and also commented on the earlier Dixon work. Later, extensive documentation on the language was carried out by J.P. Harrington, who worked with Sally Noble, the last speaker of the language. None of this work has been published, but slides of all of Harrington's work can be viewed on the Smithsonian Institution's website. Harrington's assistant John Paul Marr also made recordings of the language with speaker Martha Zigler. George Grekoff collected previous works of linguistics intending to write a grammar, but died before it was completed. The last Chimariko speaker was Martha Ziegler, who died in the 1950s. According to Golla, bilingual Hupa-Chimariko speakers native to the South Fork of the Trinity River, Burnt Ranch and New Rivers areas, organized as the Tsnungwe Tribe, "[are] seeking federal acknowledgement, consider both Hupa and Chimariko to be their heritage languages but emphasize Hupa for purposes of cultural revitalization." There are no programs available to either teach or revitalize Chimariko from its current status of extinction.
The consonant inventory of Chimariko is as follows:
The vowel inventory of Chimariko is as follows:<br />
Chimariko shares syllabic similarities with other languages in Northern California. The most common syllable structures for Chimariko are CV and CVC, with the largest possible structures being CCVC or CVCC.
Because the documentary corpus of Chimariko was limited, the description of the grammar of the language was not complete. However, general observations were made.
Among the recorded grammatical characteristics are the following: Chimariko had reduplication in many nominal forms, particularly in the names of fauna (e.g., tsokoko-tci "bluejay", himimitcei "grouse"). Like many American languages (such as Shasta, Maidu, Wintun, as well as Shoshoni, Siouan, and Pomo), Chimariko verbs had a series of instrumental and body-part prefixes, indicating the particular body part or object with which an action was carried out. Instrumentals are attached at the beginning of the verb root and often occur with a suffix which indicates the motion in the verb, such as "up", "down", and "through".
Chimariko does not use numeral classifiers. Also lacking is a clear pattern to indicate control.
Noun incorporation is present in Chimariko. The verbs have prefixes, suffixes and a circumfix.
Verb templates:
According to Carmen Jany, "no other language has the exact same system as Chimariko". Chimariko uses both a decimal and quinary numeral systems. Numerals appear in noun phrases, do not take affixes (except for the determinative suffix ), can either follow or precede the noun, and can appear without a noun.
There are two demonstrative pronouns in Chimariko indicating "here" and "there". indicates here, or near the speaker, and indicates there, or a distance from the speaker. To indicate "this" and "that", the intensive suffix is added:
The modal system in Chimariko is abundant. Modal suffixes attach at the very end of a verb after all other suffixes are applied and generally do not occur with aspectual suffixes. The modal suffixes function as interrogatives, negatives, dubitatives, speculatives, conditionals, emphatics, potentials, potential futures, purposive futures, optatives, desideratives, imperatives, admonitives, intensives, inferentials, resultatives, and evidentials.
The research available indicates a variation in opinion about Chimariko's word order. Dixon claimed that usual word order is SVO or SOV, but in some cases the object precedes the subject, especially when the subject is pronominal. Jany claims that word order is not rigid but is mainly verb-final. The clauses are separated by brackets and the verbs are bolded in the following example:
Inside noun phrases, there is variation in order of modifiers and the noun; sometimes the noun comes before other elements of the phrase, sometimes after. When dealing with possession, the subject always precedes the object.
Chimariko has an agent/patient case system. For first persons, agent and patient are differentiated, and third persons are not. Person hierarchy in the argument structure is present as well where speech act participants are favored over third persons.
Chimariko differentiates alienable and inalienable possession. Alienable possessions such as objects and kinship are marked by suffix, while inalienable possessions such as body parts are marked by prefix, on the possessed.
Examples from JP Harrington field notes contrasting alienable and inalienable possession: 'my horn'(deer says) 'my horn' (Frank says)
In Chimariko, there is no grammatical complementation, however there are a few strategies to convey semantic complementation including separate clauses, verbal affixes, the use of attitude words, and using the desiderative 'to want'.
Complements with utterance predicates (separate clauses):
Desiderative âÂÂto wantâ with clausal arguments
In Chimariko, relativization can be done one of two ways â using a special verb suffix to form internally headed clauses, and or by a headless relative clause. There is a relative pronoun that is sometimes used. The following is an example given by Jany:
The relative clause is in brackets. is the head.
This table lists a few present-day locations in Chimariko territory.
<section begin="list-of-glossing-abbreviations"/><div style="display:none;"> A:agent DER:derivational DIR:directional </div><section end="list-of-glossing-abbreviations"/>