Grammatical Sketch of the Tohono O'odham Language

Abstract

This work serves as a grammatical sketch of the Tohono O'odham language, a Uto-Aztecan language belonging to the people native to southern Arizona and north-west Mexico. This thesis is not a comprehensive grammar of the O’odham language, but rather focuses on specific linguistic elements of phonetics, phonology, morphology, and syntax. This thesis includes: [1] a phonemic inventory of O’odham phonemes and a brief explanation of how these phonemes interact in various positions, [2] a general understanding of the important roles pronouns and auxiliaries serve such as aspect, number, and person, [3] the derivational properties of nouns and verbs, and how noun and verb phrases are modified–similar to the roles of adjectives and adverbs, [4] a review of basic principles of sentence structure, and [5] a glossed text that demonstrates many of the features discussed herein. Glossed examples are included where useful and an entire glossed text is provided in the appendix. For further studies, there are additional O’odham language resources and materials available including multiple dictionaries, a pedagogical grammar, and numerous scholarly articles. The progression and availability of some of these resources is discussed in chapter 1. Unless otherwise stated, the data and vocabulary in the examples are provided by Zepeda (1983).