| Description |
The Shoshoni language, as it is found in the small and fairly isolated speech community of interrelated individuals at Duckwat.er, Nevada, exhibits a great amount of variation. Even among the half dozen principal informants, much variation has been noted which, over and above the ever present idiosyncratic variations within languages, reflects both the historical changes which have occurred within the Shoshoni language and geographical and social distinctions which have linguistic manifestations. This variation manifests itself in the phonology, in the morphology, and in the discourse of the language as it is spoken at Duckwater. The phonology of Duckwater Shoshoni varies in different features from speaker to speaker both in respect to the degree of acculturation and the age of the speaker and in respect to the aboriginal "dialect" area of the speaker. |
