The Cupeño language is an extinct Uto-Aztecan language, once spoken by the Cupeño people of southern California, United States. Roscinda Nolasquez (d. 1987) was the last native speaker of Cupeño. The Cupeño people now speak English. The native name Kupangaxwicham means 'people from the sleeping place', referring to their traditional homeland, prior to 1902, of Ktipa (at the base of Warner's Hot Springs). A smaller village was located to the south of Ktipa, named Wildkalpa. Throughout the 1890s, there was debate over whether the Cupeño people should be allowed to continue living on traditional Cupeño territory. After many years of public protests, the California Supreme Court decided to relocate the Cupeño people to the Pala Reservation. Cupeño shows linguistic influence from both the languages that preceded it and the Yuman-speaking Ipai, who share their southern border.

Region

The language was originally spoken in Cupa, Wilaqalpa, and Paluqla, located in San Diego County, California, and later around the Pala Indian Reservation.

Morphology

Cupeño is an agglutinative language, where words use suffix complexes for a variety of purposes with several morphemes strung together. It is dominantly head-final, with a mostly strict word order (SOV) for some constituents, such as genitive-noun constructions. However, in certain contexts, there is flexibility in the word order, allowing verbs to be shifted to the initial part of a sentence or arguments to follow verbs.

Nouns

Nouns, as well as demonstratives, determiners, quantifiers, and adjectives, in Cupeño are marked for case and number and agree with each other in complex nominal constructions.

Verbs

Cupeño inflects its verbs for transitivity, tense, aspect, mood, person, number, and evidentiality. Evidentiality in Cupeño is expressed with clitics, typically appearing near the beginning of the sentence: =kuʼut 'reportative' (mu=kuʼut 'and it is said that...') =am 'mirative' =$he 'dubitative' There are two inflected moods, realis =pe and irrealis =eʼp.

Tense-Aspect system

Future simple verbs remain unmarked. Past simple verbs include past-tense pronouns, while past imperfect verbs add the imperfect modifier as shown below.

Pronouns

The pronominals in Cupeño manifest in various forms and structures. The following are only attached to past-tense verbs.

Phonology

Vowels

and primarily occur in Spanish loanwords but also serve as allophones of in native Cupeño words. can be realized as in closed syllables and as in some open syllables. may reduce to a schwa in unstressed syllables. also appears as when long and stressed, after labials and, and as before. is also realized as before uvulars.

Consonants

Lexicon