John Dedrick, who lived and worked among the Yaquis for more than thirty years, shares his extensive knowledge of the language, while Uto-Aztecan specialist Eugene Casad helps put the material in a comparative perspective."--Jacket

Ute is a Uto-Aztecan language of the northernmost (Numic) branch, currently spoken on three reservations in western Colorado and eastern Utah. Like many other native languages of Northern America, Ute is severely endangered. This book is part of the effort toward its preservation. Typologically, Ute offers a cluster of intriguing features, best viewed from the perspective of diachronic change and grammaticalization. The book presents a comprehensive synchronic description of grammatical structures and their communicative functions, as well as a diachronic account of a grammar in the midst of change. The book is the first of a 3-volume series which also includes a collection of oral texts and a dictionary. Ute speakers and tribal members may find in the present volume a step-by-step description of how words are combined into meaningful communication. Linguists may find a detailed account of one language, an account that is unabashedly informed by universals of grammar, communication and change.

A study in historical linguistics of the presence of Semitic and Egyptian in the Uto-Aztecan language family, helping to explain various puzzles of linguisitics within Uto-Aztecan