Tübatulabal /təˈbɑːtələbɑːl/ is an Uto-Aztecan language, traditionally spoken in Kern County, California, United States.

Its origin is unclear, but it may be related to the noun stem tɨba- "pine nuts".

All stops and affricates are geminated in word-final position, regardless of the length of the preceding vowel.

Tübatulabal has predictable word stress, which is tied to morphological constituency and syllable weight.

Secondary stress is assigned right to left from the final syllable, falling on every other mora: Words with the form VːCVCV will be stressed as ˌVːCVˈCV: For the purposes of stress assignment, two identical short vowels that are separated only by a glottal stop are treated as a single vowel if and only if they belong to the same morpheme: There are three basic word types in Tübatulabal: verbs, nouns, and particles.

Particles have their own stems, but they have comparatively little inflection, whereas both verbs and nouns tend to be very morphologically complex.

Suffixes form a closed class and occur in a fixed order according to the word type.

Initial reduplication prefixes a copy of the first vowel of the stem (as well as any immediately following nasal), preceded by a fixed ʔ.

Some examples illustrate the reduplication process: Conjunction involves the combination of a particle with a word of another type.

According to Voegelin, the behavior of particles is similar to that of enclitics in other Uto-Aztecan languages but distinct enough from them that it should not be considered to be a kind of cliticization.

Transitivity change is indicated by the use of one (or more) of a number of derivational suffixes with which verbs are constructed.

They have a different effect depending on the inherent transitivity of the verb root, as well as the presence of other transitivity-changing morphology.

Relative nouns make a finer distinction between suus and ejus objects and genitives.

Nouns may be divided into three basic classes according to their stem shape and morphological behavior and sometimes according to their semantic contribution as well.

Morphemes belonging to the particle class are distinguished by the fact that they undergo little or no inflection and suffixation, unlike verbs and nouns.

The second-person conjunctive plural subject form may also syncopate, and medial vowel then shortens as well: -bum.

Possessive pronouns typically lean on the possessum: haniːnɨʔɨŋ "my house"; ʃɔːɔjin "his wife".

According to (Voegelin 1935, p. 185) harv error: no target: CITEREFVoegelin1935 (help), "Word-order in general is stylistic rather than obligatory."

In addition, the most important linguistic work on Tübatulabal, the original grammatical description of the language, (Voegelin 1935) harv error: no target: CITEREFVoegelin1935 (help) uses a somewhat different orthography.