Family division
Five languages belong to the Caddoan language family:
- Caddoan languages
- Caddo (2 speakers)
- Northern Caddoan
Kitsai and Wichita have no speakers left. Kitsai stopped being spoken in the 19th century when its members were absorbed into the Wichita tribe. Wichita stopped being spoken in 2016, when the last native speaker of Wichita, Doris McLemore (who left recordings and language materials), died.
All of the remaining Caddoan languages spoken today are severely endangered. As of 2007, both the Pawnee and Arikara languages only had 10 speakers, with the Caddo language only spoken by 2 (as of 2023). [1] Caddo and Pawnee are spoken in Oklahoma by small numbers of tribal elders. Arikara is spoken on the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota.
Prior to colonization and US expansion, speakers of Caddoan languages were more widespread. The Caddo, for example, lived in northeastern Texas, southwestern Arkansas, and northwestern Louisiana, as well as southeastern Oklahoma. The Pawnee formerly lived along the Platte River in what is now Nebraska.
Prehistory
Glottochronology is a controversial method of reconstructing, in broad detail, the history of a language and its relationships, though it may still provide useful insights and generalizations regarding a family's history. In the case of Proto-Caddoan, it appeared to have divided into two branches, Northern and Southern, more than 3000 years ago (The division of the language implies also a geographic and/or political separation).
South Caddoan, or Caddo proper, evolved in north-eastern Texas and adjacent Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Other than Caddo, no daughter languages are known, but some unrecorded ones likely existed in the 16th and the 17th centuries.
Northern Caddoan evolved into several different languages. The language that became Wichita, with several different dialects, branched off about 2000 years ago. Kitsai separated from the Northern Caddoan stem about 1200 years ago, and Pawnee and Arikara separated 300 to 500 years ago. [2]
External relations
Adai, a language isolate from Louisiana is known only from a 275-word list collected in 1804, and may be a Caddoan language, however documentation is too scanty to determine with certainty. [3] Adjacent to the Caddo lived the Eyeish or Ais—not to be confused with the Ais of Florida—who also spoke a language that may have been related to Caddoan. [4]
Some linguists believe that the Caddoan, Iroquoian, and Siouan languages may be connected in a Macro-Siouan language family, but their work is suggestive and the theory remains hypothetical. Similar attempts to find a connection with the Algonquian languages have been inconclusive. There is insufficient evidence for linguists to propose a hypothetical Macro-Algonquian/Iroquoian language family. [5]
The Indigenous languages of the Americas are the languages that were used by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas before the arrival of non-Indigenous peoples. Over a thousand of these languages are still used today, while many more are now extinct. The Indigenous languages of the Americas are not all related to each other; instead, they are classified into a hundred or so language families, as well as a number of extinct languages that are unclassified due to the lack of information on them.
The Caddo people comprise the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma, a federally recognized tribe headquartered in Binger, Oklahoma. They speak the Caddo language.
The Hasinai Confederacy was a large confederation of Caddo-speaking Native Americans who occupied territory between the Sabine and Trinity rivers in eastern Texas. Today, their descendants are enrolled in the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma and the Natchitoches Tribe of Louisiana.
The Iroquoian languages are a language family of indigenous peoples of North America. They are known for their general lack of labial consonants. The Iroquoian languages are polysynthetic and head-marking.
Mandan is an extinct Siouan language of North Dakota in the United States.
The Macro-Siouan languages are a proposed language family that includes the Siouan, Iroquoian, and Caddoan families. Most linguists remain unconvinced that these languages share a genetic relationship, and the existence of a Macro-Siouan language family remains a subject of debate.
In linguistic typology, active–stative alignment is a type of morphosyntactic alignment in which the sole argument ("subject") of an intransitive clause is sometimes marked in the same way as an agent of a transitive verb but other times in the same way as a direct object. Languages with active–stative alignment are often called active languages.
Muskogean is a Native American language family spoken in different areas of the Southeastern United States. Though the debate concerning their interrelationships is ongoing, the Muskogean languages are generally divided into two branches, Eastern Muskogean and Western Muskogean. Typologically, Muskogean languages are agglutinative. One documented language, Apalachee, is extinct and the remaining languages are critically endangered.
Adai is an extinct Native American language that was spoken in northwestern Louisiana.
Caddo is a Native American language, the traditional language of the Caddo Nation. It is critically endangered, with no exclusively Caddo-speaking community and as of 2023 only two speakers who had acquired the language as children outside school instruction, down from 25 speakers in 1997. Caddo has several mutually intelligible dialects. The most commonly used dialects are Hasinai and Hainai; others include Kadohadacho, Natchitoches and Yatasi.
The Pawnee language is a Caddoan language traditionally spoken by Pawnee Native Americans, currently inhabiting north-central Oklahoma. Historically, the Pawnee lived along the Platte River in what is now Nebraska.
Siouan or Siouan–Catawban is a language family of North America that is located primarily in the Great Plains, Ohio and Mississippi valleys and southeastern North America with a few other languages in the east.
The Kichai tribe was a Native American Southern Plains tribe that lived in Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma. Their name for themselves was K'itaish.
Marianne Mithun is an American linguist specializing in American Indian languages and language typology. She is a professor of linguistics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she has held an academic position since 1986.
Spiro Mounds is an Indigenous archaeological site located in present-day eastern Oklahoma. The site was built by people from the Arkansas Valley Caddoan culture. that remains from an American Indian culture that was part of the major northern Caddoan Mississippian culture. The 80-acre site is located within a floodplain on the southern side of the Arkansas River. The modern town of Spiro developed approximately seven miles to the south.
The Kitsailanguage is an extinct member of the Caddoan language family. The French first record the Kichai people's presence along the upper Red River in 1701. By the 1840s Kitsai was spoken in southern Oklahoma, but by the 1930s no native speakers remained. It is thought to be most closely related to Pawnee. The Kichai people today are enrolled in the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes, Waco and Tawakonie), headquartered in Anadarko, Oklahoma.
Arikara is a Caddoan language spoken by the Arikara Native Americans who reside primarily at Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota. Arikara is close to the Pawnee language, but they are not mutually intelligible.
Wallace Chafe was an American linguist. He was Professor Emeritus and research professor at The University of California, Santa Barbara.
The Eyeish were a Native American tribe from present-day eastern Texas.
Bidai is an unclassified extinct language formerly spoken by the Bidai people of eastern Texas. Zamponi (2024) notes that the numerals do not appear to be related to those of any other languages and hence proposes that Bidai may be a language isolate.
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