Choctaw | |
---|---|
Chahta anumpa | |
Native to | United States |
Region | From Southeastern Oklahoma, to east-central Mississippi and into Louisiana and Tennessee |
Ethnicity | 20,000 Choctaw (2007) [1] |
Native speakers | 9,600 (2015 census) [1] |
Muskogean
| |
Official status | |
Official language in | ![]() ![]() |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-2 | cho |
ISO 639-3 | cho |
Glottolog | choc1276 |
ELP | Choctaw |
![]() Current geographic distribution of the Choctaw language | |
![]() Distribution of Native American languages in Oklahoma | |
People | Chahta |
---|---|
Language | Chahta anumpa |
Country | Chahta Yakni |
The Choctaw language (Choctaw: Chahta anumpa [2] ), spoken by the Choctaw, an Indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands, US, is a member of the Muskogean language family. Chickasaw is a separate but closely related language to Choctaw. [3]
The Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma published the New Choctaw dictionary in 2016.
There are three dialects of Choctaw (Mithun 1999):
Other speakers live near Tallahassee, Florida, and with the Koasati in Louisiana, and also a few speakers live in Texas and California.
Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
central | lateral | |||||
Nasal | m | n | ||||
Stop 1 | p b | t | k | ʔ 2 | ||
Affricate | ch [ tʃ ] | |||||
Fricative | f | s 3 | ɬ | sh [ ʃ ] 3 | h | |
Approximant | l | y [ j ] | w |
Short 1 | Long | Nasal 2 | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
tense | lax | |||
Close front | i | ɪ | iː | ĩː~ẽː |
Close-mid back | o | ʊ | oː | õː |
Open central | a | ə | aː | ãː |
Syllable | Type | Example |
---|---|---|
V | Light | a.bih |
CV | Light | no.sih |
VV | Heavy | ii.chih |
CVV | Heavy | pii.ni' |
V | Heavy | a.chi' |
CV | Heavy | ta.chi' |
VC | Heavy | ish.ki' |
CVC | Heavy | ha.bish.ko' |
VVC | Super Heavy | óok.cha-cha |
CVVC | Super Heavy | náaf.ka |
VC | Super Heavy | at |
CVC | Super Heavy | ok.hish |
*(C)VCC | Super Heavy | tablit.tapt |
*CCV | Super Heavy | ski.tii.nnih |
Choctaw verbs display a wide range of inflectional and derivational morphology. In Choctaw, the category of verb may also include words that would be categorized as adjectives or quantifiers in English. Verbs may be preceded by up to three prefixes and followed by as many as five suffixes. In addition, verb roots may contain infixes that convey aspectual information.
The verbal prefixes convey information about the arguments of the verb: how many there are and their person and number features. The prefixes can be divided into three sorts: agreement markers, applicative markers, and anaphors (reflexives and reciprocals). The prefixes occur in the following order: agreement-anaphor-applicative-verb stem.
The agreement affixes are shown in the following chart. The only suffix among the personal agreement markers is the first-person singular class I agreement marker /-li/. Third-person is completely unmarked for class I and class II agreement arguments and never indicates number. [20]
person markers | class I | class II | class III | class N | imperative | ||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
+s | +C | +V | +C/i | +a/o | +C | +V | +C | +V | +C | +V | |||
first-person | singular | initial | -li | sa- | si- | a̱- | am- | ak- | n/a | ||||
medial | -sa̱- | -sam- | |||||||||||
paucal | ii- | il- | pi- | pi̱- | pim- | kii- | kil- | ||||||
plural | hapi- | hapi̱- | hapim- | ||||||||||
second-person | singular | is- | ish- | chi- | chi̱- | chim- | chik- | ∅ | |||||
plural | has- | hash- | hachi- | hachi̱- | hachim- | hachik- | ho- | oh- | |||||
third-person | ∅ | ∅ | i̱- | im- | ik- |
Some authors (Ulrich 1986, Davies, 1986) refer to class I as actor or nominative, class II as patient or accusative and class III as dative. Broadwell prefers the neutral numbered labels because the actual use of the affixes is more complex. This type of morphology is generally referred to as active–stative and polypersonal agreement.
Class I affixes always indicate the subject of the verb. Class II prefixes usually indicate direct object of active verbs and the subject of stative verbs. Class III prefixes indicate the indirect object of active verbs. A small set of stative psychological verbs have class III subjects; an even smaller set of stative verbs dealing primarily with affect, communication and intimacy have class III direct objects.
As the chart above shows, there is no person-number agreement for third person arguments. Consider the following paradigms:
DIRECT OBJECT SUBJECT | first-person | second-person | third-person | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
singular | paucal | plural | singular | plural | |||
first-person | singular | ili-habli-li-tok 1 'I kicked myself' | pi-habli-li-tok 'I kicked us (few)' | hapi-habli-li-tok 'I kicked us (all)' | chi-habli-li-tok 'I kicked you' | hachi-habli-li-tok 'I kicked you (pl.)' | habli-li-tok 'I kicked her/him/it/them' |
plural | ii-sa-habli-tok 'we kicked me' | il-ili-habli-tok 1 'we kicked ourselves' | ii-chi-habli-tok 'we kicked you' | ii-hachi-habli-tok 'we kicked you (pl.)' | ii-habli-tok 'we kicked her/him/it/them' | ||
second-person | singular | is-sa-habli-tok 'you kicked me' | ish-pi-habli-tok 'you kicked us (few)' | ish-hapi-habli-tok 'you kicked us (all)' | ish-ili-habli-tok 1 'you kicked yourself' | ish-hachi-habli-tok 'ýou kicked you (pl.)' | ish-habli-tok 'you kicked her/him/it/them' |
plural | has-sa-habli-tok 'you (pl.) kicked me' | hash-pi-habli-tok 'you (pl.) kicked us (few)' | hash-hapi-habli-tok 'you (pl.) kicked us (all)' | hash-chi-habli-tok 'you (pl.) kicked you' | hash-ili-habli-tok 1 'you (pl.) kicked yourselves' | hash-habli-tok 'you (pl.) kicked her/him/it/them' | |
third-person | sa-habli-tok 'she/he/it/they kicked me' | pi-habli-tok 'she/etc. kicked us (few)' | hapi-habli-tok 'she/etc. kicked us (all)' | chi-habli-tok 'she/etc. kicked you' | hachi-habli-tok 'she/etc. kicked you (pl.)' | habli-tok "she/etc. kicked her/him/it/them" ili-habli-tok 1 'she/etc. kicked herself/etc.' | |
Transitive active verbs seemingly with class III direct objects:
When a transitive verb occurs with more than one agreement prefix, I prefixes precede II and III prefixes:
Ii-
1P.I-
chi-
2S.II-
pi̱sa
see⟨NGR⟩
-tok
-PT
'We saw you.'
Ish-
2S.I-
pim-
1P.III-
anooli
tell
-tok.
-PT
'You told us.'
For intransitive verbs, the subjects of active verbs typically have class I agreement. Because third-person objects are unmarked, intransitive active verbs are indistinguishable in form from transitive active verbs with a third-person direct object.
The subjects of stative verbs typically have II agreement. A small set of psychological verbs have subjects with class III agreement. [21]
Baliili
run
-li
-1S.I
-tok
-PT
'I ran.'
Sa-
1S.II-
niya
fat
-h.
-TNS
'I am fat.'
A̱-
1S.III-
ponna
skilled
-h.
-TNS
'I am skilled.'
The set of agreement markers labelled N above is used with negatives. [22] Negation is multiply marked, requiring that an agreement marker from the N set replace the ordinary I agreement, the verb appear in the lengthened grade (see discussion below), and that the suffix /-o(k)-/ follow the verb, with deletion of the preceding final vowel. The optional suffix /-kii/ may be added after /-o(k)-/. Consider the following example:
Ak-
1S.N-
iiya
go⟨LGR⟩
-o
-NEG
-kii
-NEG
-ttook
-DPAST
'I did not go.'
Compare this with the affirmative counterpart:
Iya
go
-li
-1S.I
-ttook.
-DPAST
'I went'.
To make this example negative, the 1sI suffix /-li/ is replaced by the 1sN prefix /ak-/; the verb root iya is lengthened and accented to yield íiya; the suffix /-o/ is added, the final vowel of iiya is deleted, and the suffix /-kii/ is added.
Reflexives are indicated with the /ili-/ prefix, and reciprocals with /itti-/: [23]
Ili-
REFL-
pi̱sa
see⟨NGR⟩
-li
-1S.I
-tok.
-PT
'I saw myself'.
The following examples show modal and tense suffixes like /-aachii̱/ 'irrealis'(approximately equal to future), /-tok/ 'past tense', /-h/ 'default tenses': [24]
Baliili
run
-h.
-TNS
'She runs.'
Baliili
run
-aachi̱
-IRR
-h.
-TNS
'She will run.'
There are also suffixes that show evidentiality, or the source of evidence for a statement, as in the following pair: [25]
Nipi
meat
awashli
fry
-hli
-FIRST:HAND
'She fried the meat.' (I saw/heard/smelled her do it.)
Nipi
meat
awashli
fry
-tok
-PT
-a̱sha
-GUESS
'She fried the meat.' (I guess)
There are also suffixes of illocutionary force which may indicate that the sentence is a question, an exclamation, or a command: [26]
Awashli
fry
-tok
-PT
-o̱
-Q
'Did she fry it?'
Chahta
Choctaw
si-
1S.II-
a
be
-h
-TNS
-okii
-EXCL
'I'm Choctaw!' or 'I certainly am a Choctaw!'
Choctaw verb stems have various infixes that indicate their aspect. [27] These stem variants are traditionally referred to as 'grades'. The table below shows the grades of Choctaw, along with their main usage.
Name of Grade | How it is formed | When it is used |
---|---|---|
n-grade | infix n in the next to last (penultimate) syllable; put accent on this syllable | to show that the action is durative (lasts some definite length of time) |
l-grade | put accent on next to last (penultimate) syllable; lengthen the vowel if the syllable is open | before a few common suffixes, such as the negative /-o(k)/ and the switch-reference markers /-cha/ and /-na/ |
hn-grade | insert a new syllable /-hV̱/ after the (original) next to last (penultimate) syllable. V̱ is a nasalized copy of the vowel that precedes it. | to show that the action of the verb repeats |
y-grade | insert -Vyy- before the next to last (penultimate) syllable | to show delayed inception |
g-grade | formed by lengthening the penultimate vowel of the stem, accenting the antepenultimate vowel, and geminating the consonant that follows the antepenult. | to show delayed inception |
h-grade | insert -h- after the penultimate vowel of the stem. | to show sudden action |
Some examples that show the grades follow:
In this example the l-grade appears because of the suffixes /-na/ 'different subject' and /-o(k)/ 'negative':
lowa
burn
-t
-SS
taaha
complete⟨LGR⟩
-na
-DS
falaama
return
-t
-SS
ak-
1S.N-
iiya-
go⟨LGR⟩
o
-NEG
-kii
-NEG
-ttook
-DPAST
'... (the school) burned down and I didn't go back.'
The g-grade and y-grade typically get translated into English as "finally VERB-ed":
Taloowa
sing
-h
-TNS
'He sang.'
Tálloowa
sing⟨GGR⟩
-h
-TNS
'He finally sang.'
The hn-grade is usually translated as 'kept on VERBing':
Ohó̱ba
rain⟨HNGR⟩
-na
-DS
nittak
day
pókkooli
ten
oshta
four
-ttook
-DPAST
'It kept on raining for forty days.'
The h-grade is usually translated "just VERB-ed" or "VERB-ed for a short time":
Nóhsi
sleep⟨HGR⟩
-h
-TNS
'He took a quick nap.
Nouns have prefixes that show agreement with a possessor. [28] Agreement markers from class II are used on a lexically specified closed class of nouns, which includes many (but not all) of the kinship terms and body parts. This is the class that is generally labeled inalienable.
sa-
1S.II-
noshkobo
head
'my head'
chi-
2S.II-
noshkobo
head
'your head'
noshkobo
head
'his/her/its/their head'
sa-
1S.II-
ishki
mother
'my mother'
chi-
2S.II-
ishki
mother
'your mother'
Nouns that are not lexically specified for II agreement use the III agreement markers:
a̱-
1S.III-
ki'
father
'my father'
am-
1S.III-
ofi
dog
'my dog'
Although systems of this type are generally described with the terms alienable and inalienable, this terminology is not particularly appropriate for Choctaw, since alienability implies a semantic distinction between types of nouns. The morphological distinction between nouns taking II agreement and III agreement in Choctaw only partly coincides with the semantic notion of alienability.
Choctaw nouns can be followed by various determiner and case-marking suffixes, as in the following examples, where we see determiners such as /-ma/ 'that', /-pa/ 'this', and /-akoo/ 'contrast' and case-markers /-(y)at/ 'nominative' and /-(y)a̱/ 'accusative': [29]
alla
child
nakni
male
-m
-that
-at
-NOM
'that boy (nominative)'
Hoshi
bird
-at
-NOM
itti
tree
chaaha
tall
-m
-that
-ako̱
-CNTR:ACC
o̱-
SUPE-
biniili
sit
-h
-TNS
'The bird is sitting on that tall tree.' (Not on the short one.)
The last example shows that nasalizing the last vowel of the preceding N is a common way to show the accusative case.
O̱ba
rain
-tok
-PT
'It rained.'
niya
fat
-h
-TNS
'She/he/it is fat, they are fat.'
Pi̱sa-
see⟨NGR⟩
tok
-PT
'She/he/it/they saw her/him/it/them.'
When there is an overt subject, it is obligatorily marked with the nominative case /-at/. Subjects precede the verb
hoshi
bird
-at
-NOM
apa
eat
-tok
-PT
'The birds ate them.'
When there is an overt object, it is optionally marked with the accusative case /-a̱/
hoshi
bird
-at
-NOM
sho̱shi
bug
(-a̱)
-(ACC)
apa
eat
-tok.
-PT
'The birds ate the bugs.'
The Choctaw sentence is normally verb-final, and so the head of the sentence is last.
Some other phrases in Choctaw also have their head at the end. Possessors precede the possessed noun in the Noun Phrase:
ofi
dog
hohchifo
name
'the dog's name'
Choctaw has postpositional phrases with the postposition after its object:
tamaaha
town
bili̱ka
near
'near a town'
The written Choctaw language is based upon the English version of the Roman alphabet and was developed in conjunction with the "civilization program" of the United States, a program to westernize and forcefully assimilate Indigenous Americans, particularly those adhering to what were to become the Five Civilized Tribes (of which the Choctaw are a part) into Anglo-American Culture and Sympathies during the early 19th century. Although there are other variations of the Choctaw alphabet, the three most commonly seen are the Byington (Traditional), Byington/Swanton (Linguistic), and Modern (Mississippi Choctaw).
Many publications by linguists about the Choctaw language use a slight variant of the "modern (Mississippi Choctaw)" orthography listed here, where long vowels are written as doubled. In the "linguistic" version, the acute accent shows the position of the pitch accent, rather than the length of the vowel.
The discussion of Choctaw grammar below uses the linguistic variant of the orthography.
Some common Choctaw phrases (written in the "Modern" orthography):
Other Choctaw words:
Counting to twenty:
At "Native Nashville" web , there is an Online Choctaw Language Tutor, with Pronunciation Guide and four lessons: Small Talk, Animals, Food and Numbers.
Ganda or Luganda is a Bantu language spoken in the African Great Lakes region. It is one of the major languages in Uganda and is spoken by more than 5.56 million Baganda and other people principally in central Uganda, including the country's capital, Kampala. Typologically, it is an agglutinative, tonal language with subject–verb–object word order and nominative–accusative morphosyntactic alignment.
Madí—also known as Jamamadí after one of its dialects, and also Kapaná or Kanamanti (Canamanti)—is an Arawan language spoken by about 1,000 Jamamadi, Banawá, and Jarawara people scattered over Amazonas, Brazil.
Crow is a Missouri Valley Siouan language spoken primarily by the Crow Nation in present-day southeastern Montana. The word Apsáalooke translates to "Children of the Large Beaked Bird", which was later incorrectly translated into English as 'Crow'. It is one of the larger populations of American Indian languages with 4,160 speakers according to the 2015 US Census.
Koasati is a Native American language of Muskogean origin. The language is spoken by the Coushatta people, most of whom live in Allen Parish north of the town of Elton, Louisiana, though a smaller number share a reservation near Livingston, Texas, with the Alabama people. In 1991, linguist Geoffrey Kimball estimated the number of speakers of the language at around 400 people, of whom approximately 350 live in Louisiana. The exact number of current speakers is unclear, but Coushatta Tribe officials claim that most tribe members over 20 speak Koasati. In 2007, the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana, in collaboration with McNeese State University and the College of William and Mary, began the Koasati (Coushatta) Language Project as a part of broader language revitalization efforts with National Science Foundation grant money under the Documenting Endangered Languages program.
The Tunica or Luhchi Yoroni language is a language isolate that was spoken in the Central and Lower Mississippi Valley in the United States by Native American Tunica peoples. There are no native speakers of the Tunica language, but there were 32 second-language speakers in 2017, and as of 2023, there are 60 second-language speakers.
The Wariʼ language is the sole remaining vibrant language of the Chapacuran language family of the Brazilian–Bolivian border region of the Amazon. It has about 2,700 speakers, also called Wariʼ, who live along tributaries of the Pacaas Novos river in Western Brazil. The word wariʼ means "we!" in the Wariʼ language and is the term given to the language and tribe by its speakers.
Seneca is the language of the Seneca people, one of the Six Nations of the Hodinöhsö꞉niʼ ; it is an Iroquoian language, spoken at the time of contact in the western part of New York. While the name Seneca, attested as early as the seventeenth century, is of obscure origins, the endonym Onödowáʼga꞉ translates to "those of the big hill." About 10,000 Seneca live in the United States and Canada, primarily on reservations in western New York, with others living in Oklahoma and near Brantford, Ontario. As of 2022, an active language revitalization program is underway.
Comanche is a Uto-Aztecan language spoken by the Comanche, who split from the Shoshone soon after the Comanche had acquired horses around 1705. The Comanche language and the Shoshoni language are quite similar, but certain consonant changes in Comanche have inhibited mutual intelligibility.
Eastern Pomo, also known as Clear Lake Pomo, is a nearly extinct Pomoan language spoken around Clear Lake in Lake County, California by one of the Pomo peoples.
The Yimas language is spoken by the Yimas people, who populate the Sepik River Basin region of Papua New Guinea. It is spoken primarily in Yimas village, Karawari Rural LLG, East Sepik Province. It is a member of the Lower-Sepik language family. All 250-300 speakers of Yimas live in two villages along the lower reaches of the Arafundi River, which stems from a tributary of the Sepik River known as the Karawari River.
Ixcatec is a language spoken by the people of the Mexican village of Santa María Ixcatlan, in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca. The Ixcatec language belongs to the Popolocan branch of the Oto-manguean language family. It is believed to have been the second language to branch off from the others within the Popolocan subgroup, though there is a small debate over the relation it has to them.
Khwarshi is a Northeast Caucasian language spoken in the Tsumadinsky-, Kizilyurtovsky- and Khasavyurtovsky districts of Dagestan by the Khwarshi people. The exact number of speakers is not known, but the linguist Zaira Khalilova, who has carried out fieldwork in the period from 2005 to 2009, gives the figure 8,500. Other sources give much lower figures, such as Ethnologue with the figure 1,870 and the latest population census of Russia with the figure 1,872. The low figures are because many Khwarshi have registered themselves as being Avar speakers, because Avar is their literary language.
The Nukak language is a language of uncertain classification, perhaps part of the macrofamily Puinave-Maku. It is very closely related to Kakwa.
Arbore is an Afro-Asiatic language spoken by the Arbore people in southern Ethiopia in a few settlements of Hamer woreda near Lake Chew Bahir.
This article is about the sound system of the Navajo language. The phonology of Navajo is intimately connected to its morphology. For example, the entire range of contrastive consonants is found only at the beginning of word stems. In stem-final position and in prefixes, the number of contrasts is drastically reduced. Similarly, vowel contrasts found outside of the stem are significantly neutralized. For details about the morphology of Navajo, see Navajo grammar.
Pech or Pesh is a Chibchan language spoken in Honduras. It was formerly known as Paya, and continues to be referred to in this manner by several sources, though there are negative connotations associated with this term. It has also been referred to as Seco. There are 300 speakers according to Yasugi (2007). It is spoken near the north-central coast of Honduras, in the Dulce Nombre de Culmí municipality of Olancho Department.
Highland Oaxaca Chontal, or Chontal de la Sierra de Oaxaca, is one of the Chontal languages of Oaxaca, Mexico. It is sometimes called Tequistlatec, but is not the same as Tequistlatec proper, which is extinct.
Khroskyabs is a Gyalrongic language of China. It is called Guanyinqiao in Ethnologue after a town in western Sichuan where one dialect of the language is spoken, Thugsrje Chenbo. It has been referred to as Lavrung in previous publications.
Matlatzinca, or more specifically San Francisco Matlatzinca, is an endangered Oto-Manguean language of Western Central Mexico.[3] The name of the language in the language itself is pjiekak'joo.[4] The term "Matlatzinca" comes from the town's name in Nahuatl, meaning "the lords of the network." At one point, the Matlatzinca groups were called "pirindas," meaning "those in the middle."[5]
Swahili is a Bantu language which is native to or mainly spoken in the East African region. It has a grammatical structure that is typical for Bantu languages, bearing all the hallmarks of this language family. These include agglutinativity, a rich array of noun classes, extensive inflection for person, tense, aspect and mood, and generally a subject–verb–object word order.