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Loup | |
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Nipmuck | |
Pronunciation | [lu] loo |
Native to | United States |
Region | Massachusetts, Connecticut |
Ethnicity | likely Nipmuck |
Extinct | 18th century |
transcribed with Latin script | |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | Either: xlo – Loup A xlb – Loup B |
xlo Loup A | |
xlb Loup B | |
Glottolog | loup1243 Nipmuck loup1245 Loup B |
Loup is a term which refers to the Algonquian language varieties spoken in colonial New England as attested in the manuscripts of mid-eighteenth century French missionaries. [1] It was attested in a notebook titled Mots loups (literally translating to "wolf words"), compiled by Jean-Claude Mathevet, a priest who worked among Algonquian peoples, composing of 124 pages. [2] Loup ('Wolf') was a French colonial ethnographic term, and usage was inconsistent. In modern literature, Loup A refers to the varieties described by Mathevet, and Loup B refers to those described by François-Auguste Magon de Terlaye. [1]
Linguist Ives Goddard identified three distinct language varieties each attested in the Loup A and Loup B manuscripts. The languages of Loup A are referred to as Loup 1, Loup 2, and Loup 3; the languages of Loup B are referred to as Loup 4, Loup 5, and Loup 6. According to Goddard, Loup 3 and Loup 4 are the same language. [1]
On the basis of morphophonological comparisons with other Algonquian languages and ethnogeographic context, Goddard identifies the five Loup languages with particular bands of the Pocumtuck Confederacy [1] :
The phonology of Loup A [1] (Nipmuck), reconstructed by Gustafson 2000:
Bilabial | Alveolar | Palatal/ Postalveolar | Velar | Glottal | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
plain | pal. | plain | lab. | ||||
Nasal | m | n | |||||
Plosive | p | t | tʲ | k | ( kʷ ) | ||
Affricate | tʃ | ||||||
Fricative | s | h | |||||
Lateral | l | ||||||
Approximant | w | j |
Front | Back | |
---|---|---|
Close | i , iː | u |
Mid | e | o , oː |
Open | a , aː , ã |
The vowel sounds likely have the same phonetic quality as other southern New England Algonquian languages. The short vowels /ioea/ may represent the sounds as [ɪ], [ʊ], [ɛ,ə], and [ʌ], while the long vowels /iː/, /oː/, and /ã/ correspond to /i/, /o/, and /ã/. [2] [3]