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Muskogean languages
Language family of Southeast US From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Muskogean (/məˈskoʊɡiən/ mə-SKOH-ghee-ən; also Muskhogean) is a language family spoken in the Southeastern United States. Members of the family are Indigenous Languages of the Americas. Typologically, Muskogean languages are highly synthetic and agglutinative. One documented language, Apalachee, is no longer spoken, and the remaining languages are critically endangered.
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Genetic relationships
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Family division
The Muskogean family consists of Alabama, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee (or Creek), Koasati, Apalachee, and Hitchiti-Mikasuki.[1] Hitchiti is generally considered a dialect of Mikasuki.[2] "Seminole" is sometimes used for a dialect of Muscogee spoken in Oklahoma.[3]
The major subdivisions of the family have long been controversial, but the following lower-level groups are universally accepted: Choctaw–Chickasaw, Alabama–Koasati, Hitchiti–Mikasuki, and Muscogee.[4][5][6] Apalachee is no longer spoken; its precise relationship to the other languages is uncertain, but Mary Haas and Pamela Munro both classify it with the Alabama–Koasati group.[7]
Haas's classification
For connections among these groupings, one influential classification is that of Mary Haas and Karen Booker, in which "Western Muskogean" (Choctaw-Chickasaw) is seen as one major branch, and "Eastern Muskogean" (Alabama-Koasati, Hitchiti-Mikasuki, and Muscogee) as another. Within Eastern Muskogean, Alabama-Koasati and Hitchiti-Mikasuki are generally thought to be more closely related to each other than to Muscogee.[8] That classification is reflected in the list below:[9][10][11]
- Muskogean
Munro's classification
A different classification has been proposed by Pamela Munro. In her classification, the languages are divided into a "Southern Muskogean" branch (Choctaw-Chickasaw, Alabama-Koasati, and Hitchiti-Mikasuki) and a "Northern Muskogean" one (Muscogee). Southern Muskogean is then subdivided into Hitchiti-Mikasuki and a "Southwestern Muskogean" branch containing Alabama-Koasati and "Western Muskogean" (Choctaw-Chickasaw).[8] The classification is reflected in the list below:[12]
Broader relationships
Possible Muskogean languages
Several sparsely attested languages have been claimed to be Muskogean languages. George Broadwell suggested that the languages of the Yamasee and Guale were Muskogean.[13][14] However, William Sturtevant argued that the "Yamasee" and "Guale" data were Muscogee and that the language(s) spoken by the Yamasee and Guale people remain unknown.[15] It is possible that the Yamasee were an amalgamation of several different ethnic groups and did not speak a single language. Chester B. DePratter describes the Yamasee as consisting mainly of speakers of Hitchiti and Guale.[16] The historian Steven Oatis also describes the Yamasee as an ethnically mixed group that included people from Muskogean-speaking regions, such as the early colonial-era native towns of Hitchiti, Coweta, and Cussita.[17]
The Amacano, Chacato, Chine, Pacara, and Pensacola people, who lived along the Gulf Coast of Florida from the Big Bend Coast to Pensacola Bay, are reported to have spoken the same Muskogean language, which may have been closely related to Choctaw.[18][19][20][21]
Sparse evidence indicates that a Muskogean language was spoken by at least some of the people of the paramount chiefdom of Cofitachequi in northeastern South Carolina. If so, that would be the most eastern outpost of Muskogean. The people of Cofitichequi were probably absorbed by nearby Siouan and Iroquoian speakers in the late 17th century.[22]
A vocabulary of the Houma may be another underdocumented Western Muskogean language or a version of Mobilian Jargon, a pidgin based on Western Muskogean.
Gulf
The best-known connection proposed between Muskogean and other languages is Mary Haas' Gulf hypothesis, in which she conceived of a macrofamily comprising Muskogean and a number of language isolates of the southeastern US: Atakapa, Chitimacha, Tunica, and Natchez. While well-known, the Gulf grouping is now generally rejected by historical linguists.[13][23] Some Muskogean scholars continue to believe that Muskogean is related to Natchez.[24]
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Features
Nouns
Nouns in Muskogean languages may take prefixes indicating the person and number of a possessor. Noun phrases may be marked for grammatical case, with a distinction between subjects (nominative case) and nonsubjects (oblique case). Some Muskogean languages have affixes indicating plural nouns (generally human nouns) or groups.
Verbs
Muskogean verbs are highly synthetic, with affixes for tense, aspect, person, number, direction, and mood. While case marking is nominative–accusative, person marking is active–stative, with separate series of agent, patient, and indirect object person markers.
Verbs have a complex system of ablaut indicating aspect. In Muskogean linguistics, the different forms are known as "grades" or "themes".[25]
All the languages make use of suppletive verbs indicating the number of the subject in an intransitive verb or the number of the direct object in a transitive verb.
Innately-numbered verbal stems, Mikasuki:[26]
haca:l-om
stand.SG.SBJ
"(one) is standing"
loko:k-om
stand.DU
"(two) stand"
loko:ka:c-om
stand.PL
"(three or more) stand"
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Vocabulary
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Below is a list of basic vocabulary in five Muskogean languages from Broadwell (1992):[27]
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Proto-language
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Phonology
Proto-Muskogean is reconstructed as having the consonants (given in IPA transcription):[28]
The phonemes reconstructed by Haas as */x/ and */xʷ/ show up as /h/ and /f/ (or /ɸ/[29]), respectively, in all Muskogean languages;[30] they are therefore reconstructed by some as */h/ and */ɸ/.[12][31] */kʷ/ appears as /b/ in all the daughter languages except Muscogee for which it is /k/ initially and /p/ medially. The value of the proto-phoneme conventionally written ⟨θ⟩ (or ⟨N⟩) is unknown;[32] it appears as /n/ in Western Muskogean languages and as /ɬ/ in Eastern Muskogean languages. Haas reconstructed it as a voiceless /n/ (that is, */n̥/), based partly on presumed cognates in Natchez.[12][33]
Lexicon
Proto-Muskogean lexical reconstructions by Booker (2005) are as follows.
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Notes
External links
Bibliography
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