Siouan(/ˈsuːən/SOO-ən) orSiouan–Catawbanis alanguage familyofNorth Americathat is located primarily in theGreat Plains,OhioandMississippivalleys and southeastern North America with a few other languages in the east.
| Siouan | |
|---|---|
| Siouan–Catawban | |
| Geographic distribution | centralNorth America |
| Linguistic classification | One of the world's primarylanguage families |
| Subdivisions |
|
| ISO 639-2/5 | sio |
| Linguasphere | 64-A |
| Glottolog | siou1252 |
 Pre-contact distribution of the Siouan–Catawban languages | |
Name
editAuthors who call the entire familySiouandistinguish the two branches asWestern SiouanandEastern Siouanor as "Siouan-proper" and "Catawban". Others restrict the name "Siouan" to the western branch and use the nameSiouan–Catawbanfor the entire family. Generally, however, the name "Siouan" is used without distinction.
Family division
editSiouan languages can be grouped intoWestern Siouan languagesandCatawban.
The Western Siouan languages are typically subdivided into Missouri River languages (such asCrowandHidatsa),Mandan,Mississippi River languages (such asDakota,Chiwere-Winnebago,andDhegihan languages), andOhio Valley Siouan languages(Ofo,Biloxi,andTutelo). TheCatawbanbranch consisting ofCatawbanandWoccon.
Charles F. Voegelinestablished, on the basis of linguistic evidence, thatCatawbanwas divergent enough from the other Siouan languages, including neighboring Siouan languages of the Piedmont and Appalachia, to be considered a distinct branch.[1]Voegelin proposes that Biloxi, Ofo and Tutelo consistute one group which he termsOhio Valley Siouan.This group includes various historical languages spoken by Siouan peoples not only in the Ohio River Valley, but across the Appalachian Plateau and into the Piedmont regions of present-day Virginia and the Carolinas. Some of these groups migrated or were displaced great distances following European contact, ending up as far afield as present-day Ontario and southern Mississippi. Collectively, Siouan languages of Appalachia and the Piedmont are sometimes grouped under the termTutelo,Tutelo-Saponi, or Yesah (Yesa:sahį)[2]as the language historically spoken by theMonacan,Manahoac,Haliwa-Saponi,andOccaneechipeoples.[3]
Proto-Siouan
edit| Proto-Siouan |
|---|
Proto-Siouan is thereconstructed ancestorof all modern Siouan languages.
Previous proposals
editThere is a certain amount ofcomparative workin Siouan–Catawban languages. Wolff (1950–51) is among the first and more complete works on the subject. Wolff reconstructed the system of proto-Siouan, and this was modified by Matthews (1958). The latter's system is shown below:
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | *p | *t | *k | *ʔ | |
| Fricative | *s | *ʃ | *x | *h | |
| Nasal | *m | *n | |||
| Approximant | *w | *r | *j |
With respect to vowels, five oral vowels are being reconstructed/*i,*e,*a,*o,*u/and threenasal vowels/*ĩ,*ã,*ũ/.Wolff also reconstructed some consonantal clusters/*tk,*kʃ,*ʃk,*sp/.
Current proposal
editCollaborative work involving a number of Siouanists started at the 1984 Comparative Siouan Workshop at the University of Colorado with the goal of creating a comparative Siouan dictionary that would include Proto-Siouan reconstructions.[4]This work yielded a different analysis of the phonemic system of Proto-Siouan, which appears below:[5]
Consonants
edit| Labial | Coronal | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | plain | *p | *t | *k | *ʔ | |
| glottalized | *pʼ | *tʼ | *kʼ | |||
| preaspirated | *ʰp | *ʰt | *ʰk | |||
| postaspirated | *pʰ | *tʰ | *kʰ | |||
| Fricative | plain | *s | *ʃ | *x | *h | |
| glottalized | *sʼ | *ʃʼ | *xʼ | |||
| Sonorant | *w | *r | *j | |||
| Obstruent | *W | *R | ||||
In Siouanist literature (e.g., Rankin et al. 2015),Americanist phonetictranscriptions are the norm, so IPA *ʃis Americanist *š, IPA *j is Americanist *y, and so on.
The major change to the previously-proposed system was accomplished by systematically accounting for the distribution of multiple stop series in modern Siouan languages by tracing them back to multiple stop series in the proto-language. Previous analysis posited only a single stop series.[6]
Many of the consonant clusters proposed by Wolff (1950–1951) can be accounted for due tosyncopationof short vowels before stressed syllables. For example, Matthews (1958: 129) gives *wróke as the proto-form for 'male.' With added data from a larger set of Siouan languages since the middle of the twentieth century, Rankin et al. (2015) give *waroː(-ka) as the reconstructed form for 'male.'
Unlike Wolff and Matthew's proposals, there are no posited nasal consonants in Proto-Siouan. Nasal consonants only arise in daughter languages when followed by a nasal vowel.[7] In addition, there is a set of sounds that represent obstruentized versions of their corresponding sonorants. These sounds have different reflexes in daughter languages, with *w appearing as [w] or [m] in most daughter languages, while *W has a reflex of [w], [b], [mb], or [p]. The actual phonetic value of these obstruents is an issue of some debate, with some arguing that they arise through geminated *w+*w or *r+*r sequences or a laryngeal plus *w or *r.[8]
Vowels
editPrevious work on Proto-Siouan only posited single vowel length. However,phonemic vowel lengthexists in several Siouan languages such asHidatsa,Ho-Chunk,andTutelo.Rankin et al. (2015) analyze numerous instances of long vowels as present due to common inheritance rather than common innovation. The five oral vowels and three nasal vowels posited by earlier scholars is expanded to include a distinction between short and long vowels. The proposed Proto-Siouan vowel system appears below:
| Front | Central | Back | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| short | long | short | long | short | long | ||
| High | oral | *i | *iː | *u | *uː | ||
| nasal | *ĩ | *ĩː | *ũ | *ũː | |||
| Mid | *e | *eː | *o | *oː | |||
| Low | oral | *a | *aː | ||||
| nasal | *ã | *ãː | |||||
External relations
editTheYuchiisolate may be the closest relative of Sioux–Catawban, based on both sound changes and morphological comparison.[9]
In the 19th century,Robert Lathamsuggested that the Siouan languages are related to theCaddoanandIroquoian languages.In 1931, Louis Allen presented the first list of systematic correspondences between a set of 25 lexical items in Siouan and Iroquoian. In the 1960s and 1970s,Wallace Chafefurther explored the link between Siouan and Caddoan languages. In the 1990s,Marianne Mithuncompared the morphology and syntax of all the three families. At present, thisMacro-Siouanhypothesis is not considered proven, and the similarities between the three families may instead be due to their protolanguages having been part of asprachbund.[10]
References
edit- ^Voegelin, C.F. (1941). "Internal Relationships of Siouan Languages".American Anthropologist.42(2): 246–249.doi:10.1525/aa.1941.43.2.02a00080.JSTOR662955.
- ^https:// yesasahin.org/
- ^Ryan M. Kasak. 2016. A distant genetic relationship between SiouanCatawban and Yuchi. In Catherine Rudin & Bryan J. Gordon (eds.), Advances in the study of siouan languages and linguistics, 5–39. Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI:10.17169/langsci.b94.120https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/id/be94144a-3e4f-4913-9089-2bcfe5bd0879/611691.pdf
- ^Rankin, Robert L., Carter, Richard T., Jones, A. Wesley, Koontz, John E., Rood, David S. & Hartmann, Iren (Eds.). (2015).Comparative Siouan Dictionary.Leipzig, Germany: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (Available online athttp://csd.clld.org,Accessed on 2015-12-13.)
- ^Rankin, Robert L., Carter, Richard T. & Jones, A. Wesley (n.d.).Proto-Siouan Phonology and Grammar.Ms. University of Kansas.
- ^Wolff, Hans (1950). "Comparative Siouan II".International Journal of American Linguistics.16(3): 113–121.doi:10.1086/464075.S2CID197656511.
- ^Some Siouan languages have however developed a phonemic contrast between the non-nasal sonorants w- and r- and the corresponding nasals m- and n-. These historical developments are presented in the following article: Michaud, Alexis;Jacques, Guillaume; Rankin, Robert L. (2012)."Historical Transfer of Nasality Between Consonantal Onset and Vowel: From C to V or from V to C?".Diachronica.29(2): 201–230.doi:10.1075/dia.29.2.04mic.S2CID53057252.
- ^Rankin, Robert L., Carter, Richard T. & Jones, A. Wesley. (n.d.).Proto-Siouan Phonology and Grammar.Ms. University of Kansas.
- ^Rudin, Catherine; Gordon, Bryan James (2016). "A distant genetic relationship between Siouan-Catawban and Yuchi".Advances in the study of Siouan languages and linguistics.Studies in Diversity Linguistics.doi:10.17169/LANGSCI.B94.118.ISSN2363-5568.
- ^Mithun, Marianne(1999).The languages of native North America.Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. p. 305.ISBN9780521232289.
Bibliography
edit- Parks, Douglas R.; & Rankin, Robert L. (2001). "The Siouan languages." In R. J. DeMallie (Ed.),Handbook of North American Indians: Plains(Vol. 13, Part 1, pp. 94–114). W. C. Sturtevant (Gen. Ed.). Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution.ISBN0-16-050400-7.
- Voegelin, C.F.(1941). "Internal Relationships of Siouan Languages".American Anthropologist.42(2): 246–249.doi:10.1525/aa.1941.43.2.02a00080.JSTOR662955.
Further reading
edit- Rudin, Catherine; Gordon, Bryan James (2016). Rudin, Catherine; Gordon, Bryan James (eds.).Advances in the study of Siouan languages and linguistics.Studies in Diversity Linguistics. Berlin: Language Science Press.doi:10.17169/langsci.b94.118.ISBN978-3-946234-37-1.
External links
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