Pre-contact distribution of Muskogean languages

Muskogean (also Muskhogean, Muskogee) is a language family of the Southeastern United States. The Muskogean languages are generally divided into two rough branches, Eastern and Western, though these distinctions are the subject of some debate. They are agglutinative languages. Download high resolution version (762x696, 155 KB) Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Download high resolution version (762x696, 155 KB) Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Muskogee or Muscogee can refer to: the Creek people, an American Indian people originally from Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama, later relocated to Oklahoma their Creek language, or more broadly any of the Muskogean languages the ghost town of Muscogee, Florida the city of Muskogee, Oklahoma Muscogee County, Georgia Muskogee County... Regional definitions vary from source to source. ... It has been suggested that Agglutination be merged into this article or section. ...

Family division

The Muskogean family has been subdivided into two competing genetic trees. The traditional classification is from Mary Haas and her students. A more recent and controversial classification has been proposed by Pamela Munro. Mary Rosamund Haas (born January 12, 1910; died May 17, 1996) was an American linguist who specialized in North American Indian languages, Thai, and historical linguistics. ... Pamela Munro is a linguist at UCLA. She specializes in American Indian languages, including Chickasaw. ...

A vocabulary of the Houma may be another under-documented Western Muskogean language or a version of Mobilian Jargon. Mobilian Jargon is a pidgin based on Western Muskogean. This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... Mobilian Jargon was a pidgin trade language used as a lingua franca among Native American groups living along the Gulf of Mexico around the time of European settlement of the region. ...

Haas

I. Western Muskogean

1. Chickasaw

2. Choctaw (a.k.a. Chahta, Chacato)

II. Eastern Muskogean The Chickasaw language (Chikashshanompa, IPA ) is a Native American language of Muskogean family. ... The Choctaw language, traditionally spoken by the Native American Choctaw people of the southeastern United States, is a member of the Muskogean family. ...

A. Central Muskogean

i. Apalachee-Alabama-Koasati group

a. Alabama-Koasati

3. Alabama

4. Koasati

b. Apalachee

5. Apalachee

ii. Hitchiti-Mikasuki

6. Hitchiti-Mikasuki

B. Creek

7. Creek

The Alabama language is a Native American language, spoken by the Alabama-Coushatta tribe of Texas. ... The Koasati language is a Native American language of Muskogean stock. ... Approximate area of the Apalachee culture region. ... The Mikasuki language (also Miccosukee or Hitchiti-Mikasuki) is a Muskogean language spoken by around 500 people in southern Florida. ... The Creek language, also known as Muscogee (Mvskoke in Creek), is a Muskogean language spoken by the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and Seminole Indians in Florida and Oklahoma. ...

Munro

I. Northern Muskogean

1. Creek/Seminole

II. Southern Muskogean The Creek language, also known as Muscogee (Mvskoke in Creek), is a Muskogean language spoken by the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and Seminole Indians in Florida and Oklahoma. ... The Seminole are a Native American Indian people of Florida. ...

A. Southwestern Muskogean group

i. Apalachee

2. Apalachee

ii. Alabama-Koasati

3. Alabama

4. Koasati

iii. Western Muskogean

5. Chickasaw

6. Choctaw

B. Hitchiti-Mikasuki group

7. Hitchiti/Mikasuki

Approximate area of the Apalachee culture region. ... The Alabama language is a Native American language, spoken by the Alabama-Coushatta tribe of Texas. ... The Koasati language is a Native American language of Muskogean stock. ... The Chickasaw language (Chikashshanompa, IPA ) is a Native American language of Muskogean family. ... The Choctaw language, traditionally spoken by the Native American Choctaw people of the southeastern United States, is a member of the Muskogean family. ... Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... The Mikasuki language (also Miccosukee or Hitchiti-Mikasuki) is a Muskogean language spoken by around 500 people in southern Florida. ...

Genetic relationships

Muskogean languages have been tentatively linked by some to Natchez, a language isolate of Lousiana. This relationship is not considered proven, however, and most linguists still consider Natchez to not be demonstrably related to any other language. The languages are also linked to Native Americans in the South Carolina area, specifically the Yamasee of the Low Country^{[citation needed]}. Natchez is a city located in Adams County, Mississippi. ... A language isolate, in the absolute sense, is a natural language with no demonstrable genealogical (or genetic) relationship with other living languages; that is, one that has not been demonstrated to descend from an ancestor common to any other language. ... The Yamasee were a Muskogean Native American tribe that lived in coastal region of present-day northern Florida and southern Georgia near the Savannah River. ...

Family features

Phonology

Muskogean languages have relatively simple phonologies compared to many other Native American languages. Proto-Muskogean is reconstructed as having the phonemes^[1]:

The phonemes reconstructed by Mary Haas as */x/ and */xʷ/ show up as /h/ and /f/ (or /ɸ/), respectively, in all Muskogean languages; they are therefore reconstructed by some as */h/ and */ɸ/. */kʷ/ appears as /b/ in all the daughter languages except Creek, where it is /k/ initially and /p/ medially. The value of the proto-phoneme written <θ> is unknown; it appears as /n/ in Western Muskogean languages and as /ɬ/ in Eastern Muskogean languages. Mary Haas reconstructed it as a voiceless /n/, that is, */n̥/. Labials are consonants articulated either with both lips (bilabial articulation) or with the lower lip and the upper teeth (labiodental articulation). ... Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli (the sockets) of the superior teeth. ... Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate (the middle part of the roof of the mouth). ... Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate (the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum). ... A labiovelar consonant is a consonant made with two blockages, one at the lips (labial) and the other at the soft palate (velar). ... A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. ... Affricate consonants begin as stops (most often an alveolar, such as or ) but release as a fricative (such as or or, in a couple of languages, into a fricative trill) rather than directly into the following vowel. ... Fricatives (or spirants) are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. ... Laterals are L-like consonants pronounced with an occlusion made somewhere along the axis of the tongue, while air from the lungs escapes at one side or both sides of the tongue. ... A nasal consonant is produced when the velum—that fleshy part of the palate near the back—is lowered, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. ... The Creek language, also known as Muscogee (Mvskoke in Creek), is a Muskogean language spoken by the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and Seminole Indians in Florida and Oklahoma. ...

Nouns

Most family languages display lexical accent on nouns, as well as grammatical case which distinguishes the nominative from the oblique. Nouns do not obligatorially inflect for gender or number. In grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun indicates its grammatical function in a greater phrase or clause; such as the role of subject, of direct object, or of possessor. ...

Verbs

Muskogean verbs have a complex ablaut system wherein the verbal stem changes depending on aspect (almost always), and less commonly depending on tense or modality. In Muskogean linguistics, the different forms are known as "grades". In linguistics, the term ablaut (from German ab- in the sense down, reducing + Laut sound) designates a system of vowel gradations in Proto-Indo-European and its far-reaching consequences in all of the modern Indo-European languages. ...

Verbs mark for first and second person, as well as agent and patient (Choctaw also marks for dative). Third-persons (he, she, it) have a null-marker.

Plurality of a noun agent is marked by either 1) affixation on the verb or 2) an innately plural verbal stem.

Example (pluralization via affixation, Choctaw)

 ishimpa ish-impa 2SG.NOM-eat "you [sg.] eat" hashimpa hash-impa 2PL.NOM-eat "you [pl.] eat" 

Example (innately-numbered verbal stems, Mikasuki)

 łiniik run. SG "to run (singular)" palaak run. PAUCAL "to run (several)" mataak run. PL "to run (many)" 

References

External links

• Paper on Roots of Muskogean languages (discusses classifications)
• Ethnologue: Muskogean

Bibliography

• Booker, Karen. (2005). "Muskogean Historical Phonology." In Hardy and Scancarelli 2005, pp. 246-298.
• Campbell, Lyle. (1997). American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509427-1.
• Goddard, Ives (Ed.). (1996). Languages. Handbook of North American Indians (W. C. Sturtevant, General Ed.) (Vol. 17). Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution. ISBN 0-16-048774-9.
• Haas, Mary. (1973). The southeast. In T. A. Sebeok (Ed.), Linguistics in North America (part 2, pp. 1210-1249). The Hauge: Mouton.
• Hardy, Heather, and Janine Scancarelli. (2005). Native Languages of the Southeastern United States. University of Nebraska Press.
• Mithun, Marianne. (1999). The languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-23228-7 (hbk); ISBN 0-521-29875-X.
• Sebeok, Thomas A. (Ed.). (1973). Linguistics in North America (parts 1 & 2). Current trends in linguistics (Vol. 10). The Hauge: Mouton. (Reprinted as Sebeok 1976).
• Sturtevant, William C. (Ed.). (1978-present). Handbook of North American Indians (Vol. 1-20). Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution. (Vols. 1-3, 16, 18-20 not yet published).