Language isolate of southern Louisiana, US
Chitimacha
(
CHIT
-i-m?-
SHAH
[4]
or
chit-i-
MAH
-sh?
,
[5]
Sitimaxa
[6]
) is a
language isolate
historically spoken by the
Chitimacha
people of
Louisiana
, United States. It became extinct in 1940 with the death of the last fluent speaker, Delphine Ducloux.
Although no longer spoken, it is fairly extensively documented in the early 20th-century work (mostly unpublished) of
linguists
Morris Swadesh
[7]
[8]
and
John R. Swanton
. Swadesh in particular wrote a full grammar and dictionary, and collected numerous texts from the last two speakers, although none of this is published.
Language revitalization
efforts are underway to teach the language to a new generation of speakers.
[9]
[10]
[11]
Tribal members have received
Rosetta Stone
software for learning the language. As of 2015, a new Chitimacha dictionary is in preparation, and classes are being taught on the Chitimacha reservation.
[12]
Classification
[
edit
]
Chitimacha has recently been proposed to be related to, or a member of, the hypothetical
Totozoquean language family
.
[13]
An automated computational analysis (
ASJP
4) by Muller et al. (2013) found lexical similarities between Chitimacha,
Huave
, and
Totozoquean
.
[14]
However, since the analysis was automatically generated, the grouping could be either due to mutual lexical borrowing or genetic inheritance.
An earlier, more speculative, proposal suggested an affinity with the also hypothetical group of
Gulf languages
.
[13]
Phonology
[
edit
]
Brown, Wichmann, and Beck (2014) give the following phoneme inventory based on
Morris Swadesh
's 1939 analysis.
[15]
Orthography
[
edit
]
Transcription has been done by researchers in a number of orthographies, including French, Spanish,
[16]
and Americanist.
[17]
Members of the Chitimacha tribe have developed a practical orthography using the Latin alphabet which does not use diacritics
[17]
or special characters.
[18]
It retains elements of the orthography earlier used by Morris Swadesh.
[18]
Grammar
[
edit
]
Chitimacha has a grammatical structure which is not dissimilar from modern Indo-European languages but it is still quite distinctive. Chitimacha distinguishes several word classes: verbs, nouns, adjectives (verbal and nominal), quantifiers, demonstratives. Swadesh (1946) states that the remaining word classes are hard to distinguish but may be divided "into proclitics, postclitics, and independent particles". Chitimacha has auxiliaries which are inflected for tense, aspect and mood, such as
to be
. Polar interrogatives may be marked with a final falling intonation and a clause final post-position.
Chitimacha does not appear to have adopted any grammatical features from their interactions with the French, Spanish or Americans.
[19]
Pronouns
[
edit
]
Verbs are inflected for person and number of the subject. Ambiguity may be avoided by the use of the personal pronouns (shown in the table below), but sentences without personal pronouns are common. There is no
gender
in the personal pronouns and verbal indexes. Subject and object personal pronouns are identical.
|
singular
|
plural
|
1st person
|
qix
[?i?]
|
qux
[?u?]
|
2nd person
|
him(q)
[him?]
|
was
[was]
|
3rd person
|
hus
[hus]
|
hunks
[hunks]
|
[20]
|
Pronouns are more restricted than nouns when appearing in a possessive construction. Pronouns cannot be proceeded by a possessive unlike nouns.
Nouns
[
edit
]
There are definite
articles
in Chitimacha.
[21]
Nouns are mostly uninflected; there are only approximately 30 nouns (mostly kinship or referring to persons) which distinguish a singular or plural form through a plural suffix or other formations.
Nouns are free, or may be possessed by juxtaposing the possessor and the possessed noun.
- ?i? ?in??i
= my father ("I father")
- was ?asi ?in??i
= that man's father ("that man father")
Sample sentences
[
edit
]
The following sentences and translations are from the book "Modern Chitimacha (Sitimaxa)" (2008), endorsed by the Chitimata Tribal government's Cultural Department.
[22]
Qix susbi qix gampi n? gaptk, huupup cuug, huutanki nahpiig, gastank hup naxmiig cuug, juqunk kamcin getiki.
Qix susbi qix gampi n? gaptk, huupup cuug, huutanki nahpiig, gastank hup naxmiig cuug, juqunk kamcin getiki
My gun my ammunition and taking, lake+to going, boat-in over-crossing north to hunting going, soon deer I+struck
"Taking my gun and my ammunition and going toward the lake, I crossed over in a boat and hunted toward the north, where I soon killed a deer."
We nux gaptk, him susbi wey hix hi kaat?miig, wetk naxmiig cuucuux, qaxtkanki qoonak qun kun getsuy.
We nux gaptk, him susbi wey hix hi kaat?miig, wetk naxmiig cuucuux, qaxtkanki qoonak qun kun getsuy
That stone taking, your gun that with thither rubbing, then hunting if+you+go, then soon some thing you+will+kill
"If you take that stone and rub your gun with it and then go hunting, you will soon kill something."
Hana hup cuyqi, n?ncuu waaksti hi qehiqi.
Hana hup cuyqi, n?ncuu waaksti hi qehiqi
House to he+went too late thither he+arrived
"He went to the house, but he arrived too late."
References
[
edit
]
- ^
Chitimacha
at
Ethnologue
(18th ed., 2015)
(subscription required)
- ^
Fogelson, Raymond; Sturtevant, William C.
Handbook of North American Indians
. Vol. 14: Southeast. Government Printing Office.
ISBN
978-0-16-087616-5
.
- ^
Hieber, Daniel W. (July 27, 2015).
"Renaissance on the Bayou: The Revival of a Lost Language"
.
The Conversation
. Archived from
the original
on July 28, 2015.
- ^
Brightman, Robert A. (2004). "Chitimacha". In Sturtevant, William (ed.).
Handbook of North American Indians
. Vol. 14: Southeast. p. 642.
- ^
Waldman, Carl (2009).
Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes
. Infobase.
ISBN
978-1438110103
.
- ^
Granberry, Julian (2008). "7".
Modern Chitimacha (Sitimaxa)
(2nd ed.). Munchen: LINCOM Europa.
ISBN
978-3895863523
.
Called Sitimaxa by its speakers - 'Language of Many Waters,' the lanuguage has been spoken since time immemorial in southern Louisiana along the Gulf Coast from the Mississippi River Delta West to the Texas border.
- ^
Swadesh, Morris
(1948). "Sociologic Notes on Obsolescent Languages".
International Journal of American Linguistics
.
14
(4): 226?235.
doi
:
10.1086/464009
.
JSTOR
1262876
.
S2CID
144458026
.
- ^
Swadesh, M. (1934). "The phonetics of Chitimacha".
Language
.
10
(4): 345?362.
doi
:
10.2307/409490
.
JSTOR
409490
.
- ^
"YouTube ? Chitimacha Language Episode ? Finding Our Talk 3"
.
youtube.com
. Retrieved
January 26,
2010
.
[
dead YouTube link
]
- ^
"Press Release, Media Room, Rosetta Stone"
. Archived from
the original
on October 20, 2017
. Retrieved
August 26,
2012
.
- ^
Larry Abramson (Director) (February 2, 2010).
"Software Company Helps Revive 'Sleeping' Language"
.
All Things Considered - NPR
. Retrieved
August 26,
2012
.
- ^
Heflin, Judy (August 2015).
"The Successful Revival of the Chitimacha Language"
.
Language Magazine
. Retrieved
October 3,
2015
.
- ^
a
b
Brown, Cecil H.; Wichmann, Søren; Beck, David (2014). "Chitimacha: A Mesoamerican language in the Lower Mississippi valley".
International Journal of American Linguistics
.
80
(4): 425?474.
doi
:
10.1086/677911
.
S2CID
145538166
.
- ^
Muller, Andre; Velupillai, Viveka; Wichmann, Søren; et al. (October 2013).
"ASJP World Language Trees of Lexical Similarity"
. 4.
- ^
Swadesh, Morris (1939). "Chitimacha grammar, texts and vocabulary" (Document). Philadelphia: Franz Boas Collection of Materials for American Linguistics, American Philosophical Society. Mss.497.3.B63c G6.5.
- ^
Nathalie, Dajko; Walton, Shana (2019).
Language in Louisiana: Community and Culture
.
University Press of Mississippi
.
ISBN
978-1-4968-2386-1
.
OCLC
1137797868
.
- ^
a
b
Hieber, Daniel W. (2019).
"Semantic Alignment in Chitimacha"
.
International Journal of American Linguistics
.
85
(3): 313?363.
doi
:
10.1086/703239
.
ISSN
0020-7071
.
S2CID
198714798
.
- ^
a
b
Dagostino, Carmen; Mithun, Marianne; Rice, Keren, eds. (2023).
The Languages and Linguistics of Indigenous North America A Comprehensive Guide
.
DeGruyter
.
doi
:
10.1515/9783110600926
.
ISBN
978-3-11-059798-1
.
- ^
Swadesh, Morris (1946). "Chitimach". In Hoijer, Harry (ed.).
Linguistic structures of native America
. New York: Viking Fund. pp. 312?336.
- ^
Granberry, Julian (2008). "5. Sitimaxa Particles".
Modern Chitimacha (Sitimaxa)
. Munchen: LINCOM Europa. p. 86.
- ^
Kaufman, David V. (2014).
The Lower Mississippi Valley as a Language Area
(Doctoral dissertation). University of Kansas.
- ^
Granberry, Julian (2008). "Sample Siximaxa Sentences".
Modern Chitimacha (Sitimaxa)
. Munchen: LINCOM Europa. pp. 101?104.
Further reading
[
edit
]
- Brown, Cecil H.; Wichmann, Søren; Beck, David (2014). "Chitimacha: a Mesoamerican language in the Lower Mississippi Valley".
International Journal of American Linguistics
.
80
(4): 425?474.
doi
:
10.1086/677911
.
JSTOR
10.1086/677911
.
S2CID
145538166
.
- "Chitimacha Language and the Chitimacha Indian Tribe (Chitamacha, Chetimacha, Shetimasha)"
.
Native Languages
. Retrieved
August 26,
2012
.
- Swanton, John Reed (1919).
A structural and lexical comparison of the Tunica, Chitimacha, and Atakapa languages
. Govt. Printing Office
. Retrieved
August 25,
2012
.
- Toomey, Thomas Noxon (1914).
Relationships of the Chitimachan Linguistic Family
. Hervas Laboratories
. Retrieved
August 25,
2012
.
External links
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]
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Language families
and isolates
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Proposed groupings
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Lists
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