Chickasaw (language)

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Chikashsha Chikashshanompa '

Spoken in

United States
speaker approx. 75
Linguistic
classification
Language codes
ISO 639 -1

-

ISO 639 -2 ( B ) nai ( T ) cic

The Chickasaw or Chikashsha (from the Chickasaw Chikashshanompa - "language of the Chickashsha" called), (German outdated Tschikasa ), is a North American Indian language from the family of the Muskogee languages . It is agglutinating and follows the pattern of subject-object-verb. The language is closely related to the Choctaw and is mostly understood, if not always. Chickasaw is spoken by the Chickasaw people who now live in southeast Oklahoma around the city of Ada, Oklahoma .

Lute

Consonants

The Chikasha has 16 consonants . In the table below the consonants are written in orthography . The phonetic description of each consonant is written to the right of each orthographic letter in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) if the orthography differs from the IPA symbol.

labial Alveolar Post
alveolar 		Velar Glottal
Bilabial Labio-
dental 		Central consonant Lateral consonant
Plosives p b   t     k '[ʔ]
Affricates ch [ʧ]    
Fricatives   f s lh [ɬ] sh [ʃ]   H
Nasals m   n        
Approximants w     l y [j]    
  • w is labiovelar .
  • Voiceless plosives p , t , k are puff [pʰ, tʰ, kʰ] , especially at the beginning of a word.

Vowels

The Chikasha has 9 vowels :

front   back
short
(oral) 		long,
oral vowel 		long,
nasal vowel 		short
(oral) 		long,
oral vowel 		long,
nasal vowel 		short
(oral) 		long,
oral vowel 		long,
nasal vowel
Closed vowel i ii [iː] i̱ [ĩː]   O oo [oː] o̱ [õː]
Open vowel   a aa [aː] a̱ [ãː]  

The Chikasha vowels differ in length and nasality . Short vowels are centralized: the short “i” is phonetically [ɪ] , the short o is phonetically [o̟] and the short a is phonetically [ə] .

Short vowels are also elongated phonetically if they appear in the second syllable as a sequence of several open syllables . For example, the word sahashaa is phonetically [sahaˑʃaː] . The extended short vowel is usually between a short and a long vowel in length. However, the phonetic implementation varies with the different speakers and also with the phonetic environment. The extension never happens at the end of the word and is also restricted by certain morphological criteria (Gordon et al., 2000).

grammar

verb

Pronominal affixes

Verbs (e.g. subject , direct object, indirect object ) are denoted by pronominal affixes (prefixes and suffixes) that are added to the verb. The pronominal affixes are aligned with number and person .

The Chikasha has an active-tripod-pronominal system with two basic series of pronouns: an active series (I) and a tripod series (II). In addition, the Chikasha has dative (III), negative (N) and reciprocal (IR) series.

The active series is used for active intransitive subjects and active transitive subjects. The active series is shown in the following table:

active
Singular Plural
1st person -li il- / ii-
2nd person ish- hash
3rd person -

There is no affix in the 3rd person and normally no distinction is made between singular and plural. The 1st person singular affix is ​​a suffix while the other affixes are prefixes. The 1st person plural has two forms: il- which is used before vowels and ii- which is used before consonants - hence il-iyya “we go”, ii-malli “we jump”. An example of the verb malli "to jump" is shown below (underlined with the pronominal affixes):

Active affixes indicating subjects
Singular Plural
1st person malli li "I jump" ii malli "we jump"
2nd person ish malli "you jump" hash malli "You jump"
3rd person malli "he, she, it jumps / they jump"

The tripod series (II) is shown below. This series is used to display intransitive tripod subjects and direct tripod objects:

tripod
Singular Plural
1st person sa- po-
2nd person chi- hachi-
3rd person -

Example with intransitive tripod subjects, lhinko "being fat":

Tripod affixes indicating subjects
Singular Plural
1st person sa lhinko "I'm fat" po lhinko "We are fat"
2nd person chi lhinko "you are fat" hachi lhinko "You are fat"
3rd person lhinko "he, she, it's fat / they are fat"

Example with direct objects, pisa “to look at (someone)” (the subject in the paradigm below is marked because it is in the 3rd person):

Tripod affixes that indicate direct objects
Singular Plural
1st person sa pisa "He, she, it looks at me" po pisa "He, she, it looks at us"
2nd person chi pisa "He, she, it looks at you" hachi pisa "He, she, it looks at you"
3rd person pisa "he, she, it looks at him, she, at it"

Active and tripod affixes can occur together, namely if the active affix designates the active subject and the tripod affix designates the direct object. Active prefixes come before tripod prefixes. If ish- "active 2nd person singular" comes before sa- "tripod 1st person singular", issa- (the sh assimilation to s ) results . Likewise, hash- "active 2nd person plural" + sa- results as hassa- . " Look at" the full paradigm of pisa below:

Active and tripod affixes together
Verb form Translation Morpheme segmentation
hachipisali "I'm looking at you" hachi-pisa-li
pisali "I look at them (singular)" pisa-li
iichipisa "We look at you" ii-chi-pisa
iihachipisa "We look at you" ii-hachi-pisa
iipisa "We look at them (singular)" ii-pisa
issapisa "You look at me" ish-sa-pisa
ishpopisa "You are looking at us" ish-po-pisa
ishpisa "You look at them (singular)" ish-pisa
hassapisa "You look at me" hash-sa-pisa
hashpopisa "You are looking at us" hash-po-pisa
hashpisa "You look at them (singular)" hash-pisa
sapisa "She looks at me" sa-pisa
popisa "She looks at us" po-pisa
chipisa "She looks at you" chi-pisa
hachipisa "She looks at you" hachi-pisa
pisa "She looks at you (singular)" pisa

Verb degrees

      foyopa 'to breathe'
      fóyyo'pa 'give a sign of consent'
      foyohómpa 'to be breathed' (progressive form)
      foyámpa 'Breathe' (progressive form) (at the same time as another action)

literature

  • Matthew Gordon: A phonological and phonetic study of word-level stress in Chickasaw . In: International Journal of American Linguistics , 70 (1), 2004, pp. 1-32.
  • Matthew Gordon, Pamela Munro, Peter Ladefoged: Some phonetic structures of Chickasaw . In: Anthropological Linguistics , 42, 2000, pp. 366-400.
  • Matthew Gordon, Munro, Pamela, Peter Ladefoged: Chickasaw (Illustrations of the IPA) . In: Journal of the International Phonetic Association , 31 (2), 2001, pp. 287-290.
  • Pamela Munro, C. Willmond: Chickasaw: An analytical dictionary . University of Oklahoma Press, Norman 1994.
  • Chikasa . In: Meyers Konversations-Lexikon . 4th edition. Volume 15, Verlag des Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig / Vienna 1885–1892, p. 888.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Chickasaws Are On the Move . Linguistics Society of America Committee on Endangered Languages ​​and their Preservation. Retrieved April 9, 2012.