Golf languages

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The Gulf languages form a hypothetical North American language family made up of the Muskogee languages on the one hand and four extinct individual languages that were previously regarded as isolated , namely Natchez , Tunica , Atakapa and Chitimacha .

The Gulf languages ​​were proposed by Mary Haas (Haas 1951, 1952) as a language family, but this family could not be clearly identified by comparative linguistics  . Historical linguists such as Lyle Campbell (Campbell and Mithun 1979, Campbell 1997) mention the relationship as unproven, although some Muskogee linguists believe that the Muskogee languages ​​are at least related to Natchez (Campbell 1997: 305).

In any event, some specialists in Muskogee linguistics, including Mary Haas and Pamela Munro (Munro 1995), saw the hypothesis of a golf language family as promising; Haas said the closest related language of the Muskogee languages ​​would be Natchez, followed by Tunica, Atakapa and - more dubious - Chitimacha. One difficulty in verifying the hypothesis is the lack of accessible primary sources. Most of the notes on Chitimacha and Natchez are as yet unpublished and are in archives.

literature

  • Lyle Campbell : American Indian Languages. The Historical Linguistics of Native America (= Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics. 4). Oxford University Press, New York NY et al. 1997, ISBN 0-19-509427-1 .
  • Lyle Campbell, Marianne Mithun (Ed.): The Languages ​​of Native America. Historical and Comparative Assessment. University of Texas Press, Austin TX et al. 1979, ISBN 0-292-74624-5 .
  • Mary R. Haas : The Proto-Gulf word for water (with notes on Siouan-Yuchi). In: International Journal of American Linguistics. Vol. 17, No. 2, 1951, ISSN  0020-7071 , pp. 71-79, JSTOR 1263263 .
  • Mary R. Haas: The Proto-Gulf word for land (with notes on Proto-Siouan). In: International Journal of American Linguistics. Vol. 18, No. 4, 1952, pp. 238-240, JSTOR 1263321 .
  • Pamela Munro: Gulf and Yuki-Gulf. In: Anthropological Linguistics. Vol. 36, No. 2, 1994, ISSN  0003-5483 , pp. 125-222, JSTOR 30028292 .