The Algonquian languages ( or ; also Algonkian) are a subfamily of indigenous American languages that include most languages in the Algic language family. The name of the Algonquian language family is distinguished from the orthographically similar Algonquin dialect of the Indigenous Ojibwe language (Chippewa), which is a senior member of the Algonquian language family. The term ''Algonquin'' has been suggested to derive from the

Maliseet The Wəlastəkwewiyik, or Maliseet (, also spelled Malecite), are an Algonquian-speaking First Nation of the Wabanaki Confederacy. They are the indigenous people of the Wolastoq ( Saint John River) valley and its tributaries. Their territory ...

word (), "they are our relatives/allies". A number of Algonquian languages are considered extinct languages by the modern linguistic definition. Speakers of Algonquian languages stretch from the east coast of

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

to the Rocky Mountains. The proto-language from which all of the languages of the family descend,

Proto-Algonquian Proto-Algonquian (commonly abbreviated PA) is the proto-language from which the various Algonquian languages are descended. It is generally estimated to have been spoken around 2,500 to 3,000 years ago, but there is less agreement on where it was ...

, was spoken around 2,500 to 3,000 years ago. There is no scholarly consensus about where this language was spoken.

Family division

This subfamily of around 30 languages is divided into three groups according to geography: Plains,

Central Central is an adjective usually referring to being in the center of some place or (mathematical) object. Central may also refer to: Directions and generalised locations * Central Africa, a region in the centre of Africa continent, also known as ...

, and Eastern Algonquian; of these three, only Eastern Algonquian constitutes a true genetic subgroup. The languages are listed below, following the classifications of Goddard (1996) and Mithun (1999).

Extinct Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...

languages are marked with †, and endangered languages are noted as such. For dialects and subdialects, consult the separate main articles for each of the three divisions. : '' Plains'' :: 1.

Blackfoot The Blackfoot Confederacy, ''Niitsitapi'' or ''Siksikaitsitapi'' (ᖹᐟᒧᐧᒣᑯ, meaning "the people" or " Blackfoot-speaking real people"), is a historic collective name for linguistically related groups that make up the Blackfoot or Bla ...

:: '' Arapahoan'' (including

Nawathinehena The Arapaho (; french: Arapahos, ) are a Native Americans in the United States, Native American people historically living on the plains of Colorado and Wyoming. They were close allies of the Cheyenne tribe and loosely aligned with the Lakota p ...

(†), and

Besawunena The Arapaho (; french: Arapahos, ) are a Native American people historically living on the plains of Colorado and Wyoming. They were close allies of the Cheyenne tribe and loosely aligned with the Lakota and Dakota. By the 1850s, Arapaho band ...

(†)) ::: 2. Arapaho proper ::: 3. Gros Ventre (†) :: 4. Cheyenne : ''

'' :: 5. Cree–Innu–Naskapi :: 6. Menominee :: ''Ojibwe–Potawatomi'' ::: 7. Ojibwe ::: 8.

Potawatomi The Potawatomi , also spelled Pottawatomi and Pottawatomie (among many variations), are a Native American people of the western Great Lakes region, upper Mississippi River and Great Plains. They traditionally speak the Potawatomi language, a m ...

:: 9. Sauk–Fox–Kickapoo :: 10. Shawnee :: 11. Miami–Illinois (†) : '' Eastern'' :: 12. Miꞌkmaq :: '' Abenaki'' ::: 13. Western Abenaki ::: 14. Eastern Abenaki (†) :: 15. Malecite–Passamaquoddy :: 16. Massachusett :: 17. Narragansett (†) :: 18. Mohegan–Pequot (†) :: 19. Quiripi-Naugatuck-Unquachog (†) :: 20. Mohican (†) :: ''

Lenape The Lenape (, , or Lenape , del, Lënapeyok) also called the Leni Lenape, Lenni Lenape and Delaware people, are an indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands, who live in the United States and Canada. Their historical territory includ ...

'' ::: 21. Munsee ::: 22. Unami (†) :: 23. Nanticoke–Piscataway (†) :: 24.

Carolina Algonquian Carolina may refer to: Geography * The Carolinas, the U.S. states of North and South Carolina ** North Carolina, a U.S. state ** South Carolina, a U.S. state * Province of Carolina, a British province until 1712 * Carolina, Alabama, a town in th ...

(†) :: 25. Powhatan (†) :: 26. Etchemin (†) :: 27.

Loup A Loup is an extinct Algonquian languages, Algonquian language, or possibly group of languages, spoken in colonial New England. ''Loup'' ("Wolf") was a French language, French colonial ethnographic term, and usage was inconsistent. In modern literatu ...

(†) :: 28. Loup B (†) :: 29. Shinnecock (†)

Subgroups

''Eastern Algonquian'' is a true genetic subgrouping. The ''Plains Algonquian'' and the ''Central Algonquian'' groups are not genetic groupings but rather areal groupings. Although these areal groups often do share linguistic features, these commonalities are usually attributed to

language contact Language contact occurs when speakers of two or more languages or varieties interact and influence each other. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics. When speakers of different languages interact closely, it is typical for th ...

. Paul Proulx has argued that this traditional view is incorrect, and that ''Central Algonquian'' (in which he includes the Plains Algonquian languages) is a genetic subgroup, with Eastern Algonquian consisting of several different subgroups. However, this classification scheme has failed to gain acceptance from other specialists in the Algonquian languages. Instead, the commonly accepted subgrouping scheme is that proposed by Ives Goddard (1994). The essence of this proposal is that

originated with people to the west, perhaps in the Plateau region of Idaho and Oregon or the Rocky Mountain-Great Plains boundary of Montana, and then moved east, dropping off subgroups as people migrated. By this scenario, Blackfoot was the first language to branch off, which coincides well with its being the most divergent language of Algonquian. In west-to-east order, the subsequent branchings were: * Arapaho-Gros Ventre, Cree-Montagnais, Menominee, and Cheyenne; * then the core Great Lakes languages: (Ojibwe–Potawatomi, Shawnee, Sauk–Fox–Kickapoo, and Miami–Illinois); and * finally, Proto-Eastern Algonquian. This historical reconstruction accords best with the observed levels of divergence within the family, whereby the most divergent languages are found furthest west (since they constitute the earliest branchings during eastern migration), and the shallowest subgroupings are found furthest to the east (Eastern Algonquian, and arguably Core Central). Goddard also points out that there is clear evidence for pre-historical contact between Eastern Algonquian and Cree-Montagnais, as well as between Cheyenne and Arapaho-Gros Ventre. There has long been especially extensive back-and-forth influence between Cree and Ojibwe. It has been suggested that the "Eastern Great Lakes" languages – what Goddard has called "Core Central", e.g., Ojibwe–Potawatomi, Shawnee, Sauk–Fox–Kickapoo, and Miami-Illinois (but not Cree–Montagnais or Menominee) – may also constitute their own genetic grouping within Algonquian. They share certain intriguing lexical and phonological innovations. However, this theory has not yet been fully fleshed out and is still considered conjectural. Algonquian is sometimes said to have included the extinct

Beothuk language Beothuk ( or ), also called Beothukan, is an extinct language once spoken by the indigenous Beothuk people of Newfoundland. The Beothuk have been extinct since 1829, and there are few written accounts of their language. Hence, little is known ab ...

Newfoundland Newfoundland and Labrador (; french: Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador; frequently abbreviated as NL) is the easternmost province of Canada, in the country's Atlantic region. The province comprises the island of Newfoundland and the continental region ...

, whose speakers were both in geographic proximity to Algonquian speakers and who share DNA in common with the Algonquian-speaking Miꞌkmaq. However, linguistic evidence is scarce and poorly recorded, and it is unlikely that reliable evidence of a connection can be found.

Grammatical features

The Algonquian language family is known for its complex polysynthetic morphology and sophisticated verb system. Statements that take many words to say in English can be expressed with a single word. Ex: ( Menominee) ''paehtāwāēwesew'' "He is heard by higher powers" (''paeht''- 'hear', -''āwāē''- 'spirit', -''wese''- passivizer, -''w'' third-person subject) or (

Plains Cree Plains Cree may refer to: * Plains Cree language * Plains Cree people Plains Indians or Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains and Canadian Prairies are the Native American tribes and First Nation band governments who have historically liv ...

) ''kāstāhikoyahk'' "it frightens us". These languages have been extensively studied by Leonard Bloomfield, Ives Goddard, and others. Algonquian nouns have an animate/inanimate contrast: some nouns are classed as ''animate'', while all other nouns are ''inanimate''. There is ongoing debate over whether there is a semantic significance to the categorization of nouns as animate or inanimate, with scholars arguing for it as either a clearly

semantic Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and comput ...

issue, or a purely

syntactic In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituency), ...

issue, along with a variety of arguments in between. More structurally inclined linguistic scholars have argued that since there is no consistent semantic system for determining the

animacy Animacy (antonym: inanimacy) is a grammatical and semantic feature, existing in some languages, expressing how sentient or alive the referent of a noun is. Widely expressed, animacy is one of the most elementary principles in languages around th ...

of a noun, that it must be a purely linguistic characterization. Anthropological linguists have conversely argued the strong connection between animacy and items viewed as having spiritual importance. Another important distinction involves the contrast between nouns marked as ''proximate'' and those marked as '' obviative''. Proximate nouns are those deemed most central or important to the discourse, while obviative nouns are those less important to the discourse. There are personal pronouns which distinguish three persons, two numbers (singular and plural), inclusive and exclusive first person plural, and proximate and obviative third persons. Verbs are divided into four classes: transitive verbs with an animate object (abbreviated "TA"), transitive verbs with an inanimate object ("TI"), intransitive verbs with an animate subject ("AI"), and intransitive verbs with an inanimate subject ("II"). A very notable feature of the Algonquian languages is their '' direct-inverse'' (also known as ''hierarchical'') morphosyntactic alignment, distinguishing between an unmarked voice where the subject outranks the object in a person hierarchy and a marked voice where the opposite relation obtains.

Vocabulary

:''See the lists of words in the Algonquian languages and the list of words of Algonquian origin at Wiktionary, the free dictionary and Wikipedia's sibling project.'' Loan words Because Algonquian languages were some of the first with which Europeans came into contact in North America, the language family has given many words to English. Many eastern and midwestern U.S. states have names of Algonquian origin ( Massachusetts, Connecticut, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, etc.), as do many cities: Milwaukee, Chicago, et al.

Ottawa Ottawa (, ; Canadian French: ) is the capital city of Canada. It is located at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the Rideau River in the southern portion of the province of Ontario. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the core ...

, the capital of Canada, is named after the Algonquian nation, the Odawa people. For a more detailed treatment of geographical names in three Algonquian languages, see the external link to the book by Trumbull.

Notes

Citations

Bibliography

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

External links

Algonquian language family
on Native-languages.org
Comparative Algonquian Swadesh vocabulary lists
(from Wiktionary'
Swadesh-list appendix

Algonquian Linguistic Atlas
{{DEFAULTSORT:Algonquian Languages Algonquian peoples Aquinnah, Massachusetts First Nations languages in Canada Great Lakes tribal culture Indigenous languages of North America Indigenous languages of the North American eastern woodlands Indigenous languages of the North American Plains Indigenous languages of the North American Southeast Indigenous languages of the North American Subarctic Languages of the United States