Atakapa (,
[Sturtevant, 659] natively ''Yukhiti'') is an
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 ...
language isolate
Language isolates are languages that cannot be classified into larger language families. Korean and Basque are two of the most common examples. Other language isolates include Ainu in Asia, Sandawe in Africa, and Haida in North America. The nu ...
native to southwestern
Louisiana
Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is bord ...
and nearby coastal eastern
Texas
Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...
. It was spoken by the
Atakapa
The Atakapa Sturtevant, 659 or Atacapa were an indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands, who spoke the Atakapa language and historically lived along the Gulf of Mexico in what is now Texas and Louisiana. They included several distinct band ...
people (also known as ''Ishak'', after their word for "the people"). The language became extinct in the early 20th century.
Classification
While considered an isolate, there have been attempts to connect Atakapa with other languages of the Southeast. In 1919
John R. Swanton
John Reed Swanton (February 19, 1873 – May 2, 1958) was an American anthropologist, folklorist, and linguist who worked with Native American peoples throughout the United States. Swanton achieved recognition in the fields of ethnology and et ...
proposed a Tunican language family that would include Atakapa,
Tunica, and
Chitimacha;
Morris Swadesh
Morris Swadesh (; January 22, 1909 – July 20, 1967) was an American linguist who specialized in comparative and historical linguistics.
Swadesh was born in Massachusetts to Bessarabian Jewish immigrant parents. He completed bachelor's and ma ...
would later provide work focusing on connections between Atakapa and Chitimacha.
Mary Haas
Mary Rosamond Haas (January 23, 1910 – May 17, 1996) was an American linguist who specialized in North American Indian languages, Thai, and historical linguistics. She served as president of the Linguistic Society of America. She was electe ...
later expanded the proposal by adding
Natchez and the
Muskogean languages
Muskogean (also Muskhogean, Muskogee) is a Native American language family spoken in different areas of the Southeastern United States. Though the debate concerning their interrelationships is ongoing, the Muskogean languages are generally div ...
, a hypothesis known as
Gulf
A gulf is a large inlet from the ocean into the landmass, typically with a narrower opening than a bay, but that is not observable in all geographic areas so named. The term gulf was traditionally used for large highly-indented navigable bodie ...
. These proposed families have not been proven.
The similarities between Atakapa and Chitimacha, at least, may be attributable to periods of "intense contact
etween speakers of the two languagesowing to their geographic proximity."
Geographical variation
According to Swanton (1929) and Goddard (1996), Atakapa could be classified into Eastern and Western varieties.
Eastern Atakapa is known from a French-Atakapa glossary with 287 entries, compiled in 1802 by Martin Duralde. The speakers interviewed by Duralde lived in the easternmost part of Atakapa territory, around ''Poste des Attakapas'' (Saint Martinville), now
Franklin, Louisiana.
Western Atakapa is the better-attested of the two varieties. In 1885,
Albert Gatschet collected words, sentences, and texts from two native Atakapa speakers, Louison Huntington and Delilah Moss at
Lake Charles, Louisiana
Lake Charles (French: ''Lac Charles'') is the fifth-largest incorporated city in the U.S. state of Louisiana, and the parish seat of Calcasieu Parish, located on Lake Charles, Prien Lake, and the Calcasieu River. Founded in 1861 in Calcas ...
. John R. Swanton worked with another two speakers near Lake Charles: Teet Verdine in 1907, and Armojean Reon in 1908.
Additionally, in 1721, Jean Béranger collected a small vocabulary from captive speakers in
Galveston Bay
Galveston Bay ( ) is a bay in the western Gulf of Mexico along the upper coast of Texas. It is the seventh-largest estuary in the United States, and the largest of seven major estuaries along the Texas Gulf Coast. It is connected to the Gulf of ...
.
John Swanton argued that the Béranger vocabulary represented the Akokisa language, spoken by a people who lived somewhat inland from Galveston Bay. There is little evidence to support his assertion.
Phonology
Vowels
Atakapa has five vowels as presented in Swadesh (1946). Vowel length is contrastive in Atakapa.
Consonants
According to Swadesh (1946), Atakapa has the consonants presented in the following chart.
Underlying /ŋ/ surfaces as
when it appears at the end of a syllable. Swadesh further notes that /m/ often surfaces as
or
�word-finally in some adjectives, but "irregular variations in
atschet'swriting" preclude him from settling on any further conditions for this.
Additionally, it is unclear whether /n/ is indeed a distinct phoneme from /ŋ/; if this is the case, argues Swadesh, then words containing final /n/ must have arrived in a later period.
Consonant clusters consisting of a stop followed by a sibilant — themselves arising from vowel epenthesis — are generally contracted to /c/. For example, ''kec-k'' ("liver") arose from *''keks'', which arose from
epenthesis
In phonology, epenthesis (; Greek ) means the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially in the beginning syllable ('' prothesis'') or in the ending syllable (''paragoge'') or in-between two syllabic sounds in a word. The word ''epent ...
and final-vowel deletion processes in ''*kekesi'', which itself is the reduplicated form of *''kesi''.
However, there are words in which the suffix -''kš'' appears, suggesting that this contraction rule ran its course in an earlier period.
Syllable structure and stress
The typical Atakapa syllable is of the structure CVC. Swanton (1929) observes that clusters of more than two consonants are rare in the language. From his analysis of Gatschet's data, he concludes that consonant clusters of any size are ''not'' permitted in the syllable onset, but that they ''are'' permitted in the coda.
Stress is "a purely mechanical function of phrase rhythm" in Atakapa; it is generally the final syllable of a phrase that receives stress.
Morphology
The Atakapa language is a mostly
agglutinative
In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes, each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglutinative l ...
, somewhat
polysynthetic language of the
templatic type. This meaning that the language stacks (primarily within the verbal complex) a number of affixes to express
locatives,
tense,
aspect,
modality
Modality may refer to:
Humanities
* Modality (theology), the organization and structure of the church, as distinct from sodality or parachurch organizations
* Modality (music), in music, the subject concerning certain diatonic scales
* Modaliti ...
,
valency adjustment, and person/number (as both subject and object), which are assembled in a rather specific order. Person marking is one of the only instances of fusion within the language, fusing both person and number. Nouns have only a handful of suffixes and usually take only one suffix at a time.
The language is largely
head-marking; however, reduplication of an adjectival stem tends to show
dependent-marking, as it often expresses the plurality of the noun it describes.
# ''shāk tōl'' "good man"
# ''shāk tōltōl'' "good men"
Pronominal morphology
Object pronouns are prefixed to verbs, while subject pronouns are suffixed. There are independent forms of each pronoun as well: in the first person singular and plural, this form appears to be distinct from either affix, but in the second and third persons, the affixes seem to be related to the independent forms.
Grammatical gender appears not to occur in Atakapa, though evidence for it in nearby languages (e.g. Chitimacha) has been found.
The following table
of pronominal forms is presented in Swanton (1919).
In addition, Swanton notes the existence of a reflexive prefix ''hat-'' and a reciprocal prefix ''hak-.''
However, the reflexive form may be a circumfix rather than a prefix: Kaufman cites the example of ''hat-yul-šo'' ("paint themselves"), in which both ''hat-'' and ''-šo'' indicate reflexivity.
Nominal morphology
There are multiple ways to indicate a noun's plurality in Atakapa:
# attachment to the noun of the suffix ''-heu'' ("many")
# attachment to the noun of the prefix ''-šak'' (to indicate an indefinite plural)
# reduplication of the accompanying adjective
# employment of the plural suffix in the accompanying adjective and/or verb
According to Swanton (1919), a noun-forming affix ''-nen'' or ''-nan'' exists in Atakapa.
Verbal morphology
The full order
of morphemes within the verb complex is:
# Objective pronominal prefix
# Locative prefixes (if applicable)
# Verb stem
# Plural suffix ''-m'' or usitative suffix ''-u'' (if applicable)
# Infinitive or emphatic suffix ''-c'' (if applicable)
# Future suffix ''-ti'' (if applicable)
# Aspectual suffixes: continuative ''-k'', intentional ''-n'', etc. (if applicable)
# Assertive suffix: ''-š'' (if applicable)
# Subjective pronominal suffix
# Tense suffixes: past perfective ''-at'', past imperfective ''-hinst'' (if applicable)
# Negative (if applicable)
It is unclear whether or not a distinct class of auxiliary verbs exists in Atakapa; the difference between a stem-plus-auxiliary construction and a two-verb-serialization construction is not well marked.
Additionally, there is no mention of the assertive suffix ''-š'' in Swanton's work; Kaufman (2014) derives it by analogizing Atakapa and
Chitimacha.
Verb serialization
Verb serialization
The serial verb construction, also known as (verb) serialization or verb stacking, is a syntactic phenomenon in which two or more verbs or verb phrases are strung together in a single clause.Tallerman, M. (1998). ''Understanding Syntax''. London: A ...
is a productive process in Atakapa.
# ''pam-nima'' (lit. "beat-die"): beat to death.
# ''ta-wat-ten'' (lit. "stand-come-talk"): pray.
Syntax
Atakapa exhibits strict
subject-object-verb word order. While verbs are typically found in sentence-final position, it is common for
adjuncts
In brewing, adjuncts are unmalted grains (such as corn, rice, rye, oats, barley, and wheat) or grain products used in brewing beer which supplement the main mash ingredient (such as malted barley). This is often done with the intention of cut ...
, or even
subordinate clauses, to follow the verb of the
principal clause
An independent clause (or main clause) is a clause that can stand by itself as a '' simple sentence''. An independent clause contains a subject and a predicate and makes sense by itself.
Independent clauses can be joined by using a semicolon or ...
. The suffixes ''-ne'' and ''-n'' are used to indicate the subordination of a clause to the main clause, as in ''tsanuk micat penene'' ("she gave a horse
or curing her).
With occasional exceptions, adjectives follow the nouns they describe. Adverbs follow nouns and adjectives, but precede verbs.
Case marking
Atakapa marks only the
locative case
In grammar, the locative case ( abbreviated ) is a grammatical case which indicates a location. It corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by". The locative case belongs to the general local cases, together with the ...
. The language has four locative suffixes, in addition to a series of locative postpositions. These suffixes and postpositions may be placed after nouns, adjectives, and demonstratives.
* ''-kin'', the most frequently-occurring suffix, expresses the sense of English "in" or "on," as in ''nun-kin tōhulāt'' ("they lived in villages").
** ''-ki'' (occasionally ''-ke'') occurs in similar contexts.
* ''-ip'' corresponds roughly to English "at," and is very commonly used with ''nē'', "down," to form ''nēp'', "below."
* ''-ik'' generally parallels English "with," as in ''hatyūlcō nōhik'' ("they painted themselves with red").
Noun incorporation
Swanton (1919) asserts that noun incorporation is present in Atakapa, but he provides no examples of this.
Deixis
Three demonstratives serve as deictics in Atakapa:
# ''ha'' or ''a'', "this" — co-present with the speaker.
# ''ya'', distant from the speaker.
# ''ma'', still more distant from the speaker.
References
Bibliography
* Campbell, Lyle. (1997). ''American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America''. New York: Oxford University Press. .
* Gatschet, Albert S., and Swanton, John R. (1932) ''A Dictionary of the Atakapa Language''. Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Athnology, bulletin 108. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
*
* Hopkins, Nicholas A. (2007). ''The Native Languages of the Southeastern United States''. Los Angeles: Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc. (FAMSI), pp. 23–24
AbstractFull text online
* Mithun, Marianne. (1999). ''The languages of Native North America''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (hbk); .
*
*
External links
A Dictionary of the Atakapa Languageby Albert S. Gatschet and John R. Swanton, hosted by th
Portal to Texas History*
Atakapa-Ishak Nation
{{DEFAULTSORT:Atakapa Language
Atakapa
Language isolates of North America
Languages of the United States
Extinct languages of North America
Indigenous languages of the North American Southeast
Indigenous languages of Texas
Languages extinct in the 20th century
20th-century disestablishments in the United States
Gulf languages