The Gulf languages are a proposed family of native

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 ...

n languages composed of 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 ...

, along with four

language isolates 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 numbe ...

Natchez Natchez may refer to: Places * Natchez, Alabama, United States * Natchez, Indiana, United States * Natchez, Louisiana, United States * Natchez, Mississippi, a city in southwestern Mississippi, United States * Grand Village of the Natchez, a site o ...

, Tunica,

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 ...

, and (possibly)

Chitimacha The Chitimacha ( ; or ) are a federally recognized tribe of Native Americans who live in the U.S. state of Louisiana, mainly on their reservation in St. Mary Parish near Charenton on Bayou Teche. They are the only Indigenous people in the s ...

History of proposal

Gulf was proposed as a language family by

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 elected a ...

(Haas 1951, 1952), but the family has not been rigorously established by the comparative method. Historical linguists such as

Lyle Campbell Lyle Richard Campbell (born October 22, 1942) is an American scholar and linguist known for his studies of Indigenous languages of the Americas, indigenous American languages, especially those of Central America, and on historical linguistics in ...

(Campbell and Mithun 1979, Campbell 1997) list the relationship as unproven, though a number of Muskogean scholars believe that Muskogean is at least related to Natchez (Campbell 1997:305). However, the Gulf hypothesis is considered by a number of specialists on

, including Mary Haas and

Pamela Munro Pamela Munro (b. May 23, 1947) is an American linguist who specializes in Native American languages. She is a distinguished research professor emeritus of linguistics at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she has held a position si ...

. Munro (1995) has regarded the hypothesis of a Gulf family of languages as promising; Haas thought the closest language to Muskogean would be Natchez, followed by Tunica, Atakapa, and, rather dubiously, Chitimacha.Munro, Pamela. 1995. Gulf and Yuki-Gulf. ''Anthropological Linguistics'' 36: 125-222. A difficulty in evaluating the hypothesis is the lack of available data. Most of the data on Chitimacha and Natchez is still unpublished and held in archives. Additionally, Haas (1958) proposed that the Gulf languages are related to the

Algonquian languages The Algonquian languages ( or ; also Algonkian) are a subfamily of Indigenous languages of the Americas, indigenous American languages that include most languages in the Algic languages, Algic language family. The name of the Algonquian language f ...

.Haas, Mary R. (1958)
A New Linguistic Relationship in North America: Algonkian and the Gulf Languages
''Southwestern Journal of Anthropology'', 14(3), 231-264.

Lexical comparisons

Lexical comparisons by Kimball (1994) showing areal similarities among the "Gulf" languages:Kimball, Geoffrey. 1994. Comparative difficulties of the "Gulf" languages. In Langdon, Margaret (ed.), ''Proceedings of the Meeting of the Society for the Study of the Indigenous languages of the Americas July 2–4, 1993 and the Hokan-Penutian Workshop July 3, 1993'' (both held at the 1993 Linguistic Institute at

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

Columbus, Ohio Columbus () is the state capital and the most populous city in the U.S. state of Ohio. With a 2020 census population of 905,748, it is the 14th-most populous city in the U.S., the second-most populous city in the Midwest, after Chicago, and t ...

Survey of California and Other Indian Languages The Survey of California and Other Indian Languages (originally the Survey of California Indian Languages) at the University of California at Berkeley documents, catalogs, and archives the indigenous languages of the Americas. The survey also hosts ...

, Report 8. Berkeley: University of California. : : : : : : : : : : :

Comparisons with Algonquian

Some lexical similarities between the Algonquian and Gulf languages given by Haas (1958): :

Pronoun comparisons

Below are pronouns comparisons by Geoffrey Kimball (1994) showing areal similarities among the "Gulf" languages. : : : : :

References

{{North American languages Languages of North America Proposed language families