The Ho-Chunk language (''Hoocąk, Hocąk''), also known as Winnebago, is the traditional language of the
Ho-Chunk (or Winnebago) nation of
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans, also known as American Indians, First Americans, Indigenous Americans, and other terms, are the Indigenous peoples of the mainland United States ( Indigenous peoples of Hawaii, Alaska and territories of the United State ...
. The language is part of the
Siouan
Siouan or Siouan–Catawban is a language family of North America that is located primarily in the Great Plains, Ohio and Mississippi valleys and southeastern North America with a few other languages in the east.
Name
Authors who call the enti ...
language family
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the proto-language of that family. The term "family" reflects the tree model of language origination in h ...
, and is closely related to the languages of the
Iowa
Iowa () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States, bordered by the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west. It is bordered by six states: Wisconsin to the northeast, Illinois to th ...
,
Missouri
Missouri is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee): Iowa to the north, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee to the east, Arkansas t ...
, and
Oto
Oto, Ōtō, or OTO may refer to:
People
* Oto (name), including a list of people with the name
*The Otoe tribe (also spelled Oto), a Native American people
Places
*Oto, Spain, a village in the Valle de Broto, in Huesca, Aragon
* Otorohanga, a to ...
.
"Winnebago" is an
exonym
An endonym (from Greek: , 'inner' + , 'name'; also known as autonym) is a common, ''native'' name for a geographical place, group of people, individual person, language or dialect, meaning that it is used inside that particular place, group, ...
, an
Anglicization of the Sauk and Fox word ''Oinepegi''. The anglicized form of the endonym is "Ho-Chunk".
Phonology
Phonemic inventory
Ho-Chunk's vowels are distinguished by nasality and length. That is to say, the use of a
nasal vowel or a
long vowel affects a word's meaning. This is evident in examples such as ''pąą'' 'bag' compared to ''paa'' 'nose,' and ''waruc'' 'to eat' compared to ''waaruc'' 'table.'
All of Ho-Chunk's vowels show a short/long distinction, but only /i/ /a/ and /u/ have nasal counterparts.
Ho-Chunk's consonants are listed in the following table:
Typical of Mississippi Valley Siouan languages, Ho-Chunk has aspirated /p/ and /k/ phonemes but no aspirated /t/.
Nasalization rules
In Ho-Chunk, nasalizable vowels /a/, /i/, and /u/ are always nasalized when they occur after nasal consonants /m/ and /n/. The nasality spreads to an adjacent vowel if that vowel is nasalizable as well.
The spread operates across syllable or word boundaries and can move across consonants /h/ and /w/, but is blocked by all other consonants. Examples include ''nąįžą'' 'a tree' and ''ha'ųwį'' 'we (exclusive) do':
Another frequently occurring nasalization rule is /r/ to
alternation: the /r/ consonant is pronounced as
when it immediately follows a nasal vowel. That is shown in the sentence ''Mąąhį haanįną juujuxšąną'' 'My knife is dull':
Dorsey's Law (Vowel copying rule)
There is a notable sound law in Ho-Chunk called Dorsey's Law
/sup> which dictates the following:
* /ORS/ → SRS
where O is a voiceless obstruent, R is a resonant, and S a syllabic sound. In other words, if there is an underlying voiceless obstruent (in Ho-Chunk, /p/, /c/, /k/, /s/, /š/, and /x/) followed by resonant (/r/, /n/, or /w/), the vowel following the resonant is copied into the proceeding consonant cluster. All Dorsey's Law sequences attested in the language are listed below, with V representing the copied vowel:
* pVnV
* pVrV
* kVnV
* kVrV
* kVwV
* sVnV
* sVrV
* sVwV
* šVnV
* šVrV
* šVwV
* cVwV
* xVnV
* xVrV
* xVwV
Multiple sources advocate that Dorsey's Law is a synchronic process in the language because of the way that things like stress assignment and the morphological process of reduplication are affected by it.
Dorsey's Law can apply within a single morpheme, as in /pra/ becoming ara
ARA may refer to:
Media and the arts
* American-Romanian Academy of Arts and Sciences
* '' Artistička Radna Akcija'', compilation album released in former Yugoslavia
* Associate of the Royal Academy, denoting membership in the British Royal Aca ...
in the word ''paras'' '(be) wide, flat', or across morpheme boundaries, as in /šra/ becoming arain the word ''šaraše'' 'you go there,' where ''š'' is the second person pronominal prefixing to the verb ''rahe'' 'to be going there.'
Metrical structure
Ho-Chunk is a mora counting, but syllable accenting language. The stress placement of words spoken in isolation is extremely regular. Single-syllable words always have a long vowel (two moras), and stress falls on the first mora (e.g. ''áa'' 'arm'). Two-syllable words have two moras, and primary stress falls on the second mora (e.g. ''wajé'' 'dress'). In words longer than two syllables, primary stress most often falls on the third syllable, with secondary stress on each even numbered vowel after the point of primary stress (e.g. ''waǧįǧį́ '' 'ball,' or ''hocįcį́k'' 'boy'). A few rare examples of words with primary stress not on the third syllable include ''booráxux'' 'you break something into pieces' and ''gikąnąhé'' 'to invite somebody.' These and other exceptions are a result of syllable weight affecting stress location. As seen in ''booráxux'' 'you break something into pieces,' when one of the first two syllables of a multiple-syllable word is a heavy syllable, then the main stress falls on the second syllable
Generally when words are spoken in sequence to form sentences, each retains its own stress domain. However, when two or more words are compounded, they are treated as a single word and form a new single stress domain in which the aforementioned patterns apply. Examples include ''hąąbókahi'' 'every day' (a compound consisting of ''hąąp'' 'day' and ''hokahí'' 'every') and ''wąągwácek'' 'young man' (''wąąk'' 'man' and ''wacék'' 'young').
Ho-Chunk's stress system is substantially different from that of other Siouan languages, which have main stress on the second syllable or second mora. It is theorized that Ho-Chunk underwent a stress shift one mora to the right at some point in its history.
Orthography
The official Ho-Chunk orthography
An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation.
Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and ...
derives from an Americanist version of the International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation ...
(IPA). As such, its graphemes broadly resemble those of IPA, and there is a close one-to-one correspondence between graphemes and phonemes. The orthography differs from IPA in that the nasal vowels are indicated using an ogonek. Thus, /ĩ/, /ũ/, and /ã/ are written as ''į'', ''ų'', and ''ą,'' respectively. In addition, the postalveolar and palatal consonants are written as ''c, j, š, ž,'' and ''y'' (in IPA: /tʃ/, /dʒ/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/ and /j/), the velar fricative /ɣ/ is written as ''ǧ,'' and the glottal stop is written as ''ʼ'' .
The diacritic marks can be referred to in Ho-Chunk with the following terms: ''sįįc'' 'tail' for the ogonek, ''wookąnąk'' 'hat' for the haček, and ''hiyuša jikere'' 'sudden start/stop' for the glottal stop.
For a short period of time in the mid to late 1800s, Ho-Chunk was written with an adaptation of the "Ba-Be-Bi-Bo" syllabics system. As of 1994, however, the official alphabet of the Ho-Chunk Nation
The Ho-Chunk Nation (Ho-Chunk language: ) is a federally recognized tribe of the Ho-Chunk with traditional territory across five states in the United States: Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, and Missouri. The other federally recognized trib ...
is an adaptation of the Latin script
The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern I ...
. The Ho-Chunk Nations of Wisconsin and Nebraska represent some sounds differently in the alphabets that they use, as the Wisconsin tribe write a double vowel to mark longer length, and the Nebraska tribe uses a macron over the vowel (compare ''oo'' with ''ō'' for IPA /o:/'').'' These differences, shown with example words, are demonstrated in the chart below. In total, the Ho-Chunk writing system consists of 26 consonant and 16 vowel graphs/digraph
The sounds of Ho-Chunk with example words
Morphology
Verb structure
Ho-Chunk is an Agglutinative language, agglutinating and somewhat fusional
Fusional languages or inflected languages are a type of synthetic language, distinguished from agglutinative languages by their tendency to use a single inflectional morpheme to denote multiple grammatical, syntactic, or semantic features.
For e ...
language. Verbs contain several affixes to indicate things like person, number, tense, and mood.
Prefix field
Ho-Chunk uses prefixes on a verb stem to mark person
A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of prope ...
, locative case, instrumental case, benefactive case
The benefactive case (abbreviated , or sometimes when it is a core argument) is a grammatical case used where English would use "for", "for the benefit of", or "intended for", e.g. "She opened the door ''for Tom''" or "This book is ''for Bob''" ...
, reflexivity (including possessive reflexivity), and reciprocality.
= Person prefixes
=
Ho-Chunk verbs are inflected with eight pronominal categories marked for person
A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of prope ...
and clusivity
In linguistics, clusivity is a grammatical distinction between ''inclusive'' and ''exclusive'' first-person pronouns and verbal morphology, also called ''inclusive " we"'' and ''exclusive "we"''. Inclusive "we" specifically includes the addressee ...
. Ho-Chunk is a pro-drop language
A pro-drop language (from "pronoun-dropping") is a language where certain classes of pronouns may be omitted when they can be pragmatically or grammatically inferable. The precise conditions vary from language to language, and can be quite int ...
; pronouns are used very infrequently, and information on grammatical person is found on the verb in the form of one or more prefixes.
# First person singular (abbreviated 1SG)
# Second person singular (abbreviated 2SG)
# Third person singular (abbreviated 3SG)
# First person dual inclusive (abbreviated 1IN.DU)
# First person inclusive plural (abbreviated 1IN.PL)
# First person exclusive plural (abbreviated 1EX.PL)
# Second person plural (abbreviated 2PL)
# Third person plural (abbreviated 3PL)
Person marking in transitive verbs
Ho-Chunk's transitive verbs are inflected with agent
Agent may refer to:
Espionage, investigation, and law
*, spies or intelligence officers
* Law of agency, laws involving a person authorized to act on behalf of another
** Agent of record, a person with a contractual agreement with an insuranc ...
(actor) and patient
A patient is any recipient of health care services that are performed by healthcare professionals. The patient is most often ill or injured and in need of treatment by a physician, nurse, optometrist, dentist, veterinarian, or other hea ...
(undergoer) pronominal
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase.
Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not c ...
s. The generic paradigm of the pronominal prefixes in transitive verbs is outlined below. The letter V stands in the place of the verb stem
In linguistics, a word stem is a part of a word responsible for its lexical meaning. The term is used with slightly different meanings depending on the morphology of the language in question. In Athabaskan linguistics, for example, a verb stem ...
.:
In this table, the null symbol (∅) is used to represent all third person singular actor and patient pronominals. It indicates that there is no overt prefix for those pronominals (in other words, that they are null morphemes). Some cells are left blank because there are no pronominal affixes associated with that particular person/number combination. In cases like these, the action is reflexive (i.e. I do something to myself, or you (plural) do something to yourselves). Reflexivity in Ho-Chunk is indicated with another prefix, ''kii''-.
The sounds in the prefixes run together in casual speech, often leading to the deletion of the /h/ consonant and thus a long vowel or diphthong. This is evident in the example ''waakere'' 'I put them (standing),' in which the third person plural patient prefix ''wa''- merges with the first person actor prefix ''ha''-, producing ''waa''-.
Person marking in intransitive verbs
Ho-Chunk's intransitive
In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb whose context does not entail a direct object. That lack of transitivity distinguishes intransitive verbs from transitive verbs, which entail one or more objects. Additionally, intransitive verbs ar ...
verbs fall into three main types: intransitive active
Active may refer to:
Music
* ''Active'' (album), a 1992 album by Casiopea
* Active Records, a record label
Ships
* ''Active'' (ship), several commercial ships by that name
* HMS ''Active'', the name of various ships of the British Royal ...
verbs, intransitive stative
According to some linguistics theories, a stative verb is a verb that describes a state of being, in contrast to a dynamic verb, which describes an action. The difference can be categorized by saying that stative verbs describe situations that are ...
verbs, and intransitive 'third person-only' verbs.
Intransitive active verbs are those which involve only human or animate agent(s). An example is ''šgaac'' 'play,' which is inflected for person and number as follows:
Intransitive stative verbs involve an action affecting a patient. This is characteristic of the verb ''š'aak'' 'to be old':
Intransitive third-person-only verbs designate states and properties of mostly inanimate things, such as "(to) be delicious" or "(to) be expensive." They can only be inflected for third person singular or third person plural subjects (e.g. ''ceexi'' (∅-ceexi) 'it is expensive' or ''ceexire'' (ceexi-ire) 'they are expensive').
= Locative prefixes
=
Ho-Chunk has two locative prefixes, ''ha-'' 'on' or 'onto,' and ''ho-'' 'in' or 'into.' These prefixes were first described by William Lipkind in his 1928 grammar of the language 1/sup> . The prefixes are added to a verb stem as seen in the examples below:
A locative prefix may derive a noun, a verb, or both. This is true for ''homįk'', which can refer to a verb 'to lie in' or a noun 'bed.' More recent learning materials refer to the ''ha-'' prefix as a superessive applicative marker, and the ''ho-'' prefix as an inessive applicative marker.
= Instrumental prefixes
=
Ho-Chunk has a set of instrumental prefixes which indicate that an action is accomplished by means of some instrument, force, or special type of instrumental movement. These prefixes are translated into English with such phrases as 'by foot,' 'by hand,' or 'by striking.' Some sources list eight instrumental prefixes in Ho-Chunk, while others recognize a ninth ''nąą''- 'by internal force' (phonologically identical to ''nąą''- 'by foot'). These prefixes are listed first with their English translation, then paired with a stem ''wax'' 'to break, cut or sever a string-like object':
The instrumental prefixes are identified as 'Inner' or 'Outer' due to their position relative to other prefixes attaching to the verb stem. Inner prefixes are closer to the verb stem, while outer prefixes are farther away on the left edge of the word. Instrumental prefixes are found in all Siouan languages, and it is theorized that outer instrumentals originated as nouns or nominalized stems.
Suffix field
Ho-Chunk's suffixes mark number
A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...
, tense, mood, negation, and aspect
Aspect or Aspects may refer to:
Entertainment
* ''Aspect magazine'', a biannual DVD magazine showcasing new media art
* Aspect Co., a Japanese video game company
* Aspects (band), a hip hop group from Bristol, England
* ''Aspects'' (Benny Carter ...
.
Syntax
Basic word order
Like other Siouan languages, Ho-Chunk's basic word order is Subject-Object-Verb (SOV).An example of a typical sentence is ''Hinųkra wažątirehižą ruwį'' 'The woman bought a car.' In a sentence with two objects
Object may refer to:
General meanings
* Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept
** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place
** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter
* Goal, an ...
, such as ''Hinųkiža hocįcįhižą wiiwagaxhižą hok'ų'' 'A girl gave a boy a pencil,' the canonical word order is Subject-Indirect Object-Direct Object-Verb. Word order is relatively free in Ho-Chunk; however, while a word order such as ''Wažątirehižą, hinųkra ruwį'' 'The woman bought a car' is permissabie, the change from the basic neutral word order of SOV requires a prosodic pause indicated by a comma.[Johnson, Meredith; Thompson Lockwood, Hunter; Rosen, Bryan; and Schuck, Mateja. 2012. ''A Preliminary Sketch of Hocąk Syntax''. Siouan and Caddoan Languages Conference, Lawrence, Kansas.] Without this pause, an interpretation 'A car bought the woman' is possible, though highly unlikely.
Negation
Negative phrases are expressed with a particle, such as ''hąąke'' 'not' or ''hąkaga'' 'never' paired with the suffix/enclitic
In morphology and syntax, a clitic (, backformed from Greek "leaning" or "enclitic"Crystal, David. ''A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a w ...
-''nį'' 'not.' Both elements are required in such phrases: the particle precedes the verb phrase, while -''nį'' is suffixed to the verb. The following examples demonstrate this construction:
Language revitalization
Although the language is highly endangered, there are currently vigorous efforts underway to keep it alive in Ho-Chunk communities. In Wisconsin, th
Hocąk Wazija Haci Language Division
runs several language classes, an immersion daycare, and a language apprentice program. In Nebraska, the Ho-Chunk Renaissance program teaches the language in local and reservation schools. Both tribal governments recognize the importance of technology in language learning, and are active in Facebook and YouTube to reach the younger generation of learners. A "Ho-Chunk (Hoocąk) Native American Language app" is available for iPhone, iPad
The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are developed by Apple Inc. The iPad was conceived before the related iPhone but the iPhone was developed and released first. Speculation about the development, operating ...
, and other iOS
iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also include ...
devices. Language is a crucial aspect of Ho-Chunk culture:
"Within a lot of Native American cultures, language and culture go together," Lewis St. Cyr, language program director for the Ho-Chunk, said. "You can't have culture without language and you can't have language without culture. The importance of it is of who we are."
Notes
References
*''Hocąk Teaching Materials'' (2010). ''Volume 1: Elements of Grammar/Learner's Dictionary''. Helmbrecht, J., Lehmann, C., SUNY Press, . ''Volume 2: Texts and Audio-CD'', Hartmann, I., Marschke, C. SUNY Press,
External links
Ho-Chunk and Winnebago Explained
Hocank Language
Documentation of Endangered Languages website (DOBES in German)
Hoocąk Waaziija Haci Language and Culture Division
Ho-Chunk Nation (of Wisconsin) website, extensive materials about Hoçak language and restoration efforts
William Lipkind, "Winnebago Grammar"
Wisconsin History
Hocąk-English/English-Hocąk Learner's Dictionary
, Second Edition, edited by Johannes Helmbrecht & Christian Lehmann, 2006, University of Erfurt
Beginning Hocąk on Memrise
, based on Wisconsin Hocąk; phrases and vocabulary
{{DEFAULTSORT:Winnebago Language
Ho-Chunk
Indigenous languages of Minnesota
Endangered Siouan-Catawban languages
Native American language revitalization
Western Siouan languages
Endangered indigenous languages of the Americas