Muskogean (also Muskhogean, Muskogee) is a Native American

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 hist ...

spoken in different areas of the

Southeastern United States The Southeastern United States, also referred to as the American Southeast or simply the Southeast, is a geographical region of the United States. It is located broadly on the eastern portion of the southern United States and the southern por ...

. Though the debate concerning their interrelationships is ongoing, the Muskogean languages are generally divided into two branches, Eastern Muskogean and Western Muskogean. Typologically, Muskogean languages are

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 langu ...

. One documented language,

Apalachee The Apalachee were an Indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands, specifically an Indigenous people of Florida, who lived in the Florida Panhandle until the early 18th century. They lived between the Aucilla River and Ochlockonee River,Bobby ...

, is extinct and the remaining languages are critically endangered.

Genetic relationships

Family division

The Muskogean family consists of six languages that are still spoken:

Alabama (We dare defend our rights) , anthem = "Alabama (state song), Alabama" , image_map = Alabama in United States.svg , seat = Montgomery, Alabama, Montgomery , LargestCity = Huntsville, Alabama, Huntsville , LargestCounty = Baldwin County, Al ...

Chickasaw The Chickasaw ( ) are an indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands. Their traditional territory was in the Southeastern United States of Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee as well in southwestern Kentucky. Their language is classified as ...

Choctaw The Choctaw (in the Choctaw language, Chahta) are a Native American people originally based in the Southeastern Woodlands, in what is now Alabama and Mississippi. Their Choctaw language is a Western Muskogean language. Today, Choctaw people are ...

, Creek-Seminole,

Koasati The Coushatta ( cku, Koasati, Kowassaati or Kowassa:ti) are a Muskogean-speaking Native American people now living primarily in the U.S. states of Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas. When first encountered by Europeans, they lived in the territor ...

, and

Mikasuki The Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida is a federally recognized Native American tribe in the U.S. state of Florida. They were part of the Seminole nation until the mid-20th century, when they organized as an independent tribe, receiving f ...

, as well as the now-extinct

, Houma, and

Hitchiti The Hitchiti ( ) were a historic indigenous tribe in the Southeast United States. They formerly resided chiefly in a town of the same name on the east bank of the Chattahoochee River, four miles below Chiaha, in western present-day Georgia. The n ...

(the last is generally considered a dialect of Mikasuki). "Seminole" is listed as one of the Muskogean languages in Hardy's list, but it is generally considered a dialect of Creek rather than a separate language, as she comments. The major subdivisions of the family have long been controversial, but the following lower-level groups are universally accepted: Choctaw–Chickasaw, Alabama–Koasati, Hitchiti–Mikasuki, and Creek–Seminole. Because Apalachee is

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 ...

, its precise relationship to the other languages is uncertain;

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 ...

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 ...

both classify it with the Alabama–Koasati group.

Haas's classification

For connections among these groupings, the traditional classification is that of Mary Haas and her students, such as Karen Booker, in which "Western Muskogean" (Choctaw-Chickasaw) is seen as one major branch, and "Eastern Muskogean" (Alabama-Koasati, Hitchiti-Mikasuki, and Creek-Seminole) as another. Within Eastern Muskogean, Alabama-Koasati and Hitchiti-Mikasuki are generally thought to be more closely related to each other than to Creek-Seminole.Hardy 2005, pp. 70-71 That classification is reflected in the list below: *Western Muskogean **

(also called Chahta, Chacato) *Eastern Muskogean ** Creek-Seminole (also called Muskogee, Maskoke, Seminole) **

Hitchiti-Mikasuki The Mikasuki, Hitchiti-Mikasuki, or Hitchiti language is a language or a pair of dialects or closely related languages that belong to the Muskogean languages family. Mikasuki was spoken by around 290 people in southern Florida. Along with the Co ...

(also called Miccosukee) ** Apalachee–Alabama–Koasati ***

† ***

(also called Alibamu) ***

(also called Coushatta)

Munro's classification

A more recent and controversial classification has been proposed by

. In her classification, the languages are divided into a "Southern Muskogean" branch (Choctaw-Chickasaw, Alabama-Koasati, and Hitchiti-Mikasuki) and a "Northern Muskogean" one (Creek-Seminole). Southern Muskogean is the subdivided into Hitchiti-Mikasuki and a "Southwestern Muskogean" branch containing Alabama-Koasati and "Western Muskogean" (Choctaw-Chickasaw). The classification is reflected in the list below:Campbell 1997, pg. 148 Northern Muskogean: * Creek-Seminole Southern Muskogean: *

* Southwestern Muskogean **

(†) ** ''Alabama–Koasati'' ***

***

** ''Western Muskogean'' ***

***

Kimball's classification

A third proposed classification is that of Geoffrey Kimball, who envisions a threeway split among the languages, with "Western Muskogean" (Choctaw-Chickasaw), "Eastern Muskogean" (Creek-Seminole), and "Central Muskogean" (Alabama-Koasati and Hitchiti-Mikasuki). However, Kimball's classification has not received as much support as either Haas's or Munro's.

Broader relationships

Possible Muskogean languages

Several sparsely attested languages have been claimed to be Muskogean languages. George Broadwell suggested that the languages of the

Yamasee The Yamasees (also spelled Yamassees or Yemassees) were a multiethnic confederation of Native Americans who lived in the coastal region of present-day northern coastal Georgia near the Savannah River and later in northeastern Florida. The Yamas ...

and

Guale Guale was a historic Native American chiefdom of Mississippian culture peoples located along the coast of present-day Georgia and the Sea Islands. Spanish Florida established its Roman Catholic missionary system in the chiefdom in the late 16t ...

were Muskogean.Campbell 1997, pg. 149 However, William Sturtevant argued that the "Yamasee" and "Guale" data were Creek and that the language(s) spoken by the Yamasee and Guale people remain unknown. It is possible that the Yamasee were an amalgamation of several different ethnic groups and did not speak a single language. Chester B. DePratter describes the Yamasee as consisting mainly of speakers of Hitchiti and Guale. The historian Steven Oatis also describes the Yamasee as an ethnically mixed group that included people from Muskogean-speaking regions, such as the early colonial-era native towns of ''Hitchiti'', ''Coweta'', and ''Cussita''. The

Pensacola Pensacola () is the westernmost city in the Florida Panhandle, and the county seat and only incorporated city of Escambia County, Florida, United States. As of the 2020 United States census, the population was 54,312. Pensacola is the principal ci ...

and

Chatot The Chatot (also Chacato or Chactoo) were a Native American tribe who lived in the upper Apalachicola River and Chipola River basins in what is now Florida. They spoke a Muskogean language, which may have been the same as that of the Pensacola ...

(or Chacato) people are reported to have spoken the same Muskogean language, which may have been closely related to Choctaw. Sparse evidence indicates that a Muskogean language was spoken by at least some of the people of the paramount chiefdom of

Cofitachequi Cofitachequi was a paramount chiefdom founded about 1300 AD and encountered by the Hernando de Soto expedition in South Carolina in April 1540. Cofitachequi was later visited by Juan Pardo during his two expeditions (1566–1568) and by Henry W ...

in northeastern

South Carolina )''Animis opibusque parati'' ( for, , Latin, Prepared in mind and resources, links=no) , anthem = " Carolina";" South Carolina On My Mind" , Former = Province of South Carolina , seat = Columbia , LargestCity = Charleston , LargestMetro = ...

. If so, that would be the most eastern outpost of Muskogean. The people of Cofitichequi were probably absorbed by nearby

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 ...

and

Iroquoian The Iroquoian languages are a language family of indigenous peoples of North America. They are known for their general lack of labial consonants. The Iroquoian languages are polysynthetic and head-marking. As of 2020, all surviving Iroquoian la ...

speakers in the late 17th century. A vocabulary of the Houma may be another underdocumented Western Muskogean language or a version of

Mobilian Jargon Mobilian Jargon (also Mobilian trade language, Mobilian Trade Jargon, Chickasaw–Choctaw trade language, Yamá) was a pidgin used as a lingua franca among Native American groups living along the Gulf of Mexico around the time of European settlem ...

. Mobilian Jargon is a pidgin based on Western Muskogean.

Gulf

The best-known connection proposed between Muskogean and other languages is

' Gulf hypothesis, in which she conceived of a macrofamily comprising Muskogean and a number of

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 num ...

s of the southeastern US: Atakapa,

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 ...

, Tunica, and

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 ...

. While well-known, the Gulf grouping is now generally rejected by historical linguists. A number of Muskogean scholars continue to believe that Muskogean is related to Natchez.

Features

Phonology

Proto-Muskogean is reconstructed as having the consonants (given in

IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners ...

transcription): The phonemes reconstructed by Haas as and show up as and (or ), respectively, in all Muskogean languages; they are therefore reconstructed by some as and . appears as in all the daughter languages except Creek for which it is initially and medially. The value of the proto-phoneme conventionally written (or ) is unknown; it appears as in Western Muskogean languages and as in Eastern Muskogean languages. Haas reconstructed it as a voiceless (that is, ), based partly on presumed cognates in

Nouns

Most family languages display lexical accent on nouns and

grammatical case A grammatical case is a category of nouns and noun modifiers (determiners, adjectives, participles, and Numeral (linguistics), numerals), which corresponds to one or more potential grammatical functions for a nominal group in a wording. In vari ...

, which distinguishes the nominative from the oblique. Nouns do not obligatorially inflect for gender or number.

Verbs

Muskogean verbs have a complex

ablaut In linguistics, the Indo-European ablaut (, from German '' Ablaut'' ) is a system of apophony (regular vowel variations) in the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). An example of ablaut in English is the strong verb ''sing, sang, sung'' and its ...

system; the verbal stem almost always changes depending on aspect; less commonly, it is affected by tense or modality. In Muskogean linguistics, the different forms are known as "grades." Verbs mark for first and second person, as well as agent and patient (Choctaw and Chickasaw also mark for dative). Third-persons (he, she, it) have a null-marker. Plurality of a noun agent is marked by either affixation on the verb or an innately plural verbal stem: Pluralization via affixation, Choctaw: :ishimpa :ish-impa :2SG.NOM-eat :"you g.eat" :hashimpa :hash-impa :2PL.NOM-eat :"you l.eat" Innately-numbered verbal stems, Mikasuki: :łiniik :run. SG :"to run (singular)" :palaak :run. PAUCAL :"to run (several)" :mataak :run. PL :"to run (many)"

Vocabulary

Below is a list of basic vocabulary in five Muskogean languages from Broadwell (1992):Broadwell, George Aaron. (1992).
Reconstructing Proto-Muskogean Language and Prehistory: Preliminary Results
'. Paper presented at the Southern Anthropological Society, St. Augustine, FL.

Proto-language

Proto-Muskogean reconstructions by Booker (2005):

Notes

External links

Muskogean Language Family
page at native-languages.org
Chickasaw Language Information & Videos
- Chickasaw.TV

Bibliography

* Booker, Karen. (2005). "Muskogean Historical Phonology." In Hardy, Heather Kay and Scancarelli, Janine (eds.), ''Native languages of the Southeastern United States'', 246-298. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. * Broadwell, George Aaron. (1992).
Reconstructing Proto-Muskogean Language and Prehistory: Preliminary Results
' (PDF). Paper presented at the Southern Anthropological Society, St. Augustine, FL. Retrieved on 2009-05-03. * Campbell, Lyle. (1997). ''American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America''. New York: Oxford University Press. . *Coker, William S. (1999) "Pensacola, 1686-1821." in Judith Anne Bense. (1999) Editor. ''Archaeology of colonial Pensacola.'' University Press of Florida. Found a
Google Books
* Crawford, James M. (Ed.). (1975a). ''Studies in Southeastern Indian Languages''. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. * Crawford, James M. (1975b). "Southeastern Indian Languages". In Crawford (ed.) 1975, pp. 1–120. * Goddard, Ives (Ed.). (1996). ''Languages''. Handbook of North American Indians (W. C. Sturtevant, General Ed.) (Vol. 17). Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution. . * Haas, Mary (1951). "The Proto-Gulf word for water (with notes on Siouan–Yuchi)". ''International Journal of American Linguistics'' 17: 71–79. * Haas, Mary. (1952). "The Proto-Gulf word for 'land' (with notes on Proto-Siouan)". ''International Journal of American Linguistics'' 18:238–240. * Haas, Mary. (1973). "The Southeast". In

T. A. Sebeok Thomas Albert Sebeok ( hu, Sebők Tamás, ; 1920–2001) was a Hungarian-born American polymath,Cobley, Paul; Deely, John; Kull, Kalevi; Petrilli, Susan (eds.) (2011). Semiotics Continues to Astonish: Thomas A. Sebeok and the Doctrine of Signs'. ...

(Ed.), ''Linguistics in North America'' (part 2, pp. 1210–1249). The Hague: Mouton. * Hardy, Heather. (2005). "Introduction". In Hardy & Scancarelli 2005, pp. 69–74. * Hardy, Heather & Janine Scancarelli. (2005). ''Native Languages of the Southeastern United States''. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. *Hopkins, Nicholas A.
The Native Languages of the Southeastern United States
' (PDF). Report for the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc. Retrieved on 2009-05-03. * Martin, Jack B. & Pamela Munro. (2005). "Proto-Muskogean Morphology". in Hardy & Scancarelli eds., pp. 299–320 *Milanich, Jerald T. (1995). ''Florida Indians and the Invasion from Europe''. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida. * Mithun, Marianne. (1999). ''The languages of Native North America''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (hbk); . * Sebeok, Thomas A. (Ed.). (1973). ''Linguistics in North America'' (parts 1 & 2). Current trends in linguistics (Vol. 10). The Hague: Mouton. (Reprinted as Sebeok 1976). * Sturtevant, William C. (Ed.). (1978–present). ''Handbook of North American Indians'' (Vol. 1–20). Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution. (Vols. 1–3, 16, 18–20 not yet published). * Sturtevant, William C. (1994). "The Misconnection of Guale and Yamasee with Muskogean". ''International Journal of American Linguistics'' 60:139–148. *Swanton, John Reed. (1952) ''The Indian Tribes of North America.'' Found a
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Muskogean Language Agglutinative languages Language families Indigenous languages of the North American Southeast South Appalachian Mississippian culture Gulf languages