The Pawnee language is a
Caddoan language
The Caddoan languages are a family of languages native to the Great Plains spoken by tribal groups of the central United States, from present-day North Dakota south to Oklahoma. All Caddoan languages are critically endangered, as the number of ...
traditionally spoken by
Pawnee Pawnee initially refers to a Native American people and its language:
* Pawnee people
* Pawnee language
Pawnee is also the name of several places in the United States:
* Pawnee, Illinois
* Pawnee, Kansas
* Pawnee, Missouri
* Pawnee City, Nebraska ...
Native Americans, currently inhabiting in north-central
Oklahoma
Oklahoma (; Choctaw language, Choctaw: ; chr, ᎣᎧᎳᎰᎹ, ''Okalahoma'' ) is a U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States, bordered by Texas on the south and west, Kansas on the nor ...
. Historically, the Pawnee lived along the
Platte River
The Platte River () is a major river in the State of Nebraska. It is about long; measured to its farthest source via its tributary, the North Platte River, it flows for over . The Platte River is a tributary of the Missouri River, which itself ...
in what is now
Nebraska
Nebraska () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by South Dakota to the north; Iowa to the east and Missouri to the southeast, both across the Missouri River; Kansas to the south; Colorado to the southwe ...
.
Dialects
Two important
dialect
The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of Linguistics, linguistic phenomena:
One usage refers to a variety (linguisti ...
divisions are evident in Pawnee: South Band and ''Skiri''. The distinction between the two dialects rests on differences in their respective
phonetic
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...
inventory and
lexicon
A lexicon is the vocabulary of a language or branch of knowledge (such as nautical or medical). In linguistics, a lexicon is a language's inventory of lexemes. The word ''lexicon'' derives from Koine Greek language, Greek word (), neuter of () ...
.
Status
Prior to colonization and
US expansion, Pawnee was spoken by all members of the Nation. Today Pawnee is only spoken fluently by a shrinking number of elderly speakers. As more young people shift to
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
as their first language, the transmission of Pawnee and its
vitality
Vitality (, , ) is the capacity to live, grow, or develop. More simply it is the property of having life. The perception of vitality is regarded as a basic psychological drive and, in philosophy, a component to the will to live. As such, peopl ...
are seriously endangered.
As of 2007, the Pawnee Nation is developing teaching materials for the local high school and for adult language classes. There are also extensive documentary materials in the language archived at the American Indian Studies Research Institute. The Pawnee language can be heard spoken in the 2015 movie ''
The Revenant''. In 2019 and 2020, the Pawnee Nation has posted online videos teaching the Pawnee language.
Phonology
The following describes the South Band dialect.
Consonants
Pawnee has eight
consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wit ...
phoneme
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west o ...
s, and according to one analysis of medial- and final-position glottal stops, one may posit a ninth consonant phoneme.
* is predictable when it occurs in the middle of words. However, since is not completely predictable at the end of words, it may also need to be considered a phoneme.
Vowels
Pawnee has four
short
Short may refer to:
Places
* Short (crater), a lunar impact crater on the near side of the Moon
* Short, Mississippi, an unincorporated community
* Short, Oklahoma, a census-designated place
People
* Short (surname)
* List of people known as ...
vowel
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...
phonemes and four
long
Long may refer to:
Measurement
* Long, characteristic of something of great duration
* Long, characteristic of something of great length
* Longitude (abbreviation: long.), a geographic coordinate
* Longa (music), note value in early music mens ...
counterparts (also phonemic).
Morphology
Pawnee is an
ergative-absolutive polysynthetic language
In linguistic typology, polysynthetic languages, formerly holophrastic languages, are highly synthetic languages, i.e. languages in which words are composed of many morphemes (word parts that have independent meaning but may or may not be able t ...
.
Alphabet
The Pawnee
alphabet
An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syll ...
has 9 consonants and 8 vowels. The letters are relatively similar in pronunciation to their English counterparts.
Consonants
Vowels
Notes
References
*American Indian Studies Research Institute. (2008)
Dictionary Database: Pawnee (Skiri and Southband dialects)
*American Indian Studies Research Institute. (2001)
* Mithun, Marianne. (1999). ''The languages of Native North America''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (hbk); .
* Parks, Douglas R. (1976). ''A grammar of Pawnee''. New York: Garland.
* Taylor, Allan R. (1978).
eview of ''A grammar of Pawnee'' by D. Parks ''Language'', ''54'' (4), 969-972.
External links
Pawnee Language Program sponsored by the Pawnee Nation and Indiana University
{{Authority control
Pawnee
Indigenous languages of the North American Plains
Caddoan languages
Polysynthetic languages
Indigenous languages of Oklahoma
Endangered Caddoan languages
Endangered indigenous languages of the Americas