Siouan or Siouan–Catawban is a
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 ...
of
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 ...
that is located primarily in the
Great Plains
The Great Plains (french: Grandes Plaines), sometimes simply "the Plains", is a broad expanse of flatland in North America. It is located west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains, much of it covered in prairie, steppe, an ...
,
Ohio
Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...
and
Mississippi
Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Miss ...
valleys and southeastern North America with a few other languages in the east.
Name
Authors who call the entire family ''Siouan'' distinguish the two branches as ''
Western Siouan'' and ''
Eastern Siouan'' or as ''Siouan-proper'' and ''Catawban''. Others restrict the name "Siouan" to the western branch and use the name ''Siouan–Catawban'' for the entire family. Generally, however, the name "Siouan" is used without distinction.
Family division
Siouan languages can be grouped into the
Western Siouan languages
The Western Siouan languages, also called Siouan proper or simply Siouan, are a large language family native to North America. They are closely related to the Catawban languages, sometimes called Eastern Siouan, and together with them constitute ...
and
Catawban languages
The Catawban, or Eastern Siouan, languages form a small language family in east North America. The Catawban family is a branch of the larger Siouan a.k.a. Siouan–Catawban family.
Family division
The Catawban family consists of two languages: ...
. The Western Siouan languages can be divided into Missouri River languages (such as
Crow
A crow is a bird of the genus ''Corvus'', or more broadly a synonym for all of ''Corvus''. Crows are generally black in colour. The word "crow" is used as part of the common name of many species. The related term "raven" is not pinned scientifical ...
and
Hidatsa
The Hidatsa are a Siouan people. They are enrolled in the federally recognized Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota. Their language is related to that of the Crow, and they are sometimes considered a parent t ...
),
Mandan
The Mandan are a Native American tribe of the Great Plains who have lived for centuries primarily in what is now North Dakota. They are enrolled in the Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation. About half of the Mandan still res ...
, Mississippi River languages (such as
Dakotan,
Chiwere
Chiwere (also called Iowa-Otoe-Missouria or Báxoje-Jíwere-Ñút'achi) is a Siouan language originally spoken by the Missouria, Otoe, and Iowa peoples, who originated in the Great Lakes region but later moved throughout the Midwest and plains. ...
-
Winnebago, and
Dhegihan languages
The Dhegihan languages are a group of Siouan languages that include Kansa– Osage, Omaha–Ponca, and Quapaw. Their historical region included parts of the Ohio and Mississippi River Valleys, the Great Plains, and southeastern North America. T ...
), and
Ohio Valley Siouan branches. The Catawban languages consist only of
Catawban and
Woccon.
Proto-Siouan
Previous proposals
There is a certain amount of
comparative work in Siouan–Catawban languages. Wolff (1950–51) is among the first and more complete works on the subject. Wolff reconstructed the system of proto-Siouan, and this was modified by Matthews (1958). The latter's system is shown below:
With respect to vowels, five oral vowels are being reconstructed and three
nasal vowel
A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the soft palate (or velum) so that the air flow escapes through the nose and the mouth simultaneously, as in the French vowel or Amoy []. By contrast, oral vowels are produced wit ...
s . Wolff also reconstructed some consonantal clusters .
Current proposal
Collaborative work involving a number of Siouanists started at the 1984 Comparative Siouan Workshop at the University of Colorado with the goal of creating a comparative Siouan dictionary that would include Proto-Siouan reconstructions. This work yielded a different analysis of the phonemic system of Proto-Siouan, which appears below:
Consonants
In Siouanist literature (e.g., Rankin et al. 2015),
Americanist phonetic transcriptions are the norm, so IPA * is Americanist *š, IPA *j is Americanist *y, and so on.
The major change to the previously-proposed system was accomplished by systematically accounting for the distribution of multiple stop series in modern Siouan languages by tracing them back to multiple stop series in the proto-language. Previous analysis posited only a single stop series.
Many of the consonant clusters proposed by Wolff (19501951) can be accounted for due to
syncopation
In music, syncopation is a variety of rhythms played together to make a piece of music, making part or all of a tune or piece of music off-beat. More simply, syncopation is "a disturbance or interruption of the regular flow of rhythm": a "place ...
of short vowels before stressed syllables. For example, Matthews (1958: 129) gives *wróke as the proto-form for 'male.' With added data from a larger set of Siouan languages since the middle of the twentieth century, Rankin et al. (2015) give *waroː(-ka) as the reconstructed form for 'male.'
Unlike Wolff and Matthew's proposals, there are no posited nasal consonants in Proto-Siouan. Nasal consonants only arise in daughter languages when followed by a nasal vowel.
In addition, there is a set of sounds that represent obstruentized versions of their corresponding sonorants. These sounds have different reflexes in daughter languages, with *w appearing as
or
in most daughter languages, while *W has a reflex of
b or
The actual phonetic value of these obstruents is an issue of some debate, with some arguing that they arise through geminated *w+*w or *r+*r sequences or a laryngeal plus *w or *r.
Vowels
Previous work on Proto-Siouan only posited single vowel length. However, phonemic vowel length exists in several Siouan languages such as
Hidatsa
The Hidatsa are a Siouan people. They are enrolled in the federally recognized Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota. Their language is related to that of the Crow, and they are sometimes considered a parent t ...
,
Ho-Chunk
The Ho-Chunk, also known as Hoocągra or Winnebago (referred to as ''Hotúŋe'' in the neighboring indigenous Iowa-Otoe language), are a Siouan-speaking Native American people whose historic territory includes parts of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iow ...
, and
Tutelo
The Tutelo (also Totero, Totteroy, Tutera; Yesan in Tutelo) were Native Americans in the United States, Native American people living above the Atlantic Seaboard fall line, Fall Line in present-day Virginia and West Virginia. They spoke a Siouan d ...
. Rankin et al. (2015) analyze numerous instances of long vowels as present due to common inheritance rather than common innovation. The five oral vowels and three nasal vowels posited by earlier scholars is expanded to include a distinction between short and long vowels. The proposed Proto-Siouan vowel system appears below:
=Oral vowels
=
=Nasal vowels
=
External relations
The
Yuchi
The Yuchi people, also spelled Euchee and Uchee, are a Native American tribe based in Oklahoma.
In the 16th century, Yuchi people lived in the eastern Tennessee River valley in Tennessee. In the late 17th century, they moved south to Alabama, G ...
isolate may be the closest relative of Sioux–Catawban, based on both sound changes and morphological comparison.
In the 19th century,
Robert Latham suggested that the Siouan languages are related to the
Caddoan
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 ...
and
Iroquoian languages
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 ...
. In 1931,
Louis Allen
Louis Allen (April 25, 1919 – January 31, 1964) was an African-American businessman in Liberty, Mississippi, who was shot and killed on his land during the civil rights era. He had previously tried to register to vote and had allegedly talked ...
presented the first list of systematic correspondences between a set of 25 lexical items in Siouan and Iroquoian. In the 1960s and 1970s,
Wallace Chafe
Wallace Chafe (; September 3, 1927 – February 3, 2019) was an American linguist. He was Professor Emeritus and research professor at The University of California, Santa Barbara.
Biography
Chafe was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was a ...
further explored the link between Siouan and Caddoan languages. In the 1990s,
Marianne Mithun
Marianne Mithun (born 1946) is an American linguist specializing in American Indian languages and language typology. She is professor of linguistics at the University of California at Santa Barbara, where she has held an academic position since 19 ...
compared the morphology and syntax of all the three families. At present, this
Macro-Siouan
The Macro-Siouan languages are a proposed language family that would include the Siouan languages, Siouan, Iroquoian languages, Iroquoian, and Caddoan languages, Caddoan families. Most linguists remain unconvinced that these languages share a gen ...
hypothesis is not considered proven, and the similarities between the three families may instead be due to their protolanguages having been part of a
sprachbund
A sprachbund (, lit. "language federation"), also known as a linguistic area, area of linguistic convergence, or diffusion area, is a group of languages that share areal features resulting from geographical proximity and language contact. The lang ...
.
References
Bibliography
* Parks, Douglas R.; & Rankin, Robert L. (2001). "The Siouan languages." In R. J. DeMallie (Ed.), ''Handbook of North American Indians: Plains'' (Vol. 13, Part 1, pp. 94–114). W. C. Sturtevant (Gen. Ed.). Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution. .
*
Further reading
*
External links
Comparative Siouan Dictionary
{{Authority control
Language families
Indigenous languages of the North American Plains
Sioux culture
Indigenous languages of Maryland