Lenape
The Lenape (, , or Lenape , del, Lënapeyok) also called the Leni Lenape, Lenni Lenape and Delaware people, are an indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands, who live in the United States and Canada. Their historical territory includ ...
people in the late 17th century and the early 18th century, in what then was (or later became) the southern two-thirds of
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...
, southeastern
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...
and the northern two-thirds of Delaware, but later in Ontario and
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 ...
. It is one of the two
Delaware languages
The Delaware languages, also known as the Lenape languages ( del, Lënapei èlixsuwakàn), are Munsee and Unami, two closely related languages of the Eastern Algonquian subgroup of the Algonquian language family. Munsee and Unami, spoken abo ...
, the other being
Munsee
The Munsee (or Minsi or Muncee) or mə́n'si·w ( del, Monsiyok)Online Lenape Talking Dictionary, "Munsee Indians"Link/ref> are a subtribe of the Lenape, originally constituting one of the three great divisions of that nation and dwelling along t ...
. The last fluent speaker in the United States, Edward Thompson, of the Delaware Tribe of Indians, died on August 31, 2002. His sister
Nora Thompson Dean
Nora Thompson Dean (July 3, 1907 – November 29, 1984), also known as Weenjipahkihelexkwe (modern Unami orthography: Weènchipahkihëlèxkwe), which translates as "Touching Leaves Woman" in Unami, was a member of the Delaware Tribe of Indians. As ...
(1907–1984) provided valuable information about the language to linguists and other scholars.
"Lenni-Lenape," literally means "Men of Men", but is translated to mean "Original People." The Lenape names for the areas they inhabited were ''Scheyichbi'' (i.e. New Jersey), which means "water's edge", and '' Lenapehoking'', meaning "in the land of the Delaware Indians." It describes the ancient homeland of all Delaware Indians, both Unami and Munsee. The English named the river running through much of the traditional range of the Lenape after the first governor of the Jamestown Colony, Lord De La Warr, and consequently referred to the people who lived around the river as "Delaware Indians".
History
Unami is an
Eastern Algonquian language
The Eastern Algonquian languages constitute a subgroup of the Algonquian languages. Prior to European contact, Eastern Algonquian consisted of at least 17 languages, whose speakers collectively occupied the Atlantic coast of North America and adj ...
. The hypothetical common ancestor language from which the Eastern Algonquian languages descend is Proto-Eastern Algonquian (PEA). An intermediate group ''Delawarean'' that is a descendant of Proto-Eastern Algonquian consists of Mahican and Common Delaware, the latter being a further subgroup comprising Munsee Delaware and Unami Delaware.Goddard, Ives. 1996. "Introduction." Ives Goddard, ed., The Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 17. Languages, pp. 1-16. Washington, D.C.: The Smithsonian Institution. The justification for Delawarean as an intermediate subgroup rests upon the high degree of similarity between Mahican and the two Delaware languages, but relatively little detailed argumentation in support of Delawarean has been adduced.
Compared to Munsee, Unami has undergone extensive phonological innovation, coupled with morphological
regularization
Regularization may refer to:
* Regularization (linguistics)
* Regularization (mathematics)
* Regularization (physics)
In physics, especially quantum field theory, regularization is a method of modifying observables which have singularities in ...
.
The PEA vowel system consisted of four long vowels ''*i·, *o·, *e·, *a·,'' and two short vowels ''*a'' and ''ə.'' The vowel history is as follows: ''*i·'' (from PEA merger of Proto-Algonquian (PA ''*i·'' and ''*i'' to PEA ''*i·''), ''*o·'' (from PEA merger of PA ''*o·'' and ''*o'' ), ''*e·'' (from Proto-Algonquian ''*e·''), and ''*a·'' (from Proto-Algonquian ''*a·''; the short vowels are''*ə'' (from Proto-Algonquian ''*e''), and ''*a'' (from Proto-Algonquian ''*a''). This system was continued down to Common Delaware, but Munsee and Unami have innovated separately with respect to the vowel systems.
Revival attempts
The dominant modern version of the Southern Unami dialect called "Lenape" is taught by the Delaware Tribe of Indians, headquartered in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. They have the Lenape Language Preservation Project. The same dialect was spoken by the
Delaware Nation
Delaware Nation ( del, Èhëliwsikakw Lënapeyok), also known as the Delaware Tribe of Western Oklahoma and sometimes called the Absentee or Western Delaware, based in Anadarko, OklahomaAnadarko in the southwestern part of Oklahoma. Both Oklahoma and Delaware tribes have recorded native speakers and produced written lessons for instruction, which are available for sale from Various Indian Peoples Publishing Company, which is in Texas. These efforts, in conjunction with other community efforts comprise an attempt to preserve the language.
Some descriptions of the Northern Unami dialect as spoken during the 18th century are given by Moravian missionary
John Heckewelder
John Gottlieb Ernestus Heckewelder (March 12, 1743 – January 21, 1823) was an American missionary for the Moravian Church.
Biography
John Heckewelder was born in Bedford, England and came to Pennsylvania in 1754. After finishing his education, ...
.
Phonology
Consonants
Unami has been analyzed as having contrastive
geminate
In phonetics and phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from '' gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from ...
and non-geminate
obstruent
An obstruent () is a speech sound such as , , or that is formed by ''obstructing'' airflow. Obstruents contrast with sonorants, which have no such obstruction and so resonate. All obstruents are consonants, but sonorants include vowels as well as ...
consonants, although this contrast is relatively weak. A full analysis of the status of the geminates, also known as long consonants, is not available, and more than one analysis of Delaware consonants has been proposed. The long consonants are described as having low functional yield, and they differentiate relatively few pairs of words but occur in contrasting environments. Some examples of contrastive geminate pairs include: ''ná k·ə́ntka·n'' "then you (sg.) danced" versus ''ná kə́ntka·n'' "then there was dancing"; ''ní p·ɔ́·m'' "his thigh" versus ''ní pɔ́·m'' "the ham"; and ''nsa·s·a·k·ənə́mən'' "I stuck it out repeatedly" versus ''nsa·sa·k·ənə́mən'' "I stuck it out slowly".
There are also rules that lengthen consonants in certain environments. The length mark is used to indicate gemination of a preceding consonant or
vowel length
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, f ...
, although in the literature on Unami the raised dot (·) is often used for these purposes, as other diacritics may be used above vowels (see below).
In the following chart, the usual transcription used in the sources is given with the IPA in brackets.
Vowels
Unami vowels are presented as organized into contrasting long–short pairs. One asymmetry is that high short is paired with long , and the pairing of long and short is noteworthy. It is worth noting that /ə/ and /o/ are not distinguishable before /w/, /m/, and /kw/. Additionally, vowels are classified as strong and weak, which plays an important role in determining stress (see below). Long vowels and vowels before consonant clusters are automatically strong. Certain short vowels, which are differentiated with a
breve
A breve (, less often , neuter form of the Latin "short, brief") is the diacritic mark ˘, shaped like the bottom half of a circle. As used in Ancient Greek, it is also called , . It resembles the caron (the wedge or in Czech, in Slo ...
– /ĭ, ĕ, ŏ/ – are also strong vowels because they are treated morphophonemically as long vowels, even though they are pronounced as short. In a sequence of syllables containing a short vowel followed by a consonant (C) or consonant and /w/ (Cw), the odd-numbered vowels are weak, and the even numbered vowels are strong.
Furthermore, some short vowels are strong even in a weakening environment; such exceptions are often marked with a
grave accent
The grave accent () ( or ) is a diacritical mark used to varying degrees in French, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian and many other western European languages, as well as for a few unusual uses in English. It is also used in other languages using t ...
. Additionally, some vowels which are unaffected by predicted vowel syncope are marked with an
acute accent
The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets, precomposed ch ...
. There is a predictable tendency, additionally, to nasalize and lengthen a vowel before /ns/ and /nš/, so that /lowé·nso/ ("his name is
uch
Uch ( pa, ;
ur, ), frequently referred to as Uch Sharīf ( pa, ;
ur, ; ''"Noble Uch"''), is a historic city in the southern part of Pakistan's Punjab province. Uch may have been founded as Alexandria on the Indus, a town founded by Alexan ...
) is realized closer to uwé̹·sufrom underlying /ələwe·nsəw/.
Syllable structure
Syllable structure is diverse, permitting a certain amount of consonant clustering. The following consonant clusters can occur:
*/m, n/ (which are realized as homorganic nasals) + /p, t, k, s, č, š/
*/h/ + /p, t, č, k, m, l/
*/s/ + /p, k/
*/x/ + /p, k/
*/š/ + /k/
Additionally, certain consonants may combine with the semivowel /w/. Note that some underlying forms may also contain /sw/ and /šw/, but these are always removed by morphophonemic processes.
*/p, m, k, h/ + /w/
Stress
Stress
Stress may refer to:
Science and medicine
* Stress (biology), an organism's response to a stressor such as an environmental condition
* Stress (linguistics), relative emphasis or prominence given to a syllable in a word, or to a word in a phrase ...
is generally predictable in Unami. The rightmost nonfinal strong vowel is stressed, or a strong vowel in final position if it is the only one in the word. Often when stress would be expected to fall on the
antepenult
In linguistics, the ultima is the last syllable of a word, the penult is the next-to-last syllable, and the antepenult is third-from-last syllable. In a word of three syllables, the names of the syllables are antepenult-penult-ultima.
Etymology
Ul ...
it is shifted to the
penult
Penult is a linguistics term for the second to last syllable of a word. It is an abbreviation of ''penultimate'', which describes the next-to-last item in a series. The penult follows the antepenult and precedes the ultima. For example, the main ...
. This change is found in three conjunct endings: /-ak/, /-at/, and /-an/. In the last case, the accent shifts to the penultimate /-an/ only if it would otherwise fall on an antepenultimate short vowel, and if the consonant between them is voiced.
Phonological processes
Unami phonology is extremely complex, with various
morphophonological
Morphophonology (also morphophonemics or morphonology) is the branch of linguistics that studies the interaction between morphological and phonological or phonetic processes. Its chief focus is the sound changes that take place in morphemes (mi ...
rules, and a theoretical form usually undergoes a set of predictable phonological processes to produce the true form found in speech. There are about 17 such rules common to both
Munsee
The Munsee (or Minsi or Muncee) or mə́n'si·w ( del, Monsiyok)Online Lenape Talking Dictionary, "Munsee Indians"Link/ref> are a subtribe of the Lenape, originally constituting one of the three great divisions of that nation and dwelling along t ...
and Unami, and another 28 unique to Unami, though this analysis ignores predictable exceptions, such as the class of static words which may skip many of these rules. These rules govern things such as consonant lengthening/shortening, vowel syncopation, metathesis, vowel coloring, etc.
A list of processes unique to Unami follow. Note that these are written in linguistic notation. Thus, '' → ∅ / _V when are weak'' means that the sounds /ə/ and /a/ become null (disappear) in the context of when they are weak and appear before either /h/ or /x/ and another vowel. The slash means "in the context of", and the underscore _ indicates where the /ə/ or /a/ must occur. In some notations the pound symbol (#) appears, indicating word boundaries (either the beginning or end). Regular parenthesis indicate optional conditions when framing phonemes or additional information about phonemes: "C=stop". The capital letters C, V, and N mean "consonant," "vowel," and "nasal" respectively.
*U-1: Weak and strong vowel marking
*U-2: Weak short vowel loss before gutturals /h/ and /x/: /kənalhó·xwe/ ("you walk upstream") versus /nalahó·xwe·(w)/ ("he walks upstream")
** ''when /ə,a/ are weak''→ ∅ / _V
*U-3: Vowel-coloring; underlying /ə/ may be color to /i/ /o/ or /a/ in various environments.
**ə → o / _ -- although Goddard notes that this orthography may be imperfect because surface-phonemic /ə/ and /o/ are not distinct before /w/, /m/ and /kw/. Cf. /pko/ ("vegetable gum", underlying /pəkəw/) with /mpok·ó·yom/ ("my gum") but /mpək·ó·he/ ("I gather gum").
**ə → i / _
**ə → o / _ h
**ə → i / _ h ''elsewhere''
**ə → o / _ and // w_Nk
**ə → i / _ Nk ''elsewhere''
**ə → o / _x
**ə → a / _x ''elsewhere''
*U-4: Vowel shortening before primary cluster of a nasal and another consonant
**V̅ → V̌ / _ NC
*U-5: Semivowel assimilation
**h → hh / V̌_
*U-6: Stop lengthening
**C^(vl≠h) → C· / V_(s, š, x) ''where V is strong''
*U-7: /h/-metathesis
**V̌hC → hV̌C ''except / VC_ where V is weak''
*U-8: An adjustment in vowel length before /hC/ (an /h/ and another consonant)
**V → V̌ / _hC ''(voiced C)''
**V → V̅ / _hC ''(voiceless C)''
*U-9: /h/-loss before stop consonant
**hC ''(C=stop)'' → C
*U-10: Nasal assimilation, part 1
**NC ''(C=stop)'' → homorganic nasal + voiced stop
**NC ''(C= continuant)'' → nC / V_
*U-11: Vowel-weakening and syncope (with certain exceptions)
**a → ah / CV ''(/a/ is weak; C=voiceless) except some'' a ''(a=weak)'' → ∅ / #n_CV ''(C=voiceless)''
**ə → ∅ / _CV ''(/ə/ is weak; C=voiceless)'' ''and'' / l_, y_l, w_w, m_m ''and'' / #(n)_V
*U-12: Nasal assimilation, part 2
**nC ''(C=voiceless; C≠/x,h/)'' → homorganic nasal + C ''(C=voiced)'' / #_
**VnC → Ṽ·C ''(most speakers)''
*U-13: Voiced consonant assimilation
**C(x)C(y) ''(C=voiced constituant)'' → CyCy
*U-14: Vowel syncope before /xCV/, in which exceptions are marked with a grave accent
**V̌ → ∅ / _CV ''except'' / VC_ ''(where V=weak)''
*U-15: /h/-loss in clusters
**h → ∅ / _
*U-16: Vowel shortening
**V̅ → V̌ / _h(ə)CV ''and'' // _CC ''(C=voiced) and'' / _C·ah
*U-17: /mə/-loss
**V́hməna· → V́hna·
*U-18: /ə/-insertion
**∅ → ə / h_ ''and'' / #_C (C≠h)
*U-19: Metathesis of /w/. Does not affect the roots /wəl-/ 'well' and /wət-/ 'pull'.
**w(ə)C1(w) → Cw / #_V ''if C1=/p, m, k, h/''
**w(ə)C → Cw / #_
** → / #_
**w → / C_
**x → xw / o(·)_
**(k)wx(k) → (k)x(k)w / #_
*U-20: /w/-coloring of /a/-vowels and /w/-loss
**w → / _ ''where C is not /w/ and V is not /o(·)/''
**w → ∅ / V1_V2 ''where V1 is not /o(·)/ and V2 is not /ə/''
**w → ∅ / (C)_o(·)
*U-21: /y/-adjustment
**y → ∅ / V̄_V1 ''where V1 is not /ə/''
**∅ → y / V1_V2 ''where V1 is a front vowel and V2 is a back vowel''
**w → y / _k ''(only in the suffixes 1/-əkw/ and 1/-əke·/)''
*U-22: Final /l/-loss. The dropping of the /l/ is optional, but the option is exploited differently by the two morphemes it affects.
**l → (l) / _#
*U-23: Final-vowel shortening
**V̄ → V̆ / _#
*U-24: Final /h/-, /w/-, and /y/-loss
**h → ∅ / _#
**w → (w) / V̄_#
**w → ∅ / o(·)_#
**w → ∅ / #_tə
**y → ∅ / i_#
*U-25: Initial cluster and syllable loss. Initial clusters arising from morphophonemic rules U-11 and U-14 above are simplified; many initial weak-vowel syllables are lost. There are many exceptions, however, such that Goddard does not attempt to describe the pattern.
*U-26: Consonant-shortening
**C·(w) → C(w) / _
*U-27: Consonant-lengthening
**C ''(C=stop)'' → C· / #(C)hV̆_V(C)#
*U-28: Negative vowel assimilation in forms with 5/-(o·)w(i·)/, which was a recent innovation at the time Goddard was writing.
**V̄x(w)i → V̄xV̆x / _#
Morphology
Nouns
Third person participants are marked for gender (animate versus inanimate), obviation (
proximate
Proximates are used in the analysis of biological materials as a decomposition of a human-consumable good into its major constituents. They are a good approximation of the contents of packaged comestible goods and serve as a cost-effective and ea ...
versus
obviative
Within linguistics, obviative (abbreviated ) third person is a grammatical-person clusivity marking that distinguishes a non- salient (obviative) third-person referent from a more salient (proximate) third-person referent in a given discourse cont ...
), and presence (nonabsentative versus absentative). Generally, the inanimate, obviative, and absentative categories are more marked than their opposites (i.e. animate, proximate, and nonabsentative), but it is not clear whether animacy or inanimacy is the more marked of the opposition. The first and second persons are not marked for presence or obviation and are always animate.
Obviation
The first mentioned and/or primary animate third person is proximate; all other third persons are
obviative
Within linguistics, obviative (abbreviated ) third person is a grammatical-person clusivity marking that distinguishes a non- salient (obviative) third-person referent from a more salient (proximate) third-person referent in a given discourse cont ...
, unless they act in conjunction with the proximate participant. Verbs are also inflected to indicate whether the verbal action is proximate on obviate or obviate on proximate.
Presence
Third-person participants can be marked by a special set of endings indicating their absence from the general area of the focus of discourse. For example, absentative endings are used when speaking of the deceased (even if the corpse is physically present), as in the sentence ''no·lăčahko·ná·na nkahe·səná·na'' ("our (excl.) mother (abv.) treated us well"), in which both verb and noun are marked with the absentative /-a/ ending.
Gender
Nouns in Unami are classified as animate or inanimate, which is reflected in verbal conjugation. Animate nouns denote human beings, animals, spirits, trees, and certain fruits, tubers, root vegetables, and other unpredictable exceptions like /ko·n/ ("snow") and /nhíkaš/ ("my fingernail"). (However, berries, nuts, and vegetables growing above ground are generally inanimate.) Thus, /té·hi·m/ ("strawberry"), /xáskwi·m/ ("corn"), /ke·skúnthak/ ("pumpkin"), /mpi/ ("water"), and /nhíka·t/ ("my leg") are inanimate, while /lə́nu/ ("man"), /xho·k/ ("snake"), /mahtán'tu/ ("Devil") and /hɔ́pəni·s/ ("potato") are animate. However, traditionally inanimate nouns which are directly addressed or personified are treated as animate. Thus, traditionally inanimate /ăsǝ́n/ ("stone") is treated as animate in the sentence ''šá·i a· ăsǝ́nak kǝnčí·mowak'' ("the stones would immediately cry out").
Verbs
Unami is a highly
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 ...
,
polysynthetic
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 ...
language. Verbs in Unami are marked for person and number, and contain inflectional elements of order (independent, conjunct, and imperative), aspect, and the negative.
A table of the personal pronouns is given below. The first person plural ("we") may be either inclusive (including the addressee) or exclusive.
Following are tables exemplifying verbal paradigms in Unami in the independent order, indicative mood and present tense.
Animate Intransitive (AI) Verbs
Transitive Animate (TA) Verbs
Inanimate Intransitive (II) Verbs
Transitive Inanimate (TI) Verbs
The TI themes have the same inflection as AI stems for all conjuncts (NB that indefinite subject forms of consonant-final themes are not attested, but the vowel-final themes follow the AI pattern.) Three forms are illustrated from each type.
Affixes
Prefixes
Verbal prefixes are used only in the independent order, although some forms of the independent order lack a prefix. There are three of them: /n-/ (first person), /k-/ (second person), and /w-/ (third person). If a stem has an underlying initial vowel, a /t/ is inserted after the prefix, and before this and other stem-initial consonants a /ə/ is inserted. Sometimes, this /ə/ contracts with a stem-initial /wə/ to /o·/ except when the /o·/ would be phonetically shortened via rule U-4a. Examples include: /ntá·mwi/ ("I get up from lying") versus /á·mwi·(w)/ ("he gets up"). Two roots with initial /t/ extend the syllable with /-ən/ when adding prefixes; these roots are /tal-/ ("there") and /tax-/ ("so many"), e.g. ''náni ntəntala·wsí·ne·n'' ("that is where we live ur lives) from the animate intransitive stem /tala·wəsi·/.Goddard, Ives, 1979, p. 76
Prefixes are mutually exclusive and are selected based on the following rule: if one of the participants is second person, the second person prefix is used; if not, if one of the participants is the first person, then the first person prefix is used; if none of these applies, other forms, if they take a prefix, take the third person prefix. This is the well-known Algonquian 2-1-3 precedence rule.
Suffixes
Suffixes are grouped into eight positional classes. These are:
*Theme
**1. Theme signs
*Thematic affixes
**2. Diminutive and pejorative
**3. Obviative and plural
**4. Negative; imperative modes
*
Desinence
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry gr ...
s (inflectional suffixes)
**5. Central endings
**6. Aspect
**7. Peripheral endings
**8. Mode
*First position
The first position (theme signs) is filled only for transitive verbs and help describe the relationship between the two participants by indicating which is the
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 ...
and which is the
object
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 ...
. The direct and inverse theme signs indicate the direction of the verb along a spectrum what might be called distance. From least to most distant the participants are: (1) first or second; (2) indefinite (only as subject); (3) proximate third person; (4) obviative third person; (5) farther obviative third person; (6) inanimate (subject only). If the subject is less distant than the object, the direct theme is used; if the subject is more distant, the inverse signs are used. After transitive animate (TA) verb stems appear one of the four following theme signs:
**Theme 1: 1/-a·/ ~ 1/-∅/; makes direct forms
**Theme 2: 1/-əkw/ ~ 1/-əke·/; makes inverse forms
**Theme 3: 1/-i·/; makes first person object forms
**Theme 4: 1/-əl/; makes second person forms
For transitive inanimate (TI) verbs, there appears the theme sign pertaining to the appropriate TI class:
**Class 1a: 1/-am/
**Class 1b: 1/-əm/
**Class 2: 1/-o·/ ~ 1/-aw/
**Class 3: no theme sign
For Class 2 TI theme signs, in certain derivational categories, the theme sign is retained even when the thematic element is dropped. The contrast between both categories is sharper in the Central Algonquian languages, whose theme sign has a more complex series of alternants.
*Second position
The second position consists of
diminutives
A diminutive is a root word that has been modified to convey a slighter degree of its root meaning, either to convey the smallness of the object or quality named, or to convey a sense of intimacy or endearment. A (abbreviated ) is a word-formati ...
in 2/-tī/ and pejoratives in 2/-šī/ (in both of these, the /-ī/ is unstable.) An example of a diminutive is /pé·t·o/ ("the little one comes"), contrasted with the pejorative /pé·šo/ ("the undesirable one came"). The use of /t/ in the formation of diminutives seems to be an innovation of Unami, as many other Algonquian languages use */s/ or */ʃ/ (in fact, the diminutive of Munsee is /-šī/).
*Third position
In position three are the affixes 3/-lī/, which marks the obviative third person, and 3/-h(ə)tī/, which marks the plural.
*Fourth position
Position four contains the negative affix 4/-(ō)w(ī)/ and prohibitive imperative and future imperative forms, which have complex series of alternants.
*Fifth Position
Position five contains the central endings which index the central participant of each form, except those using TA theme signs 1/-i·/ and 1/-əl/;
*Sixth Position
Position six contains the affix endings: /-pan/ marks the preterite, and /sa/ ~ /shan/ mark the present.
*Seventh Position
Position seven contains peripheral endings, which are used to mark the nominal category of some 3rd person participants in forms in the independent and conjunct (but not imperative) orders.
*Eighth Position
Position eight reflects the subjunctive, prohibitive, and future modes.
Syntax
Unami is, like many
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 ...
, polysynthetic and highly agglutinative. This means that most of the information is encoded in the verb (sometimes with whole words being incorporated into the stem), making word order more fluid than in English. Unfortunately, syntax is one of the least studied aspects of the Unami language; there is much more data on morphology, because of an especial focus on reconstructing Proto-Algonquian.
Some examples of complex sentences in Unami include:Goddard, Ives, 1979
**''ta heč tɔllí·ksi·n ne·k ma·nšá·p·iyak?'' (what color are those beads?)
**''še· lah ni e·k·aɔ́·kwe ali-hɔkhakéhɔ·n ní·ša awé·ni·k'' (over there under the trees two people were buried)
**''mi·mə́nsak šokw təli-ahi-pe·nháto·n'' (but the children's footprints are numerous)
**''na hont náni tənnə́mən níkahke pi·lae·č·əč·ínka'' (then that's what those boys did)
Jotham Meeker
Jotham Meeker (Hamilton County, Ohio, November 8, 1804—January 12, 1855) was a Baptist missionary, printer, who lived and proselytized among various Native American peoples, including the Delaware, Ottawa, and Shawnee. He was born near Cincin ...