The Gulf languages are a proposed family of native North American languages composed of the

Muskogean languages Muskogean (also Muskhogean, Muskogee) is a Native American language family spoken in different areas of the Southeastern United States. Though the debate concerning their interrelationships is ongoing, the Muskogean languages are generally div ...

, along with four language isolates:

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 ...

, Tunica, Atakapa, and (possibly)

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 st ...

History of proposal

Gulf was proposed as a language family by

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 ...

(Haas 1951, 1952), but the family has not been rigorously established by the comparative method. Historical linguists such as

Lyle Campbell Lyle Richard Campbell (born October 22, 1942) is an American scholar and linguist known for his studies of indigenous American languages, especially those of Central America, and on historical linguistics in general. Campbell is professor emeri ...

(Campbell and Mithun 1979, Campbell 1997) list the relationship as unproven, though a number of Muskogean scholars believe that Muskogean is at least related to Natchez (Campbell 1997:305). However, the Gulf hypothesis is considered by a number of specialists on

, including Mary Haas 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 ...

. Munro (1995) has regarded the hypothesis of a Gulf family of languages as promising; Haas thought the closest language to Muskogean would be Natchez, followed by Tunica, Atakapa, and, rather dubiously, Chitimacha.Munro, Pamela. 1995. Gulf and Yuki-Gulf. ''Anthropological Linguistics'' 36: 125-222. A difficulty in evaluating the hypothesis is the lack of available data. Most of the data on Chitimacha and Natchez is still unpublished and held in archives. Additionally, Haas (1958) proposed that the Gulf languages are related to the

Algonquian languages The Algonquian languages ( or ; also Algonkian) are a subfamily of indigenous American languages that include most languages in the Algic language family. The name of the Algonquian language family is distinguished from the orthographically simi ...

.Haas, Mary R. (1958)
A New Linguistic Relationship in North America: Algonkian and the Gulf Languages
''Southwestern Journal of Anthropology'', 14(3), 231-264.

Lexical comparisons

Lexical comparisons by Kimball (1994) showing areal similarities among the "Gulf" languages:Kimball, Geoffrey. 1994. Comparative difficulties of the "Gulf" languages. In Langdon, Margaret (ed.), ''Proceedings of the Meeting of the Society for the Study of the Indigenous languages of the Americas July 2–4, 1993 and the Hokan-Penutian Workshop July 3, 1993'' (both held at the 1993 Linguistic Institute at

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

in Columbus, Ohio). Survey of California and Other Indian Languages, Report 8. Berkeley: University of California. : : : : : : : : : : :

Comparisons with Algonquian

Some lexical similarities between the Algonquian and Gulf languages given by Haas (1958): :

Pronoun comparisons

Below are pronouns comparisons by Geoffrey Kimball (1994) showing areal similarities among the "Gulf" languages. : : : : :

References

{{North American languages Languages of North America Proposed language families