The Assiniboine language (; also known as Assiniboin, Hohe, or Nakota, Nakoda, Nakon or Nakona, or Stoney) is a Nakotan

Siouan language Siouan ( ), also known as Siouan–Catawban ( ), is a language family of North America 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 ...

of the

Northern Plains The Great Plains is a broad expanse of flatland in North America. The region stretches east of the Rocky Mountains, much of it covered in prairie, steppe, and grassland. They are the western part of the Interior Plains, which include the mix ...

. The name ''Assiniboine'' comes from the term , from

Ojibwe The Ojibwe (; Ojibwe writing systems#Ojibwe syllabics, syll.: ᐅᒋᐺ; plural: ''Ojibweg'' ᐅᒋᐺᒃ) are an Anishinaabe people whose homeland (''Ojibwewaki'' ᐅᒋᐺᐘᑭ) covers much of the Great Lakes region and the Great Plains, n ...

, meaning 'Stone Siouans'. The reason they were called this was that Assiniboine people used heated stone to boil their food. In

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

, Assiniboine people are known as Stoney Indians, while they called themselves ''Nakota'' or ''Nakoda'', meaning 'allies'''.''

Classification

The Dakotan group of the Siouan family has five main divisions: Dakota (Santee-Sisseton), Dakota (Yankton-Yanktonai),

Lakota Lakota may refer to: *Lakota people, a confederation of seven related Native American tribes *Lakota language Lakota ( ), also referred to as Lakhota, Teton or Teton Sioux, is a Siouan languages, Siouan language spoken by the Lakota people of ...

(Teton), Nakoda (Assiniboine) and Nakoda (Stoney).Miller, D., Smith, D., McGeshick, J. R., Shanley, J., & Shields, C. (2008). ''The History of the Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, Montana'', 1800-2000. Montana: Montana Historical Society Press. Along with the closely related Stoney, Assiniboine is an n variety of the Dakotan languages, meaning its autonym is pronounced with an initial n (thus: as opposed to ''Dakʰóta'' or ''Lakʰóta'', and or as opposed to or ). The Assiniboine language is also closely related to the

Sioux language Sioux is a Siouan language spoken by over 30,000 Sioux in the United States and Canada, making it the fifth most spoken Indigenous languages of the Americas, Indigenous language in the United States or Canada, behind Navajo language, Navajo, Cre ...

and to the Stoney language (likewise called ''Nakoda'' or ''Nakota''), although they are hardly mutually intelligible. The Family Tree

D-N-L classification system

The Assiniboine language (Nakota), the Dakota language and the Lakota language are usually classified into a group with D-N-L subgroup classification. As suggested by the name of the system, the variation in pronunciations of certain words follows the D-N-L rule. A typical example is given below: Santee-Sisseton and Yankton-Yanktonai are languages that belong to the Dakotan group and Teton is a language in the Lakotan group. The table above illustrates a typical variation amongst these three languages. Just as the name of these three tribes suggest, the Dakota language, the Lakota language and the Nakota (Assiniboine) language have respective inclinations towards , , and in some substitutable consonants.

Arguments against the classification system

Some scholars argue that the D-N-L classification system may not be totally accurate due to the non-rigidness of the substitution form. Siouan Indians live on an expansive continuum such that the distinction between different languages does not manifest in a rigid, clear-cutting criterion. Historically, linguists have debated on Yankton-Yanktonai languages and their proper positions into the D-N-L classification system, but the coexistence of and phonemes made such classification doubtful. This example of lexical difference between the languages of the Siouan group illustrates another possible distinction besides the D-N-L variations.

Related languages

Sioux The Sioux or Oceti Sakowin ( ; Dakota/ Lakota: ) are groups of Native American tribes and First Nations people from the Great Plains of North America. The Sioux have two major linguistic divisions: the Dakota and Lakota peoples (translati ...

Assiniboine The Assiniboine or Assiniboin people ( when singular, Assiniboines / Assiniboins when plural; Ojibwe: ''Asiniibwaan'', "stone Sioux"; also in plural Assiniboine or Assiniboin), also known as the Hohe and known by the endonym Nakota (or Nakoda ...

, and Stoney are closely related languages of the Dakota family. Many linguists consider

and Stoney to be dialects. However, they are mutually unintelligible. Parks and DeMallie report that they are not variant forms of a single dialect, but that Assiniboine is closer to the Sioux dialects than it is to Stoney. The exact number of interrelationships among the subdialects and dialects comprising this continuum is unknown.

Geographic distribution

The languages of the Dakotan group are spoken in the following regions: *

Alberta Alberta is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Canada. It is a part of Western Canada and is one of the three Canadian Prairies, prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to its west, Saskatchewan to its east, t ...

Manitoba Manitoba is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada at the Centre of Canada, longitudinal centre of the country. It is Canada's Population of Canada by province and territory, fifth-most populous province, with a population ...

Saskatchewan Saskatchewan is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Western Canada. It is bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, to the northeast by Nunavut, and to the south by the ...

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Minnesota Minnesota ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Upper Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Ontario to the north and east and by the U.S. states of Wisconsin to the east, Iowa to the so ...

Montana Montana ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Idaho to the west, North Dakota to the east, South Dakota to the southeast, Wyoming to the south, an ...

Nebraska Nebraska ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders South Dakota to the north; Iowa to the east and Missouri to the southeast, both across the Missouri River; Ka ...

North Dakota North Dakota ( ) is a U.S. state in the Upper Midwest, named after the indigenous Dakota people, Dakota and Sioux peoples. It is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba to the north and by the U.S. states of Minneso ...

South Dakota South Dakota (; Sioux language, Sioux: , ) is a U.S. state, state in the West North Central states, North Central region of the United States. It is also part of the Great Plains. South Dakota is named after the Dakota people, Dakota Sioux ...

Official status

The Assiniboine language is not a government-recognized official language of any state or region where Assiniboine people live. There are two reservations located in Montana, but the official language of the state is English. An estimate of native speakers ranges from less than 50, to about 100, to about 150

Assiniboine people The Assiniboine or Assiniboin people ( when singular, Assiniboines / Assiniboins when plural; Ojibwe: ''Asiniibwaan'', "stone Sioux"; also in plural Assiniboine or Assiniboin), also known as the Hohe and known by the endonym Nakota (or Nak ...

, most of them elderly.Ethnologue
(cf. above). A 2021 study of Indigenous languages in Canada put Assiniboine at 350 speakers.

Phonology

The phonemic inventory has 27 consonants, which includes aspirated, plain, and ejective stops. In addition to this, it has five oral vowels and three

nasal vowels 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 Human nose, nose and the human mouth, mouth simultaneously, as in the French language, French vowel /ɑ̃/ () or A ...

. It is a structure-preserving language. Assiniboine has no definite or indefinite articles, no nominal case system, and no verbal tense marking. Clauses unmarked are "realized," while clauses marked as "potential" by means of verbal enclitic, which is successful in producing a future/non-future distinction. The verbal system is split into active and stative (split-intransitive). The active object pronominal affixes coincide with the stative verbs of the subject pronominal affixes. The affricates and stops of Assiniboine are often described as voiced rather than voiceless, due to intervocalic voicing rules which result in surface voiced forms.

Oral vowels

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 /ɑ̃/ () or Amoy []. By contrast, oral vowels are p ...
s

There are five oral vowels in Assiniboine, , and three nasal vowels, . Words that follow the above rules: * 'hill' * 'hair' * 'fog' * 'otter' * 'heavy' * 'rice' * 'to sneeze'

Syllable structure

Syllables are primarily of CV structure. While codas are possible, they are restricted and uncommon, often becoming restructured as the onset of the following syllable. Onsets may include up to two consonants but codas must be simplex. Possible onset clusters are given in the following table:Reproduced from .

Grammar

Morphology

Morphological processes for Assiniboine language are primarily agglutinating. In addition, the character of morpheme alternation in Assiniboine may be classified in terms of phoneme loss, phoneme shift, contraction, nasalization loss, syllable loss, syntactic contraction, and syntactic alternation.Levin, N. B. (1964).''The Assiniboine language''. Bloomington: Indiana University.

Morphophonemics

Examples from Levin (1964). Contraction->When two syllabics come into contact they contract as in: ;+ > ;+ > ;+ > Phoneme loss: Syllabics when is in medial position between and : ;> when is in the medial position between and : ;> when is in medial position between and : ;> Phoneme loss: semi-syllabics ; > when: ; follows Phoneme loss: non-syllabics is in medial position between and or and or and or and ; > Phoneme shift: syllabics ; > before Phoneme shift: non-syllabics When -- is in medial position between and ; > When -- is in medial position between and ; > When is in medial position between and ; > Nasalization loss exists as follows: ; > Syllable loss occurs as follows: : > Ex) 'to pay' so, + + > 'I pay' Syntactic contraction: personal inflectional morphemes ; 'I' + 'you' > 'I...you'; Syntactic contraction with verbal themes occurs as follows: ; + – > c; Syntactic alternation ; > in verbal theme ;> in nomial theme ;> with the future suffix;

Syntax

Assiniboine has SOV word order. The order of elements may differ from canonical SOV; this is not free nor scrambling word order, but instead, the result of topicalization or other movements. Out-of-context sentences are always interpreted as SOV order even if it sounds odd. For example, 'the man bit the dog', unless an element is moved into a focus position. Focused element sentences are highly marked, and practically, a strange semantic reading is preferred over an interpretation of OSV. For example, the following sentence was interpreted as 'A banana ate the boy' by a native speaker, and to get the OSV reading out of it the object must be stressed, for example if the sentence was given as a reply to the question 'What did the boy eat?'. Class 1 : 1st person+singular : 2nd person Class 2 : 1st person+singular : 2nd person For both class 1 and 2 : 1st person-singular : 3rd person : 3rd person : 1st person + singular subject/ 2nd person object

Vocabulary

# – one # – two # – three # – four # – five # – six # – seven # – eight # – nine # – ten # – black # – white # – red # – blue More words can be found in the Dakota-English Dictionary.Riggs, S. R. (1892). A Dakota-English Dictionary. Washington: US Government Printing

References

Notes

Citations

Sources

* * *

External links

A video of Fred Spyglass (Mosquito First Nation) countingVideo on Assiniboine historyOnline dictionary of Assniboine
American Indian Studies Research Institute {{Languages of Montana Indigenous languages of the North American Plains First Nations languages in Canada Endangered languages of the United States Endangered Indigenous languages of the Americas Western Siouan languages Indigenous languages of Montana