Misplaced Pages

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these messages) This article uses parenthetical referencing, which is deprecated on Misplaced Pages. Please help improve this article if you can. (Learn how and when to remove this message) This article cites its sources but does not provide page references. You can help by providing page numbers for existing citations. (October 2024) (Learn how and when to remove this message) This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Siouan languages" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (October 2024) (Learn how and when to remove this message) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Siouan
Siouan–Catawban
Geographic distribution	central North America
Linguistic classification	One of the world's primary language families
Subdivisions	Catawban (Eastern) Siouan proper (Western)
Language codes
ISO 639-2 / 5	sio
Linguasphere	64-A
Glottolog	siou1252
Pre-contact distribution of the Siouan–Catawban languages

Siouan (/ˈsuːən/ SOO-ən) or Siouan–Catawban is a language family of North America that is located primarily in the Great Plains, Ohio and Mississippi valleys and southeastern North America with a few other languages in the east.

Name

This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (October 2024) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

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 Western Siouan languages and Catawban.

The Western Siouan languages are typically subdivided into Missouri River languages (such as Crow and Hidatsa), Mandan, Mississippi River languages (such as Dakota, Chiwere-Winnebago, and Dhegihan languages), and Ohio Valley Siouan languages (Ofo, Biloxi, and Tutelo). The Catawban branch consists of Catawban and Woccon.

Charles F. Voegelin established, on the basis of linguistic evidence, that Catawban was divergent enough from the other Siouan languages, including neighboring Siouan languages of the Piedmont and Appalachia, to be considered a distinct branch. Voegelin proposes that Biloxi, Ofo and Tutelo consistute one group which he terms Ohio Valley Siouan. This group includes various historical languages spoken by Siouan peoples not only in the Ohio River Valley, but across the Appalachian Plateau and into the Piedmont regions of present-day Virginia and the Carolinas. Some of these groups migrated or were displaced great distances following European contact, ending up as far afield as present-day Ontario and southern Mississippi. Collectively, Siouan languages of Appalachia and the Piedmont are sometimes grouped under the term Tutelo, Tutelo-Saponi, or Yesah (Yesa:sahį) as the language historically spoken by the Monacan, Manahoac, Haliwa-Saponi, and Occaneechi peoples.

Proto-Siouan

Proto-Siouan is the reconstructed ancestor of all modern Siouan languages.

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 reconstructed: /*i, *e, *a, *o, *u/ and three nasal vowels /*ĩ, *ã, *ũ/. Wolff also reconstructed some consonantal clusters /*tk, *kʃ, *ʃk, *sp/.

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 *ʃ 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 (1950–1951) can be accounted for due to syncopation 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 , , , 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, Ho-Chunk, and Tutelo. 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:

External relations

The Yuchi 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 and Iroquoian languages. In 1931, Louis Allen 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 further explored the link between Siouan and Caddoan languages. In the 1990s, Marianne Mithun compared the morphology and syntax of all the three families. At present, this Macro-Siouan 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.

References

1. Voegelin, C.F. (1941). "Internal Relationships of Siouan Languages". American Anthropologist. 42 (2): 246–249. doi:10.1525/aa.1941.43.2.02a00080. JSTOR 662955.
2. "Yesa:sahį Language Project".
3. Kasak, Ryan M. (2016). "A distant genetic relationship between Siouan-Catawban and Yuchi". In Rudin, Catherine; Gordon, Bryan J. (eds.). Advances in the study of siouan languages and linguistics (PDF). Berlin: Language Science Press. pp. 5–39. doi:10.17169/langsci.b94.120. ISBN 978-3-946234-37-1. {{cite book}}: |journal= ignored (help)
4. Rankin, Robert L.; Carter, Richard T.; Jones, A. Wesley; Koontz, John E.; Rood, David S.; Hartmann, Iren, eds. (2015). "Comparative Siouan Dictionary". Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Retrieved December 13, 2015.
5. Rankin, Robert L., Carter, Richard T. & Jones, A. Wesley (n.d.). Proto-Siouan Phonology and Grammar. Ms. University of Kansas.
6. Wolff, Hans (1950). "Comparative Siouan II". International Journal of American Linguistics. 16 (3): 113–121. doi:10.1086/464075. S2CID 197656511.
7. Some Siouan languages have however developed a phonemic contrast between the non-nasal sonorants w- and r- and the corresponding nasals m- and n-. These historical developments are presented in the following article: Michaud, Alexis; Jacques, Guillaume; Rankin, Robert L. (2012). "Historical Transfer of Nasality Between Consonantal Onset and Vowel: From C to V or from V to C?". Diachronica. 29 (2): 201–230. doi:10.1075/dia.29.2.04mic. S2CID 53057252.
8. Rankin, Robert L., Carter, Richard T. & Jones, A. Wesley. (n.d.). Proto-Siouan Phonology and Grammar. Ms. University of Kansas.
9. Rudin, Catherine; Gordon, Bryan James (2016). "A distant genetic relationship between Siouan-Catawban and Yuchi". Advances in the study of Siouan languages and linguistics. Studies in Diversity Linguistics. Language Science Press. doi:10.17169/LANGSCI.B94.118. ISBN 978-3-946234-37-1. ISSN 2363-5568.
10. Mithun, Marianne (1999). The languages of native North America. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. p. 305. ISBN 9780521232289.

Bibliography

• Parks, Douglas R.; Rankin, Robert L. (2001). "The Siouan languages". In DeMallie, R. J. (ed.). Handbook of North American Indians. Vol. 13: Plains. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution. pp. 94–114. ISBN 0-16-050400-7.
• Voegelin, C.F. (1941). "Internal Relationships of Siouan Languages". American Anthropologist. 42 (2): 246–249. doi:10.1525/aa.1941.43.2.02a00080. JSTOR 662955.

Further reading

• Rudin, Catherine; Gordon, Bryan James (2016). Rudin, Catherine; Gordon, Bryan James (eds.). Advances in the study of Siouan languages and linguistics. Studies in Diversity Linguistics. Berlin: Language Science Press. doi:10.17169/langsci.b94.118. ISBN 978-3-946234-37-1.

External links

• Comparative Siouan Dictionary
• Siouan languages mailing list archive Archived 2005-10-25 at the Wayback Machine

• Siouan languages
• Language families
• Indigenous languages of the North American Plains
• Sioux culture
• Indigenous languages of Maryland