Languages of Virginia

Simon D. LevyWashington and Lee

University

The Virginia Forum26 March 2011

I believe the United States should let all foreigners in this country, provided they can speak our native language:

I believe the United States should let all foreigners in this country, provided they can speak our native language: Apache

Outline1. Why study language

2. Discovering language families: the historical/comparative method

3. Native American languages (and language families) of Virginia

4. Characterizing the sounds of language: phonetics

5. Phonetics of Rockbridge County dialect

Why Study Language

Language ≠Culture(Language ≠Ethnicity)

Language ≠Culture(Language ≠Ethnicity)

Language Is Not "Logical"

I don't have any.

Language Is Not "Logical"

I don't have any.I ain't got none.

Language Is Not "Logical"

I don't have any.I ain't got none.

No tengo ninguno.Je n'en ai pas. [cf. pas de pain]

Language Is Not "Logical"

The girl

Language Is Not "Logical"

The girlDas mädchen [neut.]

Language Is Not "Logical"

The girlDas mädchen [neut.]An cailín [masc.!]

Discovering Language FamiliesThe Historical / Comparative Method

How Not to Reconstruct Language

• Look for isolated similarities that support thrilling speculations: Hawaiian kahuna / Hebrew kohen [priest]

• "Exoticize" other language systems: e.g. Maya script

• Phoneticists: glyphs represent sounds

• Rejectionists: glyphs represent "ideas"

• Look for isolated similarities that support thrilling speculations: Hawaiian kahuna / Hebrew kohen [priest]

• "Exoticize" other language systems: e.g. Maya script

• Phoneticists: glyphs represent sounds

• Rejectionists: glyphs represent "ideas"

How Not to Reconstruct Language

Look at word order

Subject-Object-Verb

Cherokee

Subject-Verb-Object

Yuchi English

French

Tutelo-Saponi

How Not to Reconstruct Language

Look at word order

Subject-Object-Verb

Cherokee

Subject-Verb-Object

Yuchi English

French

Japanese

German (rel. clause)

Chinese

Swahili

Tutelo-Saponi

How Not to Reconstruct Language

How to Reconstruct Language

1. Look for systematic sound correspondences among words with similar meaning:

English French Sanskrit

foot pied padas

father père pita

three trois tri

thou tu tvam

tooth dent danta

ten dix dasa

How to Reconstruct Language

2. Reconstruct a proto-language genetically based on plausible directions of change:

Proto-Indo-European

Germanic Other IE

p f p

t th t

d t d

Native American Languages of

Virginia

The Current Situation(2000 Census)

Two languages, one language family

Pre-Contact

Seven languages

Pre-Contact

Four language families

AlgonquianIroquoianSiouan-

CatawbanYuchi

Algonquian Languages

Plains [areal reconstruction] Blackfoot, Arapahoan, Cheyenne

Central [areal reconstruction]Cree-Montagnais, Menominee, Ojibwe,

Potawatomi, Fox, Shawnee, Miami-Illinois

Eastern [genetic reconstruction]

Eastern Algonquian

Plains [areal reconstruction] Blackfoot, Arapahoan, Cheyenne

Central [areal reconstruction] Cree-Montagnais, Menominee, Ojibwe, Potawatomi, Fox, Shawnee, Miami-Illinois

Eastern [genetic reconstruction]

Eastern Algonquian

Míkmaq ABENAKIAN Etchemin SOUTHERNNEW

ENGLAND

DELAWARAN Powhatan CarolinaAlgonquian

(Pamlico, Lumbee, Croatan)

EASTERNABINAKI

Penobscot PequotPassamaquoddy Mohegan

DELAWARE

Munsee

Nanticoke

Piscataway

PROTO EASTERN-ALGONQUIAN

Grammatical Features of Algonquian

Languages• Polysynthetic morphology (word structure)

e.g. Menominee paehtāwāēwesew "He is heard by higher powers" (paeht- 'hear', -āwāē- 'spirit', -wese- passivizer, -w third-person subject)

• Animate / Inanimate contrast for nouns

• Inclusive / Exclusive contrast for first-person plural pronouns

Iroquoian Languages

Southern Iroquoian Cherokee (12,000 - 20,000 speakers)

Northern Iroquoian Lakes Iroquoian Five Nations and Susquehannock Seneca-Onondaga

Seneca-Cayuga Seneca Cayuga Onondaga

Onondaga Mohawk-Oneida Oneida Mohawk Susquehannock Susquehannock (extinct) Huronian Wyandot (Huron-Petun) (extinct) Erie (extinct) Tuscarora-Nottoway Tuscarora (few remaining speakers) Nottoway (extinct)

Cherokee Language

Siouan-Catawban Languages

I. Siouan (a.k.a. Siouan proper, Western Siouan)

1. Mandan A. Missouri River (a.k.a. Crow-Hidatsa)

2. Crow (4,280 speakers) 3. Hidatsa

B. Mississippi Valley (a.k.a. Central Siouan)

4. Sioux (Lakota, Dakota: 33,000 speakers) 5. Assiniboine (200 - 250 speakers) 6. Stoney 7. Chiwere (a.k.a. Iowa-Oto-Missouri) 8. Winnebago (230 speakers) 9. Omaha-Ponca (85 speakers) 10. Kansa-Osage 11. Quapa

C. Ohio Valley (Extinct)

12. Tutelo 13. Saponi 14. Moniton / Monacan 15. Occaneechi 16. Biloxi 17. Ofo

II. Catawban (a.k.a. Eastern Siouan) (Extinct)

18. Woccon 19. Catawba

Tutelo Language• Last speaker died in 1871, leaving 100 vocabulary words to ethnologist Horatio Hale

• Hale, Edward Sapir, and others recorded more vocabulary grammar from speakers living among the Six Nations of the Grand River (Ontario, Canada)

• May help with reconstructing Monacan

Horatio Hale(1817-1896)

Edward Sapir(1884-1939)

Tutelo LanguageNasal / Non-nasal vowel contrast :

lot/lo/

'prize'

cf. French: long/lõ/

'long'

laid/lε/

'ugly'

la/la/

'there'

lent/lã/

'slow'

lin/lε/

'flax'

~

Yuchi Language

• An isolate not clearly related to any other language

• As with Cherokee, speakers forcibly relocate to Oklahoma in 1800's

• Around five speakers left

• Large vowel / consonant inventory

Yuchi Language

A.

Yuchi Language

A.

Yuchi Language

A.

"Resurrecting" Languages

• The New World (Terrence Malik, New Line Cinema 2005)

• Linguist Blair Rudes (1951-2008) consulted (cf. 1975 work by F.T. Siebert)

Preserving / Revitalizing Languages

Characterizing the Sounds of Language:Phonetics

• Consonants are produced by contact / proximity of tongue and lips in various locations (hard palate, soft palate, teeth).

• Vowels are produced by shaping of tongue and lips.

• English dialects (accents) are distinguished mainly by vowels, so we will focus on vowels.

• It's easier (and less expensive) to measure vowel acoustics than to measure shape of tongue and lips.

Vowel Acoustics• Different vowels are like different musical instruments playing the same note: same pitch, different overtones

• In speech science, overtones are called formants.

• Two formants are generally enough to distinguish among vowels.

• This method gives us an objective way of distinguishing among dialects.

Vowel /o/ (as in "go")

Vowel "Space"

Virginia Dialects: Plan A

Virginia Dialects, Plan B:Vowels of Rockbridge County

• Five women ages 52 - 74

• Four raised in Rockbridge County

• One raised New Jersey (comparison)

• Asked to read aloud a short story (around two

minutes) about "Arthur the Rat", designed to

have a uniform distribution of English sounds.

Once there was a young rat named Arthur, who could never make up his mind. Whenever his friends asked him if he would like to go out with them, he would only answer, "I don't know." He wouldn't say "yes" or "no" either. He would always shirk making a choice.

His aunt Helen said to him, "Now look here. No one is going to care for you if you carry on like this. You have no more mind than a blade of grass."

One rainy day, the rats heard a great noise in the loft. The pine rafters were all rotten, so that the barn was rather unsafe. At last the joists gave way and fell to the ground. The walls shook and all the rats' hair stood on end with fear and horror. "This won't do," said the captain. "I'll send out scouts to search for a new home."

Within five hours the ten scouts came back and said, "We found a stone house where there is room and board for us all. There is a kindly horse named Nelly, a cow, a calf, and a garden with an elm tree." The rats crawled out of their little houses and stood on the floor in a long line. Just then the old one saw Arthur. "Stop," he ordered coarsely. "You are coming, of course?" "I'm not certain," said Arthur, undaunted. "The roof may not come down yet." "Well," said the angry old rat, "we can't wait for you to join us. Right about face. March!"

Arthur stood and watched them hurry away. "I think I'll go tomorrow," he calmly said to himself, but then again "I don't know; it's so nice and snug here."

That night there was a big crash. In the morning some men—with some boys and girls—rode up and looked at the barn. One of them moved a board and he saw a young rat, quite dead, half in and half out of his hole. Thus the shirker got his due.

Speaker 1

Speaker 2

Speaker 3

Speaker 4

Tidewater Accent• "/r/-less" dialect : common elsewhere (New York, Boston, Georgia)

• Raised (centralized) /au/ : in North America, unique to Canadian English and Tidewater

Speaker 5

Acoustic Analysis

"out"

Summing Up• Language is a complex phenomenon that deserves to be studied in its own right.

• The scientific study of language (i.e. linguistics) reveals what is common across languages, and how each language is unique.

• Virginia provides an example of the catastrophic loss of linguistic diversity - hence the loss of other unique ways of understanding the world.

• American English dialect variation is alive and well!

Printed SourcesCoe, Michael D. (1992/1999) Breaking the Maya Code. New York: Thames & Hudson.

Hale, H. (1883/2001) The Tutelo Language (American Language Reprints vol. 23). Bristol, PA: Evolution Publishing.

Ladefgoed, P. (2005) A Course in Phonetics. Florence, KY: Wadsworth Publishing.

Oliverio, G. R. M. (1996) A Grammar and Dictionary of Tutelo. UMI Microform 9811237. Ann Arbor: UMI Dissertation Services.

Sapir, E., L. Frachtenberg, et al. (1913/2002) Minor Vocabularies of Tutelo and Saponi (American Language Reprints vol. 26). Bristol, PA: Evolution Publishing.

Siebert, F.T. Jr. (1975) Resurrecting Virginia Algonquian from the Dead: The Reconstituted and Historical Phonology of Powhatan. In J.M. Crawford (ed.) Studies in Southeastern Indian Languages. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press

Speck, F.G. and G. Herzog (1942/2001) The Tutelo Spirit Adoption Ceremony. Harrisburg, PA: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.

Online Sources(accessed 25 March 2011)

http://www.city-data.com/states/Virginia-Languages.html

http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/hayes/103/charts/VChart/

http://www.native-languages.org/virginia.htm

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/01/0120_060120_new_world_2.html

http://www.phonetics.ucla.edu/course/chapter11/french/french.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algonquian_languages

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Algonquian_languages

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroquoian_languages

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_language

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutelo_language

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuchi_language

http://www.virginia.edu/uvatoday/newsRelease.php?id=2307