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Iroquoian Languages

Iroquoian languages

The Iroquoian languages are a Native American language family. The family includes the languages of the Iroquois Confederacy (including the extinct Mingo language), as well as Cherokee. Every language in this family has at least one nasal vowel phoneme. Cherokee's is a nasal schwa, written in transliteration as 'v' (e.g. "Hv?" sounds like "Huh?" nasalized, and means the same thing).

Family division

The Iroquoian family is composed of eleven languages. I. Northern Iroquoian : A. Tuscarora-Nottoway :: 1. Tuscarora :: 2. Nottoway : B. Proto-Lake Iroquoian :: 3. Huron-Wyandot ::: dialects: :::
- Huron :::
- Wyandot :: 4. Laurentian (languages or dialects) (?) :: i. Iroquois Proper (a.k.a. Five Nations Iroquois) ::: 5. Onondaga ::: 6. Susquehannock (a.k.a. Andaste, Conestoga, Andastoerrhonon, Minqua) ::: a. Seneca-Cayuga :::: 7. Seneca :::: 8. Cayuga ::: b. Mohawk-Oneida :::: 9. Mohawk :::: 10. Oneida II. Southern Iroquoian : 11. Cherokee What has been called the Laurentian language appears to be actually more than one dialect or language. Many different groups making up the Wyandot and the Neutral have very little linguistic documentation. Among these are the Tionontati (a.k.a. Khionontateronon, Petun, Tobacco Nation), the Wenro, and the Erie (a.k.a. Nation du Chat). These groups were called Atiwandaronk meaning "they who understand the language" by the Huron, and thus are grouped as a dialect related to Huron. The Meherrin peoples may have spoken an Iroquoian language, but there is not enough data to determine this with certainty. Nottoway, Huron-Wyandot, Susquehannock, and the Laurentian languages/dialects are now all extinct. The last speakers of Susquehannock were all murdered by the Paxton Boys lynch mob.

Genetic relations

Some linguists group the Iroquoian languages with the Siouan languages as the Macro-Siouan family, but this larger family is not recognized by a consensus of linguists. For information regarding Proto-Iroquoian see Floyd Lounsbury's article on pages 334-343 in Volume 15 of the Handbook of North American Indians and Marianne Mithun's article on pages 259-282 of the Extending the Rafters: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Iroquois collection edited by Jack Campisi, Michael Foster, and Mithun. An article that is a bit more technical but also good is Blair Rudes' treatment of Proto-Iroquoian vowels in the Spring 1996 edition of Anthropological Linguistics.

Culture

The Iroquois were made up of a group or league of tribes that settled much of the land which presently spans from western New York to western Ohio. They were not nomadic but preferred to live in villages of many multi-roomed longhouses, built with saplings and bark or thatch. These longhouses could be up to 300 feet long. Villages were occupied for about 25-50 years. The Iroquois relied greatly on domestication of plant foods, but also supplemented their diet with hunting and gathering. Food such as corn, squash, beans, and other crops were cultivated, often on large fields where forest had been cut and burned for planting. It can be stated that they practiced a system of shifting horticulture. They spent much time on cultivation, harvesting, the preparatration of maize, and storing food. They stored their crops in various types of pottery jars. Pots were specialized by being much sturdier, constructed to withstand thermal stress, but were sensitive to mechanical stress. Iroquian pottery could also be used for a variety of reasons or uses. They were great for preparing maize. Excavated grains, pottery and other evidence suggests that a typical Indian meal consisted of soup made from different plants and animals, with corn as a staple in their diets.

Bibliography

- Goddard, Ives (Ed.). (1996). Languages. Handbook of North American Indians (W. C. Sturtevant, General Ed.) (Vol. 17). Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution. ISBN 0-1604-8774-9.
- Mithun, Marianne. (1999). The languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-23228-7 (hbk); ISBN 0-521-29875-X.
- Chilton, Elizabeth. “Farming and Social Complexity in the Northeast.” North American Archaeology. Ed. Timothy R. Pauketat and Diana Dipaolo Loren. Malden: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2005. 138-160.
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Native Americans in the United States

:This article is about the people indigenous to the United States. For broader uses of "Native American" and related terms, see Native Americans. Native Americans] Native Americans in the United States (also Indians, American Indians, First Americans, Indigenous Peoples, Aboriginal Peoples, Aboriginal Americans, Amerindians, Amerinds, or Original Americans) are those indigenous peoples within the territory that is now encompassed by the continental United States, and their descendants in modern times. This collective term encompasses a large number of distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of them still enduring as political communities. A comprehensive tribal list can be found under "Classification of Native Americans." The U.S. states and several of the inhabited insular areas which do not form part of the continental U.S. territory also contain indigenous groups. These other indigenous peoples in the United States are not generally designated as "Native Americans". This includes groups such as the Alaska Natives (Inuit, Yupik, Aleut, etc.), Native Hawaiians (also known as Kanaka Māoli and Kanaka 'Oiwi), and various Pacific Islander peoples such as the Chamorros. There is some controversy surrounding the names used to describe these peoples. U.S. specific teminology considerations are also covered in the Terminology differences section, below.

Early history

See also: archeology of the Americas, models of migration to the New World, and indigenous people of the Americas for more detailed history and migration theories.

The Bering Strait Land Bridge theory

Based on anthropological and genetic evidence, most scientists believe that most Native Americans descend from people who migrated from Siberia across the Bering Land Bridge between 17,000 and 11,000 years ago, where the Bering Strait is today. The exact epoch and route is still a matter of controversy. It should be noted, however, that many Native Americans reject theories of modern anthropology, having their own traditional stories that offer accounts to their origins, which are seen only as folklore by the scientific community. The primarily Siberian origin is widely regarded as the most likely, consisting of at least three separate migrations from Siberia to the Americas:
- The first wave, during the late Pleistocene, would be the forerunners of the Clovis and Folsom cultures, both hunting the abundant large mammals of the virgin continent. This wave eventually spread over the entire hemisphere, as far south as Tierra del Fuego and is believed to have reached the New World no later than 11,000 years ago.
- The second migration brought the ancestors of the Na-Dene peoples. They lived in Alaska and western Canada, but some migrated as far south as the Pacific Northwestern U.S. and the American Southwest, and would be ancestral to the Dene, Apaches and Navajos. This group is believed to have reached North America between 6,000 to 8,000 years ago.
- The third wave brought the ancestors of the Inuit, Yupik and Aleut peoples. They may have come by sea over the Bering Strait, after the land bridge had disappeared. They are believed to have reached Alaska as late as 3,000 years ago. In recent years, molecular genetics studies have suggested as many as four distinct migrations from Asia. These studies also provide surprising evidence of smaller-scale, contemporaneous migrations from Europe, possibly by peoples who had adopted a lifestyle resembling that of Inuits and Yupiks during the last ice age. While many Native American groups retained a nomadic or semi-nomadic lifestyle through the time of European occupation of the New World, in some regions, specifically in the Mississippi River valley of the United States, in Mexico, Central America, the Andes of South America, they built advanced civilizations with monumental architecture and large-scale organization into cities and states. A recent (2004) study has claimed evidence which, if accepted, would extensively revise the timeline of human habitation in the Americas. At the Topper site on the Savannah River near Allendale, South Carolina, a team led by University of South Carolina archaeologist Dr. Albert Goodyear reported recovering what they claimed to be stone tool artifacts from strata considerably below that of Clovis culture remains. Using stratigraphy and charcoal material found with the artifacts, radiocarbon dating performed by the University of California at Irvine Laboratory dated these remains to be at least 50,000 years old. This would indicate the presence of humans well before the termination of the last glaciation. Other archaeologists have disputed the dating methodology employed, and have also questioned whether these "artifacts" are not in fact naturally-formed, rather than of human manufacture. Other recent claims for pre-Clovis artifacts have similarly been made in some South American sites. The notion of pre-Clovis habitation continues to be a subject of scholarly debate, and the issue has not yet been satisfactorily resolved.

Settling down

By 1500 B.C. many tribes had settled into small indigenous communities. In several regions temporary hunter-gatherer settlements were transformed into small permanent or semi-permanent settlements and villages, frequently established in the regions such as river valleys which were conducive to the raising of crops. Several such societies and communities over time intensified this practice of established settlements, and grew to support sizeable and concentrated populations. Examples include those of the Mississippian Culture and the Pueblo peoples (Anasazi). They constructed large and complex earthworks, and were particularly skilled at small stone sculptures and engravings on shell and copper. Agriculture was independently developed in what is now the eastern United States by 2500 B.C., based on the domestication of indigenous sunflower, squash and goosefoot. Eventually, in the last eleven hundred years, the Mexican crops of corn and beans were adapted to the shorter summers of eastern North American and replaced the indigenous crops. The large pueblos, or villages, built on top of rocky talleland or mesas of Southwest around A.D. 700, were a complicated aggregate of family apartments. Towns were one large complex of buildings, with multistoried houses arranged around courtyards or plazas. Wooden ladders provided access to upper levels. Under the courtyards, subterranean kivas, or ceremonial structures, served as meeting rooms for religious societies. While exhibiting widely divergent social, cultural, and artistic expressions, all Native American groups worked with materials available to them and employed social arrangements that augmented their means of subsistence and survival.

European colonization

Initial impacts

The European colonization of the Americas forever changed the lives and cultures of the Native Americans. In the 15th to 19th centuries, their populations were ravaged, by the privations of displacement, by disease, and in many cases by warfare with European groups and enslavement by them. The first Native American group encountered by Christopher Columbus, the 250,000 Island Arawaks more properly called Taino of Haiti Quiskaya, Cubanacan (Cuba) and Boriquen as Puerto Rico were known then, were enslaved. It is said that only 500 survived by the year 1550, and the group was considered extinct before 1650. Yet DNA studies show that the genetic contribution of the Taino to that region continues, and the mitochondrial DNA studies of the Taino are said to show relationships to the Northern Indigenous Nations, such as Inuit (Eskimo) and others. In the 15th century Spaniards and other Europeans brought horses to the Americas. Some of these animals escaped and began to breed and increase their numbers in the wild. Ironically, the horse had originally evolved in the Americas, but the last American horses, were game for early hunters, and went extinct about 9000 years ago, just after the end of the last ice age. The re-introduction of the horse had a profound impact on Native American culture in the Great Plains of North America. This new mode of travel made it possible for some tribes to greatly expand their territories, exchange goods with neighboring tribes, and more easily capture game. Europeans also brought diseases against which the Native Americans had no immunity. Chicken pox and measles, though common and rarely fatal among Europeans, often proved fatal to Native Americans, and more dangerous diseases such as smallpox were especially deadly to Native American populations. It is difficult to estimate the total percentage of the Native American population killed by these diseases. Epidemics often immediately followed European exploration, sometimes destroying entire villages. Some historians estimate that up to 80% of some Native populations may have died due to European diseases. For more information, see population history of American indigenous peoples.

Early relations

During the Seven Years' War many Native Americans sided with France although some did fight alongside the British. During the American War of Independence, the newly proclaimed United States competed with the British for the allegiance of Native American nations east of the Mississippi River. Most Native Americans who joined the struggle sided with the British, hoping to use the war to halt colonial expansion onto American Indian land. Many native communities were divided over which side to support in the war. For the Iroquois Confederacy, the American Revolution resulted in civil war. Cherokees split into a neutral (or pro-American) faction and the anti-American Chickamaugas, led by Dragging Canoe. Many other communities were similarly divided. Frontier warfare during the American Revolution was particularly brutal, and numerous atrocities were committed on both sides. Noncombatants of both races suffered greatly during the war, and villages and food supplies were frequently destroyed during military expeditions. The largest of these expeditions was the Sullivan Expedition of 1779, which destroyed more than 40 Iroquois villages in order to neutralize Iroquois raids in upstate New York. The expedition failed to have the desired effect: American Indian activity became even more determined. Native Americans were stunned to learn that when the British made peace with the Americans in the Treaty of Paris (1783), the British had ceded a vast amount of American Indian territory to the United States without even informing their Indian allies. The United States initially treated the American Indians who had fought with the British as a conquered people who had lost their land. When this proved impossible to enforce (the Indians had lost the war on paper, not on the battlefield), the policy was abandoned. The United States was eager to expand, and the national government initially sought to do so only by purchasing Native American land in treaties. The states and settlers were frequently at odds with this policy.

Removal and reservations

Treaty of Paris (1783) In the 19th century, the incessant Westward expansion of the United States incrementally compelled large numbers of Native Americans to resettle further west, sometimes by force, almost always reluctantly. Under President Andrew Jackson, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which authorized the President to conduct treaties to exchange Indian land east of the Mississippi River for lands west of the river. As many as 100,000 American Indians eventually relocated in the West as a result of this Indian Removal policy. In theory, relocation was supposed to be voluntary (and many Indians did remain in the East), but in practice great pressure was put on American Indian leaders to sign removal treaties. Arguably the most egregious violation of the stated intention of the removal policy was the Treaty of New Echota, which was signed by a dissident faction of Cherokees, but not the elected leadership. The treaty was brutally enforced by President Martin Van Buren, which resulted in the deaths of an estimated 4,000 Cherokees (mostly from disease) on the Trail of Tears. Conflicts generally known as "Indian Wars" broke out between U.S. forces and many different tribes. Authorities entered numerous treaties during this period, but later abrogated many for various reasons. Well-known military engagements include the Native American victory at the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876, and the massacre of Native Americans at Wounded Knee in 1890. On January 31, 1876 the United States government ordered all remaining Native Americans to move into reservations or reserves. This, together with the near-extinction of the American Bison which many tribes had lived on, set about the downturn of Prairie Culture that had developed around the use of the horse for hunting, travel and trading. Prairie Culture American policy toward Native Americans has been an evolving process. In the late nineteenth century reformers in efforts to "civilize" Indians adapted the practice of educating native children in Indian Boarding Schools. These schools, which were primarily run by Christians [http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewarticle.asp?AuthorID=2616&id=7375], proved traumatic to Indian children, who were forbidden to speak their native languages, taught Christianity instead of their native religions and in numerous other ways forced to abandon their Indian identity[http://www.sacbee.com/static/archive/news/projects/native/day2_main.html] and adopt European-American culture. There are also many documented cases of sexual, physical and mental abuses occurring at these schools [http://www.prsp.bc.ca/history.html] [http://www.amnestyusa.org/amnestynow/soulwound.html].

Current status

There are 563 Federally recognized tribal governments in the United States. The United States recognizes the right of these tribes to self-government and supports their tribal sovereignty and self-determination. These tribes possess the right to form their own government; to enforce laws, both civil and criminal; to tax; to establish membership; to license and regulate activities; to zone; and to exclude persons from tribal territories. Limitations on tribal powers of self-government include the same limitations applicable to states; for example, neither tribes nor states have the power to make war, engage in foreign relations, or coin money. [http://usinfo.state.gov/eur/Archive/2005/Jan/28-691277.html] In addition, there are a number of tribes that are recognized by individual states, but not by the federal government. The rights and benefits associated with state recognition vary from state to state. Military defeat, cultural pressure, confinement on reservations, forced cultural assimilation, outlawing of native languages and culture, termination policies of the 1950s, and 1960s, and slavery have had deleterious effects on Native Americans' mental and physical health. Contemporary health problems include poverty, alcoholism, heart disease, diabetes, and New World Syndrome. As recently as the 1970s, the Bureau of Indian Affairs was still actively pursuing a policy of "assimilation" [http://www.doiu.nbc.gov/orientation/bia2.cfm], the goal of which was to eliminate the reservations and steer Indians into mainstream U.S. culture. As of 2004, there are still claims of theft of Indian land for the coal and uranium it contains. [http://www.angelfire.com/band/senaaeurope/DRelocation.html] [http://www.shundahai.org/bigmtbackground.html] [http://lists.wayne.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9703&L=tamha&F=&S=&P=7661] [http://www.davidicke.net/emagazine/vol26/articles/tearsd.html] In the state of Virginia, Native Americans face a unique problem. Virginia has no federally recognized tribes, largely due to the work of one man, Walter Ashby Plecker. In 1912, Plecker became the first registrar of the state's Bureau of Vital Statistics, serving until 1946. An avowed white supremacist and fervent advocate of eugenics, Plecker believed that the state's Native Americans had been "mongrelized" with its African American population. A law passed by the state's General Assembly recognized only two races, "white" and "colored". Plecker pressured local governments into reclassifying all Native Americans in the state as "colored", leading to massive destruction of records on the state's Native American community. African American Even after his death, Plecker still haunts the state's Native American community. In order to receive federal recognition and the benefits it confers, tribes must prove their continuous existence since 1900. Plecker's policies have made it impossible for Virginia tribes to do so. The federal government, while aware of Plecker's destruction of records, has so far refused to bend on this bureaucratic requirement. A bill currently before U.S. Congress to ease this requirement has been favorably reported out of a key Senate committee, but faces strong opposition in the House from a Virginia member concerned that federal recognition could open the door to gambling in the state. [http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=74481&ran=162825] In the early 21st century, Native American communities remain an enduring fixture on the United States landscape, in the American economy, and in the lives of Native Americans. Communities have consistently formed governments that administer services like firefighting, natural resource management, and law enforcement. Most Native American communities have established court systems to adjudicate matters related to local ordinances, and most also look to various forms of moral and social authority vested in traditional affiliations within the community. To address the housing needs of Native Americans, Congress passed the Native American Housing and Self Determination Act (NAHASDA) in 1996. This legislation replaced public housing, and other 1937 Housing Act programs directed towards Indian Housing Authorities, with a block grant program directed towards Tribes. Gambling has become a leading industry. Casinos operated by many Native American governments in the United States are creating a stream of gambling revenue that some communities are beginning to use as leverage to build diversified economies. Native American communities have waged and prevailed in legal battles to assure recognition of rights to self-determination and to use of natural resources. Some of those rights, known as treaty rights are enumerated in early treaties signed with the young United States government. Tribal sovereignty has become a cornerstone of American jurisprudence, and at least on the surface, in national legislative policies. Although many Native American tribes have casinos, they are a source of conflict. Most tribes, especially small ones such as the Winnemem Wintu of Redding, California, feel that casinos and their proceeds destroy culture from the inside out. These tribes refuse to participate in the gaming industry. Many of the smaller eastern tribes have been trying to gain official recognition of their tribal status. The recognition confers some benefits, including the right to label arts and crafts as Native American and they can apply for grants that are specifically reserved for Native Americans. But gaining recognition as a tribe is extremely difficult because of a Catch-22 in the process. To be established as a tribal groups, members have to submit extensive genealogical proof of tribal descent, yet in past years many Native Americans denied their Native American heritage, because it would have deprived them of many rights, such as the right of probate. The Waccamaw tribe and the Pee Dee tribe of South Carolina were granted official recognition February 17, 2005. Two other tribal applications were denied for lack of documentation. According to 2003 United States Census Bureau estimates, a little over one third of the 2,786,652 Native Americans in the United States live in three states: California at 413,382, Arizona at 294,137 and Oklahoma at 279,559 [http://www.census.gov/popest/states/asrh/tables/SC-EST2003-04.pdf]. As of 2000, the largest tribes in the U.S. by population were Cherokee, Navajo, Choctaw, Sioux, Chippewa, Apache, Blackfeet, Iroquois, and Pueblo. In 2000 eight of ten Americans with Native American ancestry were of mixed blood. It is estimated that by 2100 that figure will rise to nine of ten [http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:D-aV4g_I9XQJ:www.law.nyu.edu/kingsburyb/spring04/indigenousPeoples/classmaterials/class10/Class%252010%2520Item%2520A6%2520-%2520Gould.doc+genealogy++%22affirmative+action%22+%22american+indian%22%22ward+churchill%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8]. The Massachusetts legislature repealed a 330-year-old law that barred Native Americans from entering Boston on the 19th of May 2005.

Cultural aspects

Though cultural features, including language, garb, and customs vary enormously from one tribe to another, there are certain elements which are encountered frequently and shared by many tribes. Early nomadic hunters forged stone weapons from around 10,000 years ago; as the age of metallurgy dawned, newer technologies were used and more efficient weapons produced. Prior to contact with Europeans, most tribes used similar weaponry. The most common implement were the bow and arrow, the war club, and the spear. Quality, material, and design varied widely. Large mammals such as the mammoth were largely extinct by around 8,000 B.C., and the Native Americans were hunting their descendants, such as bison. The Great Plains tribes were still hunting the bison when they first encountered the Europeans. The acquisition of the horse and horsemanship from the Spanish in the 17th century greatly altered the natives' culture, changing the way in which these large creatures were hunted and making them a central feature of their lives. bison

Society

The Iroquois tribes, living around the Great Lakes and extending east and north, used strings or belts called wampum that served a dual function: the knots and beaded designs mnemonically chronicled tribal stories and legends, and further served as a medium of exchange and a unit of measure. The keepers of the articles were seen as tribal dignitaries. Pueblo tribes crafted impressive items associated with their religious ceremonies. Kachina dancers wore elaborately painted and decorated masks as they ritually impersonated various ancestral spirits. Sculpture was not highly developed, but carved stone and wood fetishes were made for religious use. Superior weaving, embroided decorations, and rich dyes characterized the textile arts. Both turquoise and shell jewelry were created, as were high-quality pottery and formalized pictorial arts. Navajo spirituality focused on the maintenance of a harmonious relationship with the spirit world, often achieved by ceremonial acts, usually incorporating sand paintings. The colors—made from sand, charcoal, cornmeal, and pollen—depicted specific spirits. These vivid, intricate, and colorful sand creations were erased at the end of the ceremony.

Religion

The most widespread religion at the present time is known as the Native American Church. It is a syncretistic church incorporating elements of native spiritual practice from a number of different tribes as well as symbolic elements from Christianity. Its main rite is the peyote ceremony. The church has had significant success in combatting many of the ills brought by colonization, such as alcoholism and crime. In the American Southwest, especially New Mexico, a syncretism between the Catholicism brought by Spanish missionaries and the native religion is common; the religious drums, chants, and dances of the Pueblo people are regularly part of Masses at Santa Fe's Saint Francis Cathedral.

Gender roles

Most Native American tribes had traditional gender roles. In some tribes, such as the Iroquois nation, social and clan relationships were matrilinear and matriarchal but several different systems were in use. Men hunted, traded and made war, while women cared for the young and the elderly, fashioned clothing and instruments and cured meat. The cradle board was used by mothers to carry their baby whilst working or traveling.

Music and art

cradle board Native American music is almost entirely monophonic, but there are notable exceptions. Traditional Native American music often includes drumming and/or the playing of rattles or other percussion instruments but little other instrumentation. Flutes and whistles made of wood, cane, or bone are also played, generally by individuals, but in former times also by large ensembles (as noted by Spanish conquistador de Soto). The tuning of these flutes is not precise and depends on the length of the wood used and the hand span of the intended player, but the finger holes are most often around a whole step apart and, at least in Northern California, a flute was not used if it turned out to have an interval close to a half step. Performers with Native American parentage have occasionally appeared in American popular music, most notably Shania Twain (ethnically European, but raised by a First Nations adoptive father), Buffy Sainte-Marie, Robbie Robertson, Rita Coolidge, Wayne Newton, and Redbone (band). Some, such as John Trudell have used music to comment on life in Native America, and others, such as R. Carlos Nakai integrate traditional sounds with modern sounds in instrumental recordings. A variety of small and medium-sized recording companies offer an abundance of recent music by Native American performers young and old, ranging from pow-wow drum music to hard-driving rock-and-roll and rap. The most widely practiced public musical form among Native Americans in the United States is that of the pow-wow. At pow-wows, such as the annual Gathering of Nations in Albuquerque, New Mexico, members of drum groups sit in a circle around a large drum. Drum groups play in unison while they sing in a native language and dancers in colorful regalia dance clockwise around the drum groups in the center. Familiar pow-wow songs include honor songs, intertribal songs, crow-hops, sneak-up songs, grass-dances, two-steps, welcome songs, going-home songs, and war songs. Most indigenous communities in the United States also maintain traditional songs and ceremonies, some of which are shared and practiced exclusively within the community. For further information, see A Cry from the Earth: Music of North American Indians by John Bierhorst (ISBN 094127053X). Native American art comprises a major category in the world art collection. Native American contributions include pottery, paintings, jewelry, weavings, sculptures, basketry, and carvings. carving Artists have at times misrepresented themselves as having native parentage, most notably Johnny Cash, who traced his heritage to Scottish ancestors and admitted he fabricated a story that he was one-quarter Cherokee. The integrity of certain Native American artworks is now protected by an act of Congress that prohibits representation of art as Native American when it is not the product of an enrolled Native American artist. See: Blackfoot music

Economy

Survival in the environments in which they lived defined the work of the native groups. The Inuit, or Eskimo, prepared and buried stocks of dried meat and fish. Pacific Northwest tribes crafted seafaring dugouts 40-50 feet long for fishing. Farmers in the Eastern Woodlands tended fields of maize with hoes and digging sticks, while their neighbors in the Southeast grew tobacco as well as food crops. On the Plains, some tribes engaged in agriculture but also planned buffalo hunts in which herds were efficiently driven over bluffs. Dwellers of the Southwest deserts hunted small animals and gathered acorns to grind into a flour with which they baked wafer-thin bread on top of heated stones. Some groups on the region's mesas developed irrigation techniques, and filled storehouses with grain as protection against the area's frequent droughts. As these native peoples encountered European explorers and settlers and engaged in trade, they exchanged food, crafts, and furs for trinkets, blankets, iron, and steel implements, horses, firearms, and alcoholic beverages.

Terminology differences

:For more detail see, Native American name controversy When Christopher Columbus arrived in the "New World", he described the people he encountered as Indians because he mistakenly believed that he had reached the islands known to Europeans as the Indies. Despite Columbus's mistake, the name Indian (or American Indian) stuck, and for centuries the native people of the Americas were collectively called Indians in America, and similar terms in Europe. The problem with this traditional term is that the peoples of India are, of course, also known as Indians.

Common usage in the U.S.

The term Native American was originally introduced in the United States by anthropologists as a more accurate term for the indigenous people of the Americas, as distinguished from the people of India. Because of the widespread acceptance of this newer term in and outside of academic circles, some people mistakenly believe that Indians was outdated or offensive. People from India (and their descendants) who are citizens of the United States are known as Indian Americans. However, some American Indians have misgivings about the term Native American. Russell Means, a famous American Indian activist, opposes the term Native American because he believes it was imposed by the government without the consent of American Indians. [http://www.peaknet.net/~aardvark/means.html] Furthermore, some American Indians question the term Native American because, they argue, it serves to ease the conscience of "white America" with regard to past injustices done to American Indians by effectively eliminating "Indians" from the present. [http://www.allthingscherokee.com/atc_sub_culture_feat_events_070101.html] Still others (both Indians and non-Indians) argue that Native American is problematic because "native of" literally means "born in," so any person born in the Americas could be considered "native". However, very often the compound "Native American" will be capitalized in order to differentiate this intended meaning from others. Likewise, "native" (small 'n') can be further qualified by formulations such as "native-born" when the intended meaning is only to indicate place of birth or origin. However, neither of these two senses invalidates the other, so long as the intended sense is made clear by the context. A [http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0762158.html 1996 survey] revealed that more American Indians in the United States still preferred American Indian to Native American. Nonetheless, most American Indians are comfortable with Indian, American Indian, and Native American, and the terms are now used interchangeably. [http://www.infoplease.com/spot/aihmterms.html] The continued usage of the traditional term is reflected in the name chosen for the National Museum of the American Indian, which opened in 2004 in Washington, D.C.. Recently, the US Census introduced the "Asian Indian" category to more accurately sample the Indian American population. In practice, most Indian Americans and of course Indian nationals think of themselves as the "real" Indians. This guarantees that the terms & their usages will evolve over the next few decades.

Bibliography

- Adams, David Wallace. Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience 1875-1928, [http://www.kansaspress.ku.edu/ University Press of Kansas], 1975. ISBN 0-7006-0735-8 (hbk); ISBN 0-7006-0838-9 (pbk).
- Bierhorst, John. A Cry from the Earth: Music of North American Indians. ISBN 0-9412-7053-X.
- Hirschfelder, Arlene B.; Byler, Mary G.; & Dorris, Michael. Guide to research on North American Indians. American Library Association (1983). ISBN 0-8389-0353-3.
- Nichols, Roger L. Indians in the United States & Canada, A Comparative History. University of Nebraska Press (1998). ISBN 0-8032-8377-6.
- Snipp, C.M. (1989). American Indians: The first of this land. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
- Sturtevant, William C. (Ed.). (1978-present). Handbook of North American Indians (Vol. 1-20). Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution. (Vols. 1-3, 16, 18-20 not yet published).
- Tiller, Veronica E. (Ed.). Discover Indian Reservations USA: A Visitors' Welcome Guide. Foreword by Ben Nighthorse Campbell. Council Publications, Denver, Colorado (1992). ISBN 0-9632580-0-1.

External links

General information and history

- [http://www.LostWorlds.org Lost Worlds: An Interactive Museum of the American Indian]
- [http://soda.sou.edu/tribal.html Southern Oregon Digital Archives First Nations Tribal Collection], ethnographic, linguistic, & historical material.
- [http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/naind/html/na_000107_entries.htm Houghton Mifflin Encyclopedia of North American Indians]
- [http://www.comanchelodge.com Comanche Lodge - American Indian History And Genealogy]
- [http://www.csulb.edu/projects/ais/ American Indian History and Related Issues]
- [http://www.nativepeoples.com/ Native Peoples Magazine - Arts, Culture and Lifeways of the Native Peoples of the Americas]

Tribal, regional and reservation information

- [http://www.kstrom.net/isk/maps/cultmap.html North American Pre-Contact Culture Areas]
- [http://www.dickshovel.com/trbindex.html List of North American Tribes]
- [http://www.rootsweb.com/~rigenweb/IndianPlaceNames.html American Indian Place Names], incl. Bibliography
- [http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0030193 A Population Genetic Portrait of the Peopling of the Americas] by Jody Hey

Organizations

- [http://www.ncai.org National Congress of American Indians]
- [http://www.ncaied.org/ The National Center for American Indian Enterprise Development]
- [http://www.narf.org/ Native American Rights Fund]

Photography

- [http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award98/ienhtml/tribes.html Edward S. Curtis's The North American Indian: Photographic Images (by culture area)]
- [http://www.csulb.edu/projects/ais/nae/ American Historical Images On File: The Native American Experience]

Culture

- [http://www.ericdigests.org/1997-2/antibias.htm Countering Prejudice against American Indians and Alaska Natives]
- [http://www.androphile.org/preview/Culture/NativeAmerica/ The Two-Spirit Tradition], an essay on shamanism and male love in Native American religion.
- [http://www.ericdigests.org/1992-2/natives.htm Using Literature by American Indians and Alaska Natives in Secondary Schools]
- [http://www.ericdigests.org/1996-4/native.htm Teaching Young Children about Native Americans]

Language

- Map of languages in the US - William C. Sturtevant. (1967). Early Indian tribes, culture areas, and linguistic stocks.: (caution: Material is out-of-date)
- [http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/united_states/early_indian_alaska.jpg Alaska & Hawai‘i]
- [http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/united_states/early_indian_west.jpg Western US]
- [http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/united_states/early_indian_east.jpg Eastern US]

Art

- [http://www.nativetech.org/ NativeTech: Native American Technology and Art] Category:Native American history Category:North American history Category:Pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica ja:アメリカ州の先住民族 nb:Innfødte amerikanere simple:Native American

Iroquois Confederacy

The Iroquois Confederacy (Haudenosaunee, also known as the League of Peace and Power, Five Nations, or Six Nations) is a group of First Nations/Native Americans. The Confederacy was based, at the time of the arrival of the Europeans, in what is now upstate New York, as well as parts of Pennsylvania, Ontario, and Quebec. Quebec, 1914]]

History

Prehistoric and Protohistoric period

This union of nations was established prior to major European contact, replete with a constitution recorded with special beads called wampum that have inherent spiritual value (wampum has been innacurately compared to money in other cultures). Most Western anthropologists speculate that this Constitution was created between the middle 1400s and early 1600s, but other scholars who account for Iroquois oral tradition argue that the event took place as early as 1100, with many arguing for August 31, 1142 based on a coinciding solar eclipse (see Fields and Mann, American Indian Culture and Research Journal, vol. 21, #2). Some Westerners have also suggested that the Constitution was written with European help, although most dismiss this notion as racism. The two prophets, Hiawatha and "The Great Peacemaker", brought a message of peace to squabbling tribes. The tribes who joined the League were the Seneca, Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga and Mohawks. Once they ceased (most) infighting, they rapidly became one of the strongest forces in 17th and 18th century northeastern North America. The League engaged in a series of wars against the French and their Iroquoian-speaking Wyandot ("Huron") allies. They also put great pressure on the Algonquian peoples of the Atlantic coast and what is now subarctic Canada and not infrequently fought the English colonies as well. During the 17th Century they are also credited with having destroyed the Neutral Indians and Erie Tribe as a way of controlling the fur trade, even though other reasons are often given for these wars. Some survivors of these tribes were absorbed into the Iroquois tribes. fur trade According to Francis Parkman, the Iroquois were at the height of their power in the 17th century with a population of around 12,000 people. League traditions allowed for the dead to be symbolically replaced through the "Mourning War", raids intended to seize captives and take vengeance on non-members. This tradition was common to native people of the northeast and was quite different from European settlers' notions of combat.

The 18th Century

In 1720 the Tuscarora fled north from the European colonization of North Carolina and petitioned to become the Sixth Nation. This is a non-voting position, but places them under the protection of the Confederacy. During the American Revolution the Oneida and many Tuscarora and Onondaga sided with the Americans while the Mohawk, Seneca, and Cayuga remained loyal to Great Britain. This marked the first split among the Six Nations. After a series of successful operations against frontier settlements led by the Mohawk leader Joseph Brant and his British allies, the United States reacted with vengeance. In 1779, George Washington ordered Col. Daniel Brodhead and General John Sullivan to lead expeditions against the Iroquois nations to "not merely overun, but destroy," the British-Indian alliance. The campaign successfully ended the ability of the British and Iroquois to mount any further significant attacks on American settlements. In 1794, the Confederacy entered into the Treaty of Canandaigua with the United States. After the American Revolutionary War, Captain Joseph Brant and the Six Nations Indians left New York to settle in Canada. As a reward for their loyalty to the Crown, they were given a large land grant on the Grand River. The original Mohawk settlement was on the south edge of the present-day city at a location favourable for landing canoes. Brant's crossing of the river gave the original name to the area: Brant's ford. By 1847, European settlers began to settle further up the river at a ford in the Grand River and named the village Brantford, Ontario.

Beliefs

These tribes, mostly members of the Iroquois nation, lived in the Northeastern territories of the U.S. and Canada, from the St. Lawrence River down to the Delaware Bay and inland to the Great Lakes. Their close contact with Europeans makes investigation of their original mythology and religion extremely difficult, but core beliefs included a conception of life as a struggle between the forces of good and evil. The "All-Father," and all embracing deity, had no form and little contact of the humans. Spirits animated all of nature and controlled the changing of the season. Key festivals coincided with the major events of the agricultural calendar. Seventh Generation is a precept of the Great Law of the Haudenosaunee (Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy), which requires that chiefs consider the impact of their decisions on the seventh generation.

The Haudenosaunee

The combined leadership of the Nations is known as the Haudenosaunee. It should be noted that "Haudenosaunee" is the term that the people use to refer to themselves. The word "Iroquois" is reputed to come from a French version of a Huron (Wendat) name—considered an insult—meaning "Black Snakes." The Iroquois were enemies of the Huron and the Algonquin, who were allied with the French, due to their rivalry in the fur trade. Haudenosaunee means "People Building a Long House." The term is said to have been introduced by The Great Peacemaker at the time of the formation of the Confederacy. It implies that the Nations of the confederacy should live together as families in the same longhouse. Symbolically, the Seneca were the guardians of the western door of the "tribal long house," and the Mohawk were the guardians of the eastern door. There exists another, perhaps more compelling, version explaining the origin of the word "Iroquois"; as the French combination of two distinct terms used in the language of the Haudenosaunee. Here is a link to published text discussing this point: http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/6Nations/index.html#fn1 The participants and writers developing the nascent US government addressed and compared the Haudenosaunee and their ways to a state of achievement in administrative self-governance which Rome itself never reached and which they hoped the US would aspire to and achieve. Another useful reference in learning about the Haudenosaunee exists here: http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/6Nations/index.html The Iroquois nations' political union and democratic government has been credited by some as one of the influences on the United States Constitution. Please see Figure 31 at this link: http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/6Nations/EoL/chp8.html#fig31 However, that theory has fallen into disfavor among many historians, and is regarded by some as mythology. Historian Jack Rakove writes: "The voluminous records we have for the constitutional debates of the late 1780s contain no significant references to the Iroquois." [http://hnn.us/articles/12974.html]. The Haudenosaunee issues passports to some of its citizens. Though legal travellers often find it inconvenient to have it recognized.

Member Nations

:::Note 1: Member of Original Five Nations (listed from west to east) :::Note 2: Sixth Nation (Joined in 1720)

Iroquois Clans

Within each of the six nations, people are divided into a number of matrilineal clans. The number of clans varies by nation, currently from three to seven, with a total of nine different clan names.

Government

The Iroquois have a representative government known as the Grand Council. Each tribe sends chiefs to act as respresentatives and make decisions for the whole nation. The number of chiefs has never changed.
- Onondaga 14
- Cayuga 10
- Oneida 9
- Mohawk 9
- Seneca 8

References

- "The Ordeal of the Longhouse", by Daniel K. Richter
- For a detailed account of Iroquois actions during the American Revolution, see: Williams, Glenn F. Year of the Hangman: George Washington's Campaign Against the Iroquois Yardley: Westholme Publishing, 2005.
- [http://sixnations.buffnet.net/Culture/?article=who_we_are Who Are the Haudenosaunee?]
- [http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/6Nations/ Oldest Living Participatory Democracy]
- [http://www.iroquoismuseum.org Iroquois Indian Museum, Howes Cave, NY]

External links

- [http://www.sixnations.org/ Haudenosaunee Home Page] : the official source of news and information from the Haudenosaunee.
- [http://sixnations.buffnet.net/Great_Law_of_Peace/ Gayanashagowa] Category:Iroquois Category:First Nations in Quebec Category:First Nations in Ontario ja:イロコイ連邦

Mingo (tribe)

Tribal Name

Mingo is thought to be a corruption of mingwe, which is an Algonquian word meaning "stealthy" or "treacherous." English colonists used the term to describe the Iroquois bands that had migrated to western Pennsylvania and Virginia by 1740.

Background

The Mingo people are an Iroquois group that migrated west to the Ohio River Valley in present-day West Virginia in the mid-eighteenth century where they formed their own distinct identity. Their villages were increasingly an amalgamation of Seneca, Wyandot, Shawnee, Susquehannock, and Delaware evacuees. By 1774, the Mingos acted independently of the Iroquois, frequently fighting white settlers while the Six Nations officially advocated peace. Their presence in central and eastern Ohio throughout the 1760s and 1780s especially conflicted with hordes of white settlers who vied with them for control of the region. The Mingos were led by Chief Logan in a series of battles. Despite some pockets of resistance, the Mingos were crushed, and the surviving members of the group mixed with the larger Shawnee and Miami peoples. By 1830, the Mingos were flourishing in western Ohio improving their farms and establishing schools. Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act of that same year, however, forced the Mingos and all natives in Ohio to sell their lands and leave. The United States finally defeated the Mingo nation in 1831 and subsequently forced them to vacate to Kansas in 1832. Upon their removal to Kansas, the Mingos were joined by Seneca bands and both tribes shared the Neosho Reservation there. The tribe moved yet again in 1869 after the American Civil War from the reservation to the southern part of the Neosho tract in present-day Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Today, the tribe numbers over twenty-four hundred members and continues to maintain cultural and religious ties to the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy.

Language

The Mingo language (native name: Unyææshæötká') is a Northern Iroquoian language of eastern Ohio, western Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. It is a polysynthetic language with extremely complex verb usage, closely related to Seneca, Onondaga and Cayuga. There has been increasing interest in recent years, especially among Mingo descendants, in revitalizing the language. Today, in southern West Virginia exists Mingo County, named for the Mingo tribe.

External links

- [http://mingolanguage.org/ West Virginia Mingo Alphabet & Dictionary] Category:Iroquois

Cherokee language

Cherokee (Cherokee: Tsalagi) is an Iroquoian language spoken by the Cherokee people. It is the only Southern Iroquoian language that remains spoken.

Phonology

Cherokee only has one labial consonant, , which is relatively new to the language, unless one counts the Cherokee w a labial instead of a velar.

Consonants

Vowels

Diphthongs

Cherokee has only one diphthong native to the language:
- ai An exception is the modern Oklahoma use of the loanword "automobil," with the sound and sound of English.

Grammar

Cherokee, (or Tsalagi, its name in its own language) like most Native American languages, is polysynthetic. As in the case of German or Latin, units of meaning, called morphemes, are linked together and occasionally form very long words. Cherokee verbs, constituting the most important word type, must contain as a minimum a pronominal prefix, a verb root, an aspect suffix, and a modal suffix. For example, the verb form ke:ka, "I am going," has each of these elements. The pronominal prefix is k-, which indicates first person singular. The verb root is -e, "to go." The aspect suffix that this verb employs for the present-tense stem is -k-. The present-tense modal suffix for regular verbs in Cherokee is -a. Verbs can also have prepronominal prefixes, reflexive prefixes, and derivative suffixes. Given all possible combinations of affixes, each regular verb can have 21,262 inflected forms.

Cherokee Syllabary

Cherokee is written in a syllabary invented by Sequoyah (a.k.a. George Guess). In his system, each symbol represents a syllable rather than a single phoneme. While the number of syllables in English (tens of thousands) defy the use of a syllabary, the 85 characters in the Cherokee syllabary provide a suitable method to write Cherokee. Some symbols do resemble Latin alphabet letters, but the sounds are completely different (the form of the letter for "a" resembles Latin D, for example). Sequoyah had seen English writing, but didn't know how to write it; in all known cases where a person invented a script after seeing phonetic writing, but without knowing how to write, the results have been syllabaries. (Note that v is a nasalized vowel in the following chart.) Image:Ceroka_silabaro.jpg

Tone

Cherokee has a robust tonal system in which tones may be combined in various ways, following subtle and complex tonal rules that vary from community to community. While the tonal system is undergoing a gradual simplification in many areas (no doubt as part of Cherokee's often falling victim to second-language status), the tonal system remains extremely important in meaning and is still held strongly by many, especially older speakers. This is called Tone sandhi. It should be noted that the syllabary does not normally display tone, and that real meaning discrepancies are rare within the native-language Cherokee-speaking community. The same goes for transliterated Cherokee ("osiyo," "dohitsu," etc.), which is rarely written with any tone markers, except in dictionaries. Native speakers can tell the difference between tone-distinguished words by context.

Computer representation

Cherokee is represented in Unicode, in the character range U+13A0 to U+13F4. Cherokee fonts come with Mac OS X, version 10.3 (Panther). Cherokee is also supported by free fonts found at languagegeek.com, and the shareware fonts Code2000, Everson Mono.
- [http://www.languagegeek.com/font/fontdownload.html languagegeek.com fonts]
- [http://www.evertype.com/emono/ Everson Mono]

References

- Pulte, William, and Durbin Feeling. 2001. Cherokee. In: Garry, Jane, and Carl Rubino (eds.) Facts About the World's Languages: An Encyclopedia of the World's Major Languages: Past and Present. New York: H. W. Wilson. (Viewed at the [http://www.rosettaproject.org Rosetta Project])
- Scancarelli, Janine. "Cherokee Writing." The World's Writing Systems. 1998: Section 53. (Viewed at the [http://www.rosettaproject.org Rosetta Project])

External links

- [http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/naind/html/na_006600_cherokeelang.htm The Cherokee Language]
- [http://public.csusm.edu/public/raven/cherokee.dir/cherlexi.html Cherokee (Tsalagi) Lexicon]
- [http://www.zarahemla.vzz.net/cherokee.html Cherokee Language]
- [http://www.cherokee.org/Culture/Lexicon.asp Cherokee.org Dikanesdi (Lexicon)]
- [http://corpus.linguistics.berkeley.edu/~kjohnson/JPhon_Cherokee.pdf Tone and Pitch Accent in Cherokee Nouns] (pdf)
- [http://www.auburn.edu/outreach/dl/echota/tlr_about_cherokee.php Echota Tsalagi Language Project] Category:Syllabary writing systems Category:Cherokee tribe Category:Iroquoian languages Category:Languages of the United States Category:Unique scripts Category:Indigenous languages of the North American Southeast

Nasal consonant

A nasal stop is produced when the velum—that fleshy part of the palate near the back—is lowered, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The oral cavity still acts as a resonance chamber for the sound, but the air does not escape through the mouth as it is blocked by the tongue. Thus, it is not the nose itself that differentiates between the nasal stops, but rather the tongue's articulation, as in oral stops (plosives). Rarely, other types of consonant may be nasalized. Acoustically, nasal stops are sonorants, meaning they do not restrict the escape of air and cross-linguistically are nearly always voiced. (Compare oral plosives, which block off the air completely, and fricatives, which obstruct the air with a narrow channel. Both stops and fricatives are more commonly voiceless than voiced, and are known as obstruents.) However, nasals are also stops in their articulaton because the flow of air through the mouth is blocked completely. This duality, a sonorant airflow through the nose along with an obstruction in the mouth, means that nasal stops behave both like sonorants and like obstruents. For the purposes of acoustic description they are generally considered sonorants, but in many languages they may develop from or into plosives. Acoustically, nasal stops have bands of energy at around 200 and 2,000 Hz. List of nasal stops:
- is a voiced bilabial nasal
- is a voiced labiodental nasal (SAMPA: [F])
- is an alveolar or dental nasal: see alveolar nasal
- voiced retroflex nasal, common in Indic languages (SAMPA: [n`])
- voiced palatal nasal (SAMPA: [J]); is a common sound in European languages as in: Spanish ñ; or French and Italian gn; or Catalan and Hungarian ny; or Portuguese nh.
- voiced velar nasal (SAMPA: [N]), as in sing.
- voiced uvular nasal (SAMPA: [N\]) Examples of languages containing nasal stops: English, German and Cantonese have , and Catalan, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Italian have , , as phonemes, and and as allophones. (In several American dialects of Spanish, there is no palatal nasal, but only a palatalized nasal, , as in English canyon.) The term 'nasal stop' will often be abbreviated to just "nasal". However, there are also nasal vowels, as in French, Portuguese, Yoruba, Gbe, Polish, and Ljubljana Slovene. In the IPA, nasal vowels are indicated by placing a tilde (~) over the vowel in question: French sang . Very few languages contain no nasal consonants. This has led Ferguson (1963) to assume that all languages have at least one primary nasal consonant. When a language is claimed to lack nasal consonants altogether, as with several Niger-Congo languages, or the Pirahã language of the Amazon, nasal and non-nasal consonants usually alternate allophonically, and it is a theoretical claim on the part of the individual linguist that the nasal version is not the basic form of the consonant. In the case of some Niger-Congo languages, for example, nasal consonants only occur before nasal vowels. Since nasal vowels are phonemic, it simplifies the picture somewhat to assume that nasalization in stops is allophonic. There is then a second step in claiming that nasal vowels nasalize the stops, rather than oral vowels denasalizing them. Postulating nasal vowels instead of nasal consonants helps to explain the apparent instability of nasal correspondences throughout Niger-Congo compared with, for example, Indo-European. However, several of the Chimakuan, Salish, and Wakashan languages surrounding Puget Sound, such as Quileute, Lushootseed, and Makah, are truly without any nasalization at all, in consonants or vowels, except in special speech registers such as baby-talk or the archaic speech of mythological figures (and perhaps not even that in the case of Quileute). This is an areal feature, only a few hundred years old, where nasal stops became voiced plosives ([m] became [b], etc). The only other place in the world where this occurs is in a dialect of the Rotokas language of Papua New Guinea, where nasal stops are only used when imitating foreign accents. (A second dialect does have nasal stops.)

Notes and references

Notes

# As noted by Williamson (1989:24).

References

- Ferguson (1963) 'Assumptions about nasals', in Greenberg (ed.) Universals of Language, pp 50-60.
- Saout, J. le (1973) 'Languages sans consonnes nasales', Annales de l Université d'Abidjan, H, 6, 1, 179-205.
- Williamson, Kay (1989) 'Niger-Congo overview', in Bendor-Samuel & Hartell (eds.) The Niger-Congo Languages, 3-45. Category:Consonants ko:비음 ja:鼻音

Phoneme

In human language, a phoneme is a set of phones (speech sounds or sign elements) that are cognitively equivalent. It is the basic unit that distinguishes words and morphemes. That is, changing an element of a word from one phoneme to another produces either a different word or obvious nonsense; whereas changing an element from one phone to another, when both belong to the same phoneme, produces the same word with an odd or incomprehensible pronunciation. Phonemes are not the physical segments themselves, but mental abstractions of them. A phoneme is a family of phones, called allophones, that the speakers of a language think of, and hear or see, as being the same. In sign languages, the phoneme was formerly called a chereme (or cheireme), but usage changed to phoneme when it was recognized that the mental abstractions involved are essentially the same as in oral languages. A "perfect" alphabet is one that has a single symbol for each phoneme. Phonemics, a branch of phonology, is the study of the systems of phonemes of languages. Although it is fundamental to most phonological theories, some linguists reject the theoretical validity of the phoneme. Some think that phonemes are more a product of literacy (i.e., the need to categorize the phonetics of a language in order to write it down systematically with a minimum number of letters). Other critics charge that the mind processes sub-phonemic elements of speech (e.g., features) in meaningful ways. A common test to determine whether two phones are allophones or separate phonemes relies on finding so-called minimal pairs: words that differ only in the phones in question.

Background and related ideas

The term phonème was reportedly first used by Dufriche-Desgenettes in 1873, but it refered to only a sound of speech. The term phoneme as an abstraction was developed by the Polish linguist Jan Niecislaw Baudouin de Courtenay and his student Mikołaj Kruszewski during 1875-1895. The term used by these two was fonema, the basic unit of what they called psychophonetics. The concept of the phoneme was elaborated in the works of Nikolai Trubetzkoi and other of the Prague School (during the years 1926-1935), as well as in that of structuralists like Ferdinand de Saussure, Edward Sapir, and Leonard Bloomfield. Later, it was also used in generative linguistics, most famously by Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle, and remains central in any accounts of the development of virtually all modern schools of phonology. The phoneme can be defined as "the smallest meaningful psychological unit of sound." The phoneme has mental, physiological, and physical substance: our brains process the sounds; the sounds are produced by the human speech organs; and the sounds are physical entities that can be recorded and measured. For an example of phonemes, consider the English words pat and sat, which differ only in their initial consonants. This difference, known as contrastiveness or opposition, is sufficient to distinguish these words, and therefore the P and S sounds are said to be different phonemes. A pair of words that are identical except for such a sound are known as a minimal pair; this is the most frequent demonstration that two sounds are separate phonemes. If no minimal pair can be found to demonstrate that two sounds are distinct, it may be that they are allophones. Allophones are variant phones (i.e., sounds) that are not recognized as distinct by a speaker, and are not meaningfully different in the language, and yet are perceived as "the same". This is especially likely if they consistently occur in different environments. For example, the "dark" L sound at the end of the English word "wool" is quite different from the "light" L sound at the beginning of the word "leaf", but this difference is meaningless in English, and is determined by whether the sound is at the beginning or end of a word. A native English speaker might have a hard time hearing the difference at first, but in Turkish the difference between "light" and "dark" L is sufficient to distinguish words. That is, they are two separate phonemes in Turkish, but allophones of a single phoneme in English. The phonemic relationship of two sounds may not be obvious to a non-native speaker, which is why minimal pairs and an understanding of phonetic environments are important. For example, in Korean, there is a phoneme /r/ that is a flapped r between vowels, and is an l-sound next to other consonants. These sound very different to an English speaker, who is attuned to hearing them because the differences are meaningful in English. However, the native speaker has learned from an early age to filter out the difference, as they are not meaningful in their language. In Korean, for instance, it is impossible to distinguish the two words "ram" and "lam", despite the fact that both R and L sounds occur in the language. The exact number of phonemes in English depends on the speaker and the method of determining phoneme vs. allophone, but estimates typically range from 40 to 45, which is above average across all languages. Pirahã has only 10, while !Xóõ has 141. Depending on the language and the alphabet used, a phoneme may be written consistently with one letter; however there are many exceptions to this rule — see Writing systems below. Some languages make use of pitch for the precise same purpose. In this case, the tones used are called tonemes. Some languages distinguish words made up of the same phonemes (and tonemes) by using different durations of some elements, which are called chronemes. However, the chroneme is not employed by the majority of scholars working on languages with distinctive duration, and the term itself may not even be recognized by most linguists. Usually, long vowels and consonants are represented either by a length indicator or doubling of the sound in question. In sign languages, phonemes may be classified as Tab (elements of location, from Latin tabula), Dez (the hand shape, from designator), Sig (the motion, from signation), and with some researchers, Ori (orientation). Facial expressions and mouthing are also phonemic.

Notation

A transcription that only indicates the different phonemes of a languages is said to be phonemic. Such transcriptions are enclosed within virgules (slashes), / /; these show that each enclosed symbol is claimed to be phonemically meaningful. On the other hand, a transcription that indicates finer detail, including allophonic variation like the two English L's, is said to be phonetic, and is enclosed in square brackets, [ ]. The common notation used in linguistics employs virgules (slashes) (/ /) around the symbol that stands for the phoneme. For example, the phoneme for the initial consonant sound in the word "phoneme" would be written as . In other words, the graphemes are <ph>, but this digraph represents one sound . Allophones, real speech variants of a phoneme, are often denoted in linguistics by the use of diacritical or other marks added to the phoneme symbols and then placed in square brackets ([ ]) to differentiate them from the phoneme in slant brackets (/ /). The conventions of orthography are then kept separate from both phonemes and allophones by the use of the markers < > to enclose the spelling. The symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and extended sets adapted to a particular language are often used by linguists to write phonemes of oral languages, with the principle being one symbol equals one categorical sound. Due to problems displaying some symbols in the early days of the Internet, systems such as X-SAMPA and Kirshenbaum were developed to represent IPA symbols in plain text. As of 2004, any modern web browser can display IPA symbols (as long as the operating system provides the appropriate fonts), and we use this system in this article. The only published set of phonemic symbols for a sign language is the Stokoe notation developed for American Sign Language, which has since been applied to British Sign Language by Kyle and Woll, and to Australian Aboriginal sign languages by Adam Kendon. However, there are several phonetic systems, such as SignWriting.

Examples

Examples of phonemes in the English language would include sounds from the set of English consonants, like and . These two are most often written consistently with one letter for each sound. However, phonemes might not be so apparent in written English, such as when they are typically represented with combined letters, called digraphs, like <sh> (pronounced ) or <ch> (pronounced ). To see a list of the phonemes in the English language, see IPA for English. Two sounds that may be allophones (sound variants belonging to the same phoneme) in one language may belong to separate phonemes in another language or dialect. In English, for example, has aspirated and non-aspirated allophones:aspirated as in , and non-aspirated as in . However, in many languages (e. g. Chinese), aspirated is a phoneme distinct from unaspirated . As another example, there is no distinction between and in Japanese, there is only one phoneme in Japanese, although the Japanese has allophones that make it sound more like an , , or to English speakers. The sounds and are distinct phonemes in English, but allophones in Spanish. (as in run) and (as in rung) are phonemes in English, but allophones in Italian and Spanish. An important phoneme is the chroneme, a phonemically-relevant extension of the duration a consonant or vowel. Some languages or dialects such as Finnish or Japanese allow chronemes after both consonants and vowels. Others, like Italian or Australian English use it after only one (in the case of Italian, consonants; in the case of Australian, vowels).

Arguments against the phoneme

Rather than a basic mental unit of language, some think that the phoneme may well be a perceptual artifact of alphabetic literacy (see the terms Phonemic awareness and Phonological awareness). If not that, it may be an epiphenomenal aspect to listening removed from face-to-face encounters, that is, text-like listening (qv phone and feature). It could be said that the unit of the phoneme is a necessary construct if we wish to set a dynamic, complex spoken language into static, written form expressed at a sub-syllabic level, though the model is a simplification and no where near phonologically or phonetically complete. The phoneme has the theoretical weakness from the perspective of phonology in that it uses, in part, lexical criteria to determine something that is supposed to be phonological (i.e., minimal pairs of words to point out phonological categories). Much of phonology, while accepting the phoneme as possible model or unit of language for description, has largely moved past the segmental phoneme as a basic unit of speech, of speech processing or of language acquisition. This is because the concept of the 'feature' is viewed as beneath the level of the phoneme while also spanning across segments. Meanwhile, attempts at capturing a phonological picture of the psychological control and structure underlying real speech flounder on the inadequacies of the phoneme for such purposes (that is, the phoneme can not account for co-articulation or assimilation of controlled speech, among other phenomena). However, the term, though variably defined and delimited, remains a widely and uncritically accepted concept in foreign language teaching and native literacy (especially for alphabetic languages, such as English).

Restricted phonemes

A restricted phoneme is a phoneme that can only occur in a certain environment: There are restrictions as to where it can occur. English has several restricted phonemes:
- , as in sing, occurs only at the end of a syllable, never at the beginning. (In many other languages, such as Swahili, can start a word.)
- occurs only at the beginning of a syllable, never at the end. (A few languages such as Arabic allow /h/ at the ends of words.)
- In many American dialects with the cot-caught merger, occurs only before /r/, /l/, and in the diphthong .
- In non-rhotic dialects, /r/ can only occur before a vowel, never at the end of a word or before a consonant.
- Under most interpretations, and occur only before a vowel, never at the end of a syllable. However, many phonologists interpret a word like boy as either or .

Neutralization, archiphoneme, underspecification

Phonemes that are contrastive in certain environments may not be contrastive in all environments. In the environments where they don't contrast, the contrast is said to be neutralized. In English there are three nasal phonemes, , as shown by the minimal triplet, However, these sounds are not contrastive before plosives such as . Although all three phones appear before plosives, for example in limp, lint, link, only one of these may appear before each of the plosives. That is, the distinction is neutralized before each of the plosives :
- Only occurs before ,
- only before , and
- only before . Thus these phonemes are not contrastive in these environments, and according to some theorists, there is no evidence as to what the underlying representation might be. If we hypothesize that we are dealing with only a single underlying nasal, there is no reason to pick one of the three phonemes over the other two. (In some languages there is only one phonemic nasal anywhere, and due to obligatory assimilation, it surfaces as in just these environments, so this idea is not as far-fetched as it might seem at first glance.) In certain schools of phonology, such a neutralized distinction is known as an archiphoneme (Nikolai Trubetzkoy of the Prague school is often associated with this analysis.). Archiphonemes are often notated with a capital letter. Following this convention, the neutralization of before could be notated as |N|, and limp, lint, link would be represented as |lɪNp, lɪNt, lɪNk|. (The |pipes| indicate underlying representation.) Other ways this archiphoneme could be notated are |m-n-ŋ|, , or |n
- |. Another example from English is the neutralization of the plosives /k, g/ following /s/. Phonetically, the unaspirated tenuis plosive in sky is closer to English /g/, which is partially voiceless in initial position, than to aspirated /k/. This can be heard by comparing the sky with this guy; also, in the speech of young children who are not yet able to produce consonant clusters, they often pronounce sky as what sounds like to adult ears. That is, /k/ and /g/ are constrastive word initially, But not after an /s/, Thus one cannot say whether the underlying representation of the plosive in sky is /skai/ without aspiration, or /sgai/ without voicing. This neutralization can instead be represented as an archiphoneme |G|, in which case the underlying representation of sky would be |sGai|. Another way to talk about archiphonemes involves the concept of underspecification. Phonemes can be considered fully specified segments while archiphonemes are underspecified segments. In Tuvan, phonemic vowels are specified with the features of tongue height, backness, and lip rounding. The archiphoneme |U| is an underspecified high vowel where only the tongue height is specified. Whether |U| is pronounced as front or back and whether rounded or unrounded depends on vowel harmony. If |U| occurs following a front unrounded vowel, it will be pronounced as the phoneme ; if following a back unrounded vowel, it will be as an ; and if following a back rounded vowel, it will be an . This can been seen in the following words: It should be noted that not all phonologists accept the concept of archiphonemes. Many doubt that it reflects how people process language.

Non-phonemes

Prothesis, epenthesis and paragoge due to phonotactics add sounds into words without adding meaning. Nevertheless, the sound is added, and thus the phoneme status may be ambiguous. For example, Spanish prothetic e- must be added before consonant clusters, e.g. estres.

Phonological extremes

Of all the sounds that a human vocal tract can create, different languages vary considerably in the number of these sounds that are considered to be distinctive phonemes in the speech of that language. Ubyx and some dialects of Abkhaz have only two phonemic vowels, and many Native American languages have three. On other extreme, the Bantu language Ngwe has fourteen vowel qualities, twelve of which may occur long or short, for twenty-six oral vowels, plus six nasalized vowels, long and short, for thirty-eight vowels; while !Xóõ achieves thirty-one pure vowels—not counting vowel length, which it also has—by varying the phonation. Rotokas has only six consonants, while !Xóõ has somewhere in the neighborhood of seventy-seven, and Ubyx eighty-one. French has no phonemic tone or stress, while several of the Kam-Sui languages have nine tones, and one of the Kru languages, Wobe, has been claimed to have fourteen, though this is disputed. The total number of phonemes in languages varies from as few as eleven in Rotokas to as many as 112 in !Xóõ (including four tones). These may range from familiar sounds like , , or to very unusual ones produced in extraordinary ways (see: Click consonant, phonation, airstream mechanism). The English language itself uses a rather large set of thirteen to twenty-two vowels, including diphthongs, though its twenty-two to twenty-six consonants are close to average. (There are twenty-one consonant and five vowel letters in the English alphabet, but this does not correspond to the number of consonant and vowel sounds.) The most common vowel system consists of the five vowels . The most common consonants are . A very few languages lack one of these: standard Hawai‘ian lacks , Mohawk lacks and , Hupa lacks both and a simple , colloquial Samoan lacks and , while Rotokas and Quileute lack and . While most of these languages have very small inventories, Quileute and Hupa have quite complex consonant systems. The ways that sounds are pronounced can vary slightly from language to language even if the same IPA symbol is used. For example, the Finnish word maat ("countries") sounds different from the British English (Received Pronunciation) word mart even though both are transcribed as IPA [http://www.helsinki.fi/hum/hyfl/projektit/vokaalikartat_eng.html#sweswedish_vowels]; the Spanish word sin ("without") has a somewhat different vowel from the American English seen though both are transcribed as .

Writing systems

In a phonemic writing system, a given symbol represents a single phoneme and each phoneme is represented by a single symbol. This may differ from a phonetic orthography, which only requires that the spelling be unambiguously determined by the pronunciation, and the pronunciation unambiguously indicated by the spelling. English spelling is the classic example of an nonphonemic, and indeed unphonetic, spelling system. Welsh and Irish are, by contrast, among the more predictable orthographies among languages using the Latin alphabet. In French, rules to predict pronunciation from spelling are quite simple and have few exceptions, as long as there are some clues such as context or part of speech, but guessing spelling from pronunciation is quite difficult, especially because of the many silent letters. Italian, Spanish and especially Finnish have a very close letter-to-phoneme correspondence. Karelian has a perfectly phonemic spelling system, as it has no standard language, but it has a complete spelling system. However, the split between phonemic and nonphonemic orthographies is exaggerated. All languages are written with conventions that represent both meaning and pronunciation. This is true at both ends of the scale: Chinese characters are first and foremost symbols of words, but they have some phonetic information as well. At the other extreme, there are a few orthographies which are perfect phonemic representations of an artificial national standard, but since they make no effort to represent variation in pronunciation within the language, they too are conventional. Other languages fall somewhere in between. Although English is often given as an example of an unphonetic orthography, its system is nowhere near to being as purely conventional a system as Chinese writing is. English spelling conveys etymological information, but also vast amounts of phonetic information. Spanish is often given as an example of a phonetic orthography, but it has numerous imperfections including silent letters. It is, at least, possible to tell the correct pronunciation of any written Spanish word. Another phonemic orthography is Serbian. Its phonemicity was established by Serbian "Webster" Vuk Stefanović Karadžić. He followed a strict phonemic principle, which is best told by his own words: "Write as you speak and read as it is written.". Hindi, a descendant of Sanskrit, is an example of phonetic language written with a non-Roman Alphabet.

External links

- [http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsAPhoneme.htm What is a phoneme? (SIL)]
- [http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsAnAllophone.htm What is an allophone? (SIL)]
- [http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsAPhone.htm What is a phone? (SIL)]
- [http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsAPhoneticallySimilarSegm.htm What is a phonetically similar segment? (SIL)]
- [http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsAMinimalPair.htm What is a minimal pair? (SIL)]
- [http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsComplementaryDistributio.htm What is complementary distribution? (SIL)]
- [http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsAnEnvironment.htm What is an environment? (SIL)]
- [http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsContrastInIdenticalEnvir.htm What is an contrast in identical environments? (SIL)]
- [http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsContrastInAnalogousEnvir.htm What is an contrast in analogous environments? (SIL)]
- [http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/ComparisonOfMorphemeMorphAllom.htm Comparison of morpheme-morph-allomorph & phoneme-phone-allophone? (SIL)]
- [http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/Phonology.htm What is phonology? (SIL)]
- [http://www2.let.uu.nl/UiL-OTS/Lexicon/zoek.pl?lemma=phoneme Phoneme (Lexicon of Linguistics)]
- [http://www2.let.uu.nl/UiL-OTS/Lexicon/zoek.pl?lemma=allophony Allophony (Lexicon of Linguistics)]
- [http://www2.let.uu.nl/UiL-OTS/Lexicon/zoek.pl?lemma=transcription Transcription (Lexicon of Linguistics)]
- [http://www2.let.uu.nl/UiL-OTS/Lexicon/zoek.pl?lemma=Grapheme-phoneme+conversion Grapheme-Phoneme Conversion (Lexicon of Linguistics)]
- [http://www2.let.uu.nl/UiL-OTS/Lexicon/zoek.pl?lemma=Phoneme+restoration Phoneme Restoration (Lexicon of Linguistics)]
- [http://moodle.ed.uiuc.edu/wiked/index.php/Phonemic_awareness phonemic awareness] Category:Phonetics Category:Phonology

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