Languages of North America

LIGN 101 - Will Styler

Today’s agenda

• Linguistic diversity in North America

• Three Awesome Native American Language Families

• Why Navajo made a great code in WWII/Korea.

So, there’s kind of a pattern in World Languages

North America was (and is, but less so) a linguistically diverse place!

North American Indigenous Languages!

• Approximately 296 languages spoken above Mexico before colonialism

  • (That we know of)

• These broke down into ~50 families

Indigenous Language Families

Currently surviving Indigenous Language Families

We don’t have time to talk about all of them

• I’ll talk about a few families today

North American Language Families

(That we’re going to discuss today!)

• Siouan Languages

• Algonquian Languages

• Athabaskan/Na-Dené Languages

• Uto-Aztecan Languages

Siouan Languages

Siouan

• Also called “Siouxan” or “Catawban” or “Siouan-Catawban”

• Contained 20 languages

• Now contains 11 languages

Well-known Siouan Languages

• Dakota - 18,000 speakers

• Lakota - 6000 speakers

  • This is the language used in “Dances with Wolves”

• Assiniboine/Nakota - 150 speakers

• Crow - 3000 speakers

• Osage - 10 speakers

• Hidatsa - 10 speakers

Dakota, Nakota and Lakota are often just considered “Sioux”

• Together, they’re the fifth most widely spoken NA language

• They’ve got fun history!

Lakota
Siouxan - Great Plains

Lakota
Siouxan - Great Plains

/txõka/ - Lakota for “big”

/tipi/ - Lakota for “house”

There are other loanwords, but we don’t have time for them all.

• So Sioux me!

Algonquian Languages

Algonquian

• Part of “Algic” which also has Yurok and Wiyot

• Around 30 languages

• 15 have survived

Prominent Algonquian Languages

• Cree - 117,000 speakers (US and Canada)

• Ojibwe - ~25,000 speakers

• Blackfoot - ~3,200 speakers

• Cheyenne - ~2,000 speakers

• Arapaho - ~1,000 speakers

• Massachusett (Extinct)

Algonquian Languages are Polysynthetic

Polysynthetic Languages

Languages which are highly synthetic, incorporating more than one noun into a single word

• Monday, Dr. Rood is going to present in Wichita, which is powerfully polysynthetic

Ojibwe
Algonquian - Great Lakes Region

Arapaho is the language native to the Boulder Area

• Find out more online!

Arapaho
Algoniuan - Colorado

Algonquian Loanwords

• Chipmunk

• Husky

• Moose

• Opossum

• Skunk

• Toboggan

• Hickory

‘Woodchuck’ is a borrowing

• From Naragansett ockqutchaun

That means woodchucks never chucked wood

Na-Dené Languages

Na-Dené Languages

• Includes Tlingit (spoken in Canada and Alaska) and Athabaskan

• 32 “Northern Athabaskan” Languages (spoken in Canada and Alaska)

  • ~4000 speakers

• 7 “Coastal Athabaskan” Languages (in California and Oregon)

  • 5 are extinct, the other two have 8 speakers total.

• 6 “Southern Athabaskan” Languages (in the American West and Southwest)

  • 3 are extinct, ~175,000 speakers (!!)

• Has a proposed (and widely liked) link to the Yenisean Languages of Siberia

Prominent Na-Dené Languages

• Navajo - ~170,000 speakers

• Apache - ~14,000 speakers

• Jicarilla - ~300 speakers

Let’s focus on Navajo

Spoken in the 4 corners region

In WWI, WWII, Korea and Vietnam, radio encryption was not a thing

• This meant that anything you said into a radio, Hitler heard.

• One solution: Use a language the enemies can’t understand!

Code Talkers

• Speakers of obscure languages who speak their language as “code” during war to communicate

• Choctaw, Cherokee, Comanche, Seminole, Navajo, and Basque were all used this way

• Code words were used (“Turtle” for “tank”, “Gah” (“rabbit”) for R) to further complicate things!

• The movie “Windtalkers” is about these soldiers

• Let’s talk about Navajo

What features would you want a language to have if you wanted it to be difficult for an outsider to understand?

Why Navajo is a great code-talking language

Lots of speakers!

• This means lots of people to ship overseas

Centrally located in the US

• If the Japanese took California, speakers are safe

No close relatives spoken overseas

• Polish is a really bad code language in a war against the Russians…

Unusual Consonants!

Suprasegmentals

• Vowel Length

• Vowel Nasality

• Tone (High vs. Low)

Complex Modality

Modality

Marks the “reality” or nature of the action

Navajo Modality

• Markers for if a verb’s action is Incomplete

• … or complete

• … or typical

• … or in progress

• … or in the future

• … or possible/desired

Complex Aspect

Aspect

Marks the nature of the temporal boundaries and progress of an action

• Mode and aspect can blend together, and it’s not always easy to distinguish them

Navajo Aspect

• Mark whether the action is happening at a specific moment

• … or just generally happening

• … or ongoing for a while yet

• … or recently completed

• … or happening repeatedly

• … or temporally different from the last one

Navajo Aspect (continued!)

• … or over a few different targets/locations

• … or involves an abrupt change in direction

• … or involves a change in form

• … or requires motion in a straight line

• … or just occurs sporadically, here and there

Noun class and classifiers which attach to verbs

• -ʼą́ – Solid Roundish Objects

• -yį́ – Load, Pack, Burden

• -ł-jool – Non-Compact Matter

• -lá – Slender Flexible Object

• -tą́ – Slender Stiff Object

• -ł-tsooz – Flat Flexible Object

• -tłééʼ – Mushy Matter

• -nil – Plural Objects 1

• -jaaʼ – Plural Objects 2

• -ką́ – Open Container

• -ł-tį́ – Animate Object

• Often, you don’t need to mention the noun again!

Strongly synthetic morphology

• Lots and lots of affixes

• It’s very agglutinating

  • Lots of affixes pile up on verbs

• It’s also kind of fusional

  • Phonological rules cause these suffixes to blend together

• So only experienced speakers can pick the many affixes apart!

So you have a language where…

• Many of the consonants are unusual

• Words are heavily modified by suprasegmentals

• Verb meaning is really complex

• Nouns aren’t usually necessary after the first mention

• All of this is accomplished in an unparsable affix-pile.

Navajo
Na-Dené - SW United States

At the Battle of Iwo Jima, Major Howard Connor, 5th Marine Division signal officer, had six Navajo code talkers working around the clock during the first two days of the battle. These six sent and received over 800 messages, all without error. Connor later stated, “Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima.”

From 1879 to 1938, the US Government forcibly sent Native American kids to boarding schools where children were beaten for speaking their native Language.

• … and the last of these schools closed in 1984

Remember all those extinct language families?

Remember all those extinct language families?

Our government fought hard to make that happen

This isn’t so distant

Nichols Hall

David H. Nichols

… was called upon by Territorial Governor John Evans in 1864 to suppress Indian uprisings. In his capacity as Captain of Company D, Nichols participated in the infamous Sand Creek Massacre on November 29, 1864.

• Cheyenne-Arapaho hall was named “Nichols Hall” in his honor in 1961

Cheyenne Arapaho Hall

Linguistic Diversity is important

• … and there are always racist jerks who want to destroy it

On a lighter note…

Navajo
Na-Dené - SW United States

Wrapping Up

• North America had lots of linguistic diversity

• We still have some linguistic diversity

  • Despite our government’s best efforts…

• Navajo is incredible

• You should take “Native American Languages” here

Languages of Mexico and Meso-America

LING 1020 - Will Styler

Today’s Agenda

• Uto-Aztecan Languages

• Mayan Languages

• Agreement vs. Case

Uto-Azetcan

Uto-Aztecan Languages

• Spoken in the US and in Mexico

• 30 languages

• One of the larger families in North America

Nahuatl!

Want to incur Will’s wrath?

Nahuatl is not pronounced “Na-waddle”!

/ˈnaːwatɬ/

• ɬ is a voiceless lateral fricative

Nahuatl was the language of the Aztec People

Today’s Messed-up Colorado History Lesson

Montezuma was a great Aztec Leader

He was killed by Spaniards led by Hernan Cortez

### Montezuma has a county in Colorado

The county is administered by the city of Cortez

Seriously, Colorado?

English has a lotl of borrowings from Nahuatl

• Coyote (from coyōtl)

• Mesquite (from mizquitl)

• Peyote (from peyōtl)

• Tomato (from tomatl)

• Chocolate (from xocolātl ‘bitter water’)

And I mean a lotl!

• Chili (from chīlli)

• Avocado (from āhuacatl)

• Guacamole (āhuacamōlli ‘Avocado Sauce’)

• Tamale (from tamalli)

• Chipotle (from chilpoctli ‘smoked chili’)

Axolotl

(Image Source)

Nahuatl
Uto-Aztecan - Mexico

Here’s a picture of a gerbil in a sweater, because I can’t think of a transition.

Mayan Languages

• Spoken in Central America

• Really well documented

• Around 6 million speakers

  • K’iche has the most (2 million)

Mayan Languages were the language of the Mayan Civilization

The Maya had an awesome ideographic writing system

Nova did a whole special on this.

• You can watch it online for free

(Modern Mayan languages use the Latin alphabet, though)

Features of Mayan Languages

• Agglutinating and Polysynthetic

• VOS ordering

• Numerical Classifiers

• Relational Nouns!

Relational Nouns

Relational Noun

A noun used to express prepositional meaning

• These are an areal feature for Central America!

Zapotec
Oto-Manguean - Mexico

Mnnààa’ zuu zh:ààa’n bzêiny.

woman NEU.stand the.buttocks.of deer

‘The woman is standing at the buttocks of the deer’

Zapotec
Oto-Manguean - Mexico

loh gyizhi’iilly

face chair

‘on the chair’

Which of the following direct translations uses a relational noun to express ‘the squirrel is in the bus’?

1. ‘Squirrel in bus’

2. ’Squirrel bus.LOCATIVE-CASE

3. ‘squirrel stomach bus’

4. ‘squirrel entered bus’

Which of the following direct translations uses a relational noun to express ‘the squirrel is in the bus’?

1. ‘Squirrel in bus’

2. ’Squirrel bus.LOCATIVE-CASE

C) ‘squirrel stomach bus’

D) ‘squirrel entered bus’

K’iche
Mayan - Mexico

(Sorry, I needed a segue!)

Agreement!

“What’s the difference between case and agreement?”

Case marks roles on arguments!

Russian Case Marking

• Will videt kochku
• Will-NOM see-3sg CAT-ACC
• “Will saw the cat”

With case, you make the arguments wear nametags

• So you know what role the arguments are playing

### Will-NOM see-3sg CAT-ACC

Will-NOM see-3sg CAT-ACC

Agreement marks identity on verbs!

• “Rather than marking the arguments, let’s just make sure the verb points to who did it!”

Spanish Agreement Marking

• Yo veo el gato

• 1sg see.1sgsubj el cat

• I see the cat

• The arguments aren’t marked

• … but the verb lets us know who did it!

Spanish Agreement Marking

• Michael Bay hizo peliculas malas

• Michael Bay make.3sgsubj.past movie-pl bad-pl

• “Michael Bay made bad movies”

• We know that the plural argument did it!

Agreement can use many ways of showing identity

• Person marking (1sg, 2sg, etc)

  • 2sg did it!

• Number marking (singular, plural, etc)

  • The group with more than one item did it!

• Gender marking (masc, fem, neuter)

  • It was the masculine thing!

More ways of showing identity!

• Noun class

  • It was the large, flat object!

• New vs. old information markers

  • The thing I mentioned first did it!

• Any others?

Let’s test your skills!

squirrele eta acornu

squirrel.NOM eat acorn.ACC

“The Squirrel ate the Acorn”

1. “This is case”

2. “This is agreement”

kula-knas Michael Bay Will

judge-object.is.evil Michael Bay Will

“Will judges Michael Bay”

1. “This is case”

2. “This is agreement”

So, are we all in…

Agreement!?

Three methods of marking grammatical relations!

• Word Order

• Case

• Agreement

Some languages use more than one.

• Spanish uses word order and agreement

• Russian uses agreement and case

• English uses agreement, word order, and case.

  • “I go” vs. “She goes”, word order, and “he/him”

(When more than one is used, it’s usually because the first system isn’t quite robust enough)

• Why can’t Spanish use just agreement?

Wrapping up

• Uto-Aztecan languages are awesome

  • We’ll learn more Monday

• Mayan languages are awesome

  • Know their features

• Agreement and case are different

  • … but both awesome

… and don’t forget to order lots of ahuacamolli next time you go to Chilpoctli

In Recitation: Something awesome.

Next time: Tarahumara with Jesús Villalpando

No reading.

Thank you!

Thank you!