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Caddoan languages


The Caddoan languages are a family of Native American languages. They are spoken across the Great Plains of the central United States, from North Dakota to Oklahoma.

Family division

Five languages belong to the Caddoan language family:

I. Northern Caddoan
A. Pawnee-Kitsai
: a. Kitsai
:: 1. Kitsai (also known as Kichai) (†)
: b. Pawnee
:: 2. Arikara (also known as Ree)
:: 3. Pawnee (dialects: South Bend, Skiri ''(also known as Skidi or Wolf))
B. Wichita
:: 4. Wichita (dialects: Wichita proper, Waco, Towakoni)


II. Southern Caddoan
:: 5. Caddo (dialects: Kadohadacho, Hasinai, Natchitoches, Yatasi)


The Kitsai language is now extinct, its members having been absorbed into the Witchita tribe in the 19th century. Caddo, Wichita, and Pawnee are presently spoken in Oklahoma by small handfuls of elders. Arikara is spoken on the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota. Some of the languages were formerly more widespread; the Caddo, for example, used to live in northeastern Texas, southwestern Arkansas, and northwestern Louisiana as well as southeastern Oklahoma. The Pawnee formerly lived along the Platte River in what is now Nebraska.

Genetic relations

Adai, a language isolate known only from a 275-word list, may be a Caddoan language, but the documentation is too scanty to determine with certainty. Wallace Chafe finds the relationship unlikely.

It has been proposed that Caddoan is related to Keresan or a part of a Macro-Siouan stock (along with Siouan and Iroquoian). The Keresan-Caddoan connection is now mostly rejected. Caddoan as part of Macro-Siouan is a possibility, but more research is required to determine the validity of this proposal.

Links

Indiana University-Bloomington American Indian Studies Research Institute's Northern Caddoan Linguistic Text Corpora site: [1] and Dictionary Database Search (includes Arikara, Skiri Pawnee, South Band Pawnee, Assiniboine [Nakoda], and Yanktonai Sioux [Dakota]):[2]

Bibliography

  • Campbell, Lyle. (1997). American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509427-1.
  • Chafe, Wallace L. (1973). Siouan, Iroquoian, and Caddoan. In T. Sebeok (Ed.), Current trends in linguistics (Vol. 10, pp. 1164-1209). The Hague: Mouton. (Reprinted as Chafe 1976).
  • Chafe, Wallace L. (1976). Siouan, Iroquoian, and Caddoan. In T. Sebeok (Ed.), Native languages in the Americas (pp. 527-572). New York: Plenum. (Originally published as Chafe 1973).
  • Chafe, Wallace L. (1976). The Caddoan, Iroquioan, and Siouan languages. Trends in linguistics; State-of-the-art report (No. 3). The Hague: Mouton. ISBN 90-279-3443-6.
  • Chafe, Wallace L. (1979). Caddoan. In L. Campbell & M. Mithun (Eds.), The languages of Native America: Historical and comparative assessment (pp. 213-235). Austin: University of Texas Press. ISBN 0-292-74624-5.
  • Chafe, Wallace L. (1993). Indian languages: Siouan-Caddoan. Encyclopedia of the North American colonies (Vol. 3). New York: C. Scribner's Sons ISBN 0-684-19611-5.
  • Lesser, Alexander; & Weltfish, Gene. (1932). Composition of the Caddoan linguistic stock. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, 87 (6), 1-15.
  • Mithun, Marianne. (1999). The languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-23228-7 (hbk); ISBN 0-521-29875-X.
  • Taylor, Allan. (1963). Comparative Caddoan. International Journal of American Linguistics, 29, 113-131.
A language family is a group of languages related by descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language. As with biological families, the evidence of relationship is observable shared characteristics.
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Indigenous languages of the Americas (or Amerindian Languages) are spoken by indigenous peoples from the southern tip of South America to Alaska and Greenland, encompassing the land masses which constitute the Americas.
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Great Plains are the broad expanse of prairie and steppe which lie east of the Rocky Mountains in the United States and Canada. This area covers parts of the U.S. states of Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas and Wyoming, and
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Motto
"In God We Trust"   (since 1956)
"E Pluribus Unum"   ("From Many, One"; Latin, traditional)
Anthem
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State of North Dakota

Flag of North Dakota Seal
Nickname(s): Peace Garden State,
Roughrider State, Flickertail State
Motto(s): Liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable;
Strength from the soil
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State of Oklahoma

Flag of Oklahoma Seal
Nickname(s): Sooner State
Motto(s): Labor omnia vincit (Latin: Labor conquers all things)

Official language(s) None

Capital Oklahoma City

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The Kitsai (also Kichai) language is an extinct Caddoan language. It was spoken in Oklahoma and became extinct in the 1930s. It is documented in the still mostly-unpublished fieldnotes of anthropologist Alexander Lesser. It is thought to be most closely related to Wichita.
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Arikara (also Sahnish, Arikaree, Ree) refers to a group of Native Americans that speak a Caddoan language. They were a semi-nomadic group that lived on the plains of South Dakota for several hundred years.
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The Pawnee language is a Caddoan language spoken by Pawnee Native Americans located in North central Oklahoma. Once the language of thousands of Pawnees, today Pawnee is spoken by a shrinking number of elderly speakers, and as more young people continue to learn English as
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Wichita is a moribund Caddoan language spoken in Oklahoma. Only one fluent speaker remains, and hence it is almost certain that Wichita will soon become extinct.

Sounds


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Caddo is a Caddoan language of the Southern Plains, spoken by the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma. Few native speakers remain, but the tribe is working to teach the language to the youngest generation again.
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An extinct language is a language which no longer has any native speakers, in contrast to a dead language, which is a language which has stopped changing in grammar, vocabulary, and the complete meaning of a sentence.
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Wichita is the name of:
  • Wichita (tribe), a Native American tribe
  • Wichita language, the language of the tribe
  • Wichita, a 1955 American Western movie directed by Jacques Tourneur
  • Wichita Recordings, a London based independent record label

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Caddo is a Caddoan language of the Southern Plains, spoken by the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma. Few native speakers remain, but the tribe is working to teach the language to the youngest generation again.
..... Click the link for more information.
Wichita is a moribund Caddoan language spoken in Oklahoma. Only one fluent speaker remains, and hence it is almost certain that Wichita will soon become extinct.

Sounds


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The Pawnee language is a Caddoan language spoken by Pawnee Native Americans located in North central Oklahoma. Once the language of thousands of Pawnees, today Pawnee is spoken by a shrinking number of elderly speakers, and as more young people continue to learn English as
..... Click the link for more information.
Arikara (also Sahnish, Arikaree, Ree) refers to a group of Native Americans that speak a Caddoan language. They were a semi-nomadic group that lived on the plains of South Dakota for several hundred years.
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The Fort Berthold Indian Reservation is a U.S. Indian reservation in North Dakota that is home for the Three Affiliated Tribes which consists of the Mandan, Arikara and Hidatsa peoples.
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State of North Dakota

Flag of North Dakota Seal
Nickname(s): Peace Garden State,
Roughrider State, Flickertail State
Motto(s): Liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable;
Strength from the soil
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Caddo
    < Anadarko>
    < Adai>
    < Hai-ish>
    < Hasinai>
    < Kadohadacho>
    < Nacogdoches>
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State of Texas

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Nickname(s): Lone Star State
Motto(s): Friendship.
Before Statehood Known as
The Republic of Texas

Official language(s) No official language

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State of Arkansas

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Nickname(s): The Natural State (current),
The Land of Opportunity (former)
Motto(s): Regnat Populus (The People Rule)

Official language(s) English


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Pawnee (also Paneassa, Pari, Pariki) are a Native American tribe that historically lived along the Platte, Loup and Republican Rivers in present-day Nebraska. They refer to themselves as "Chaticks-si-Chaticks", meaning "Men of men".
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Origin Western Nebraska
Mouth Missouri River, Nebraska
Basin countries United States
Length 310 miles (499 km)
Source elevation
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State of Nebraska

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Nickname(s): Cornhusker State
Motto(s): Equality before the law

Official language(s) English

Capital Lincoln
Largest city Omaha

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Adai (also Adaizan, Adaizi, Adaise, Adahi, Adaes, Adees, Atayos) is the name of a people and language that was spoken in northwestern Louisiana and were a Southeastern culture of Native Americans.
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A language isolate, in the absolute sense, is a natural language with no demonstrable genealogical (or "genetic") relationship with other living languages; that is, one that has not been demonstrated to descend from an ancestor common to any other language.
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Keresan (pronounced /kəˈɹiːsən/), also Keres (/ˈkɛɹəs/
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Macro-Siouan languages are a proposed language family that would include the Siouan, Iroquoian, and Caddoan families. Most linguists remain unconvinced that these three language groups share a genetic relationship, and the existence of a Macro-Siouan language family remains a
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