A grammar of Assiniboine : a Siouan language of the Northern Plains [Montana, Saskatchewan] PDF
Preview A grammar of Assiniboine : a Siouan language of the Northern Plains [Montana, Saskatchewan]
A GRAMMAR OF ASSINIBOINE: A SIOUAN LANGUAGE OF THE NORTHERN PLAINS Linda A. Cumberland Submitted to the faculty of the University Graduate School in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Anthropology, Indiana University September 2005 UZ-TRANSLATIONS.NET(cid:13)(cid:10) UMI Number: 3195576 Copyright 2005 by Cumberland, Linda A. All rights reserved. UMI Microform3195576 Copyright2006 by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1346 UZ-TRANSLATIONS.NET(cid:13)(cid:10) ii Accepted by the Graduate Faculty, Indiana University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy ________________________________________ Douglas R. Parks, Ph.D. ________________________________________ Robert Botne, Ph.D. Doctoral Committee ________________________________________ Raymond J. DeMallie, Ph.D. ________________________________________ Paul D. Kroeber, Ph.D. ________________________________________ May 2, 2005 David S. Rood, Ph.D. UZ-TRANSLATIONS.NET(cid:13)(cid:10) iii c 2005 Linda A. Cumberland ALL RIGHTS RESERVED UZ-TRANSLATIONS.NET(cid:13)(cid:10) iv Acknowledgments This seed for this project was planted in north Georgia through conversations with Chipa Wolf (Cherokee-French) that led me to ask two questions: what is being done to address the problem of Native American language endangerment, and can I contribute anything to the endeavor? Starting, as I did, with no background in either anthropology or linguistics, I wonder now at my stunning naivete and at the equally stunning confidence placed in me by Raymond J. DeMallie and Douglas R. Parks, who introduced me to the Assiniboine language, awarded me the fellowship that made it possible for me to come to Indiana University, and who have directed every step of my progress toward answering both questions. My first and enduring gratitude is to them. Along the way, a great many other people have offered encouragement and support in generous measure. My committee, chaired by Doug Parks, and including Ray DeMallie, Paul Kroeber, and Robert Botne of Indiana University and David Rood of the University of Colorado, each contributed to my understanding in specific ways, offering invaluable insights on multiple drafts of this work. I thank them all. I am especially indebted to Paul Kroeber, whose many, many meetings with me went above and beyond the call of duty. Other faculty members at Indiana University have also shaped my development. Philip LeSourd offered hours of stimulating and supportive discussion in and out of class. Anya Peterson Royce, Richard Bauman, and Henry Glassie taught me much about the inextricable bond between language and UZ-TRANSLATIONS.NET(cid:13)(cid:10) v culture. The linguistics department treated me as one of their own. For their teaching and counsel, I am grateful to Bob Botne, Stuart Davis, Ken DeJong, Daniel Dinnsen, and Paul Newman. The American Indian Studies Research Institute at Indiana University, under the direction of Ray DeMallie and Doug Parks, provided a stimulating learning and working environment. Doug Parks shared with me his extensive Assiniboine dictionary, which was entered in a software application created at the Institute. This software application, the Indiana Dictionary Database (IDD), became a fundamental tool supporting my research. I am grateful to Wallace Edd Hooper for training me on the software, for making modifications to accommodate my special requirements, and for his technical support in all phases of the project. I am grateful also to the scholars who participate in the online Siouan list and the annual Siouan-Caddoan conference for their many useful responses to my presentations and questions. Among these, I wish especially to thank David Rood, Robert Rankin, John Koontz, Randy Graczyk, John Boyle, Catherine Rudin, and Shannon West. Patricia A. Shaw and Brenda Farnell have provided very helpful comments when we have met at various conferences over the years. At the First Nations University of Canada, University of Regina, I am grateful for the help, both intellectual and practical, of Brent Galloway, David R. Miller, Jan Van Eijk, and Leona Kroeskamp. The encouragement and support of family and friends have sustained me throughout this undertaking. I thank my father, John Cumberland, for his wisdom, generosity, and prayers, and I am grateful to my late mother, Helen Marie Cumberland, for her ferocious emphasis on education. Because of my decision to UZ-TRANSLATIONS.NET(cid:13)(cid:10) vi return to school while they were still in college — and in the years afterwards — my children, Laura and Rob Simpson, sacrificed much of the material support that children may expect from a parent but they selflessly said, “Go for it, Mom,” and showered me with love throughout the process. Their brother, my late son, Andrew, has surely interceded for me in heaven. My brother John’s enduring interest in linguistics has led to many conversations that shaped my thinking. To the women in my family who returned to school in mid-life, I owe particular thanks for showing me that it could be done: my aunt, Ocea Goldupp; my sister-in-law, Susan Cumberland; and most especially, my sister, Dr. Sharon L. Cumberland, who contributed substantially to my support during the write-up phase, and who has been mentor, task master, and comic relief, as needed. In the graduate community, I have been blessed with extraordinary friends, including Katherine Metzo, Angela Bratton, Angel Castaneda, and finally, my friend without measure, Katherine Petrie, who, over countless cups of coffee, and despite a specialty in Mongolian studies, has maintained a lively interest in my research and offered much technical support. It is she who put my pencil drawings of the figures in chapter 8 into professional-quality graphics. This project has been generously funded. I am very grateful to the following for their support: the fellowship fund of American Indian Studies Research Institute at Indiana University, the Skomp Fund of the Anthropology department at Indiana University, the Canadian Embassy Graduate Student Fellowship Program, the Canada-US Fulbright Program, the Wenner-Gren Foundation (grant no. 6723), and the Yale Endangered Language Fund. The study is approved by the Indiana UZ-TRANSLATIONS.NET(cid:13)(cid:10) vii University Human Subjects Committee as study no. 00-3790. I extend my most profound thanks to the Assiniboine people, who accepted me into their communities and into their homes, sharing their lives and language with me; to Josephine Mechance, Selena Ditmar, and Tom Shawl at Fort Belknap, to Peter McArthur, Armand McArthur, Wayne McArthur, and Peter Bigstone at Pheasant Rump, and to Sara McArthur and Victor Sammy at White Bear. The entire community at Carry The Kettle in Saskatchewan were most welcoming and offered extraordinary assistance during my extended visits among them. James (Joe) O’Watch, who was chief at Carry The Kettle when this project was initiated, provided many crucial introductions and facilitated Band Council approval for my research. Angeline and Sarah Eashappie, Wilma Kennedy, and the late Velma O’Watch were tireless in answering my many questions with care and humor. Finally, I must express not only my thanks, but my deep affection, for my primary consultant, Bertha O’Watch, for her wisdom and example, and for honoring me by adopting me as a daughter, and the late Kaye Thompson, who brought me to Carry The Kettle but could not stay with me to the end. Her last words to me were, “Get the language.” This is dedicated to you, Kaye. I hope I have not disappointed you. UZ-TRANSLATIONS.NET(cid:13)(cid:10) viii Abstract A GRAMMAR OF ASSINIBOINE: A SIOUAN LANGUAGE OF THE NORTHERN PLAINS Assiniboine, sometimes referred to as Nakoda, is an American Indian language of the Siouan language family presently spoken by fewer than one hundred people in Montana (United States) and Saskatchewan (Canada). It is a member of a dialect continuum identified by Parks and DeMallie (Anthropological Linguistics 1992) as Sioux- Assiniboine-Stoney. The canonical sentence structure is subject-object-verb, also characterized by postpositions, head marking, and internally headed relative clauses. Morphological processes are primarily agglutinating. The phoneme inventory consists of twenty-seven consonants, including plain, aspirated, and ejective stops, and eight vowels, five oral and three nasal. The language is structure-preserving; consonant allophony is restricted to the phoneme inventory. Assiniboine has no nominal case system, no definite or indefinite articles, and no verbal tense marking. Clauses are marked as “potential” by means of a verbal enclitic and unmarked clauses are “realized,” effectively creating a future/non-future distinction. The verbal system is split-intransitive (active/stative); the object pronominal affixes of active-transitive verbs coincide with the subject pronominal affixes of the stative verbs. Participant information is encoded on the verb so that nominal antecedents may be omitted from the clause, but the question of whether Assiniboine is a “pronominal argument” language remains open. Deverbal nominalization is highly productive, as are verb compounding and noun incorporation. Verbal prefixation and UZ-TRANSLATIONS.NET(cid:13)(cid:10) ix suffixation both occur, but verbal prefixation is more systematic. Suffixation occurs in all major word classes. Assiniboine has an elaborate system of post-verbal particles that express aspect and modality; in verb compounding, verbal enclitics attach to the matrix verb and objects of the complement remain on the complement. There is a complex system of motion verbs, analyzed here as consisting of four triadic modules that encode notions of deictic center, base, direction, and belonging. A chapter on kinship includes a description of respect speech and a comprehensive list of kin terms. Appendices include three texts, orthographic equivalencies, and a cross-dialect comparison of instrumental prefixes. The grammar is written in what has recently been characterized as “basic linguistic theory.” This is the first comprehensive description of the phonology, morphology, and syntax of the Assiniboine language. _____________________________________________ _____________________________________________ _____________________________________________ _____________________________________________ _____________________________________________ UZ-TRANSLATIONS.NET(cid:13)(cid:10)
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