Tuscarora language
Encyclopedia
Tuscarora, sometimes called Ska:rù:rę', is an Iroquoian language
of the Tuscarora people
, spoken in southern Ontario
, Canada
, and northwestern New York
around Niagara Falls
, in the United States
. The historic homeland of the Tuscarora was in eastern North Carolina
, in and around the Goldsboro
, Kinston
, and Smithfield
areas. Some Tuscarora descendants, though few, still live in this region. The name Tuscarora means "hemp people," after the Indian hemp
or milkweed which they use in many aspects of their society. Skarureh refers to the long shirt worn as part of the men's regalia, hence "long shirt people".
Tuscarora is a living but severely endangered
language. As of the mid-1970s, only about 52 people spoke the language on the Tuscarora Reservation
(Lewiston, New York
) and the Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation (near Brantford, Ontario
). The Tuscarora School in Lewiston has striven to keep the language alive, teaching children from pre-kindergarten to sixth grade. Despite this, Ethnologue reports a total of only 11 to 13 speakers in the 1990s, all of whom are older adults.
The Tuscarora language can appear complex to those unfamiliar with it, more in terms of the grammar
than the sound system. Many ideas can be expressed in a single word. Most words involve several components that must be considered before speaking (or writing). It is written using mostly symbols from the Roman alphabet, with some variations, additions, and diacritic
s.
s, /ə̃ ə̃ː/. Nasal vowels are indicated with an ogonek
, long vowels with a following colon, < : >, and /ɛ/ (which may actually be [æ]) with.
The /ə̃/ is often rather written ę. Thus in the official writing system of Tuscarora, the vowels are a e i u ę.
There may also be the phonemes /b/ and /f/, although they probably occur only in loan words. The phonemic consonant cluster /sj/ is realized as a postalveolar fricative [ʃ].
/s/ followed by /j/ or sometimes /i/ often becomes [ʃ].
Used here is a type of linguistic
notation. Aloud, the first bullet point would read, "/s/ becomes [ʃ] when preceded by /t/."
consists of
in that order. All verbs contain at least a pronominal prefix
and a verb base.
In addition, these can mark such distinctions as dualic, contrastive, partitive, and iterative. According to Marianne Mithun Williams
, it is possible to find some semantic similarities from the functions of prepronominal prefixes, but not such that each morpheme is completely explained in this way.
, these prefixes also identify the object. For example:
Tuscarora word: rà:weh
Translation: He is talking.
Breakdown: masculine + 'talk' + serial
The rà is the masculine pronominal prefix, indicating that a male person is the subject of the sentence.
On account of various changes in the evolution of the language, not all of the possible combinations of distinctions in person, number, and gender are made, and some pronominal prefixes or combinations thereof can represent several acceptable meanings.
Verb stems can be made of more than just a verb root. More complex stems are formed by adding modifiers. Roots might be combined with many different kinds of morphemes to create complicated stems. Possibilities include reflexive, inchoative, reversive, intensifier, and distributive morphemes, instrumental, causative, or dative case markers, and also incorporated noun stems. The base may be further complicated by ambulative or purposive morphemes.
Nouns can be divided two ways, formally and functionally, and four ways, into formal nouns, other functional nouns, possessive constructions, and attributive suffixes.
The pronominal prefix is very much like that in verbs. It refers to who or what is being identified. The prefixes vary according to the gender, number, and "humanness" of the noun. Genders include:
The prefixes are:
Most stems are simple noun roots that are morphologically unanalyzable. These can be referred to as "simplex stems." More complex stems can be derived from verbs this is commonly done as:
(verb stem) + (nominalizing morpheme).
The process can be repeated multiple times, making more complex stems, but it is rarely the case that it is repeated too many times.
Most nouns end in the morpheme -eh. Some end in -aʔ, -vʔ, or -ʔ.
In addition to the formal nouns mentioned above, clauses, verbs, and unanalyzable particles can also be classified as nominals. Clausal nominals are such things as sentential subjects and compliments. Verbal nominals usually describe their referents.
Unanalyzable particles arise from three main sources which overlap somewhat.
Onomatopoeia, from Tuscarora or other languages, is less common than other words from other languages or verbal descriptions that turned to nominals. In many cases a pronominal prefix has dropped off, so that only the minimal stem remains.
Ownership is divided into alienable and inalienable possession, each of which type has its own construction. An example of inalienable possession would be someone's body part—this cannot be disputed. An example of alienable possession would be a piece of paper held by someone.
Attributive suffixes come in many forms:
A diminutive
indicates something smaller; an augmentive makes something bigger. A simple example would be a diminutive suffix added to the word "cat" to form a word meaning "small cat." A more abstract example would be the diminutive of "trumpet" forming "pipe." Both diminutives and augmentives have suffixes that indicate both smallness and plurality. A (certain) diminutive can be added to any functional nominal. Augmentives usually combine with other morphemes, forming more specific stems.
Attributive suffixes can be added to any word that functions as a nominal, even if it is a verb or particle.
If two nouns of the same relative "status" are together in a sentence, the SVO word order is followed. Such is the case, for example, in a Noun-Predicate-Noun sentence in which both nouns are third person
zoic (non-human) singular. If one is of a "superior" status, it can be indicated by a pronominal prefix, such as hra, and as such SVO, VSO, and OSV are all grammatically correct. The example given in Grammar Tuscarora is:
wí:rv:n wahrákvʔ tsi:r
(William he-saw-it dog.)
wahrákvʔ wí:rv:n tsi:r
(he-saw-it William dog.)
tsi:r wí:rv:n wahrákvʔ
(dog William he-saw-it.)
In all cases, the translation is "William saw a dog." Mithun
writes:
"[I]t is necessary but not sufficient to consider the syntactic case role
s of major constituents. In fact, the order of sentence elements is describable in terms of functional deviation from a syntactically defined basic order." (Emphasis added.)
A sentence that is ambiguous on basis of its containing too many ambiguous arguments is:
tsya:ts wahrá:nv:t kv:tsyvh
George he-fed-it fish
This could be translated either as "George fed the fish" or "George fed it fish."
.
Tuscarora has a case
system in which syntactic case is indicated in the verb. The main verb of the sentence can indicate, for example, "aorist
+1st-person
+objective+human+'transitive-verb
'+punctual+dative
." (In this case, a sentence could be a single word long, as below in Noun Incorporation.) Objective
and dative
are indicated by morpheme
s.
. In Tuscarora, one long verb can be an entire sentence, including subject and object. In fact, theoretically any number of arguments could be incorporated into a verb. It is done by raising nominals realized as noun stems. Datives are not incorporated.
Examples are as follows:
nvkheyaʔtsiʔrá:’nihr
Breakdown:
n + v + k + h + ey + aʔ + tsiʔr + aʔn + ihr
dualic + future + 1st-person + objective + human + reflexive + 'fire' + 'set'
Translation: I'll set my fire on him. or I'll sting him.
waʔkhetaʔnaratyáʔthahθ
Breakdown: waʔ + k + h + e + taʔnar + a + tyáʔt + hahθ
aorist + 1st-person + objective + human + 'bread' + joiner + 'buy' + dative-punctual
Translation: I bought her some bread.
yoʔnaʔtshárhv
Breakdown: yo + ʔn-aʔ-tshár + h + v
non-human-objective + 'door' + 'cover' + perfective
Translation: The door is closed.
tswé:ʔn
[tšwæʔṇ]
'hello'
stá:kwi:ʔ
[stɒ´:kwi:ʔ]
'high'
kè:rih
[kyæ´:rih]
'I think'
ótkwareh
'blood'
otá:ʔnareh
'bread'
, Oneida
, Onondaga
, Seneca
, and Cayuga
along with Tuscarora and its historic neighbor, Nottoway.
Wallace Chafe
posits that a larger language, reconstructed as "Proto-Northern-Iroquois," broke off into "Proto-Tuscarora-Cayuga," and then broke off onto its own, having no further contact with Cayuga or any of the others.
However, Lounsbury (1961:17) classed Tuscarora, along with Laurentian, Huron-Wyandot, and Cherokee as the "peripheral" Iroquoian languages — in distinction to the five "inner languages" of the Iroquois proper. Blair Rudes, who did extensive scholarship on Tuscarora and wrote a Tuscarora Dictionary, concurred with Lounsbury, adding Nottoway and Susquehannock (which Lounsbury ignored in his comparisons) to the list of "peripheral" Iroquoian languages.
is Joseph H. Greenberg's criticized theory of one massive proto-language from which all American Indian languages descended. In his Amerind Etymological Dictionary he cites Tuscarora 42 times, as part of the Amerind branch he calls Keresiouan. Examples of these citations include:
Iroquoian languages
The Iroquoian languages are a First Nation and Native American language family.-Family division:*Ruttenber, Edward Manning. 1992 [1872]. History of the Indian tribes of Hudson's River. Hope Farm Press....
of the Tuscarora people
Tuscarora (tribe)
The Tuscarora are a Native American people of the Iroquoian-language family, with members in New York, Canada, and North Carolina...
, spoken in southern Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, and northwestern New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
around Niagara Falls
Niagara Falls
The Niagara Falls, located on the Niagara River draining Lake Erie into Lake Ontario, is the collective name for the Horseshoe Falls and the adjacent American Falls along with the comparatively small Bridal Veil Falls, which combined form the highest flow rate of any waterfalls in the world and has...
, in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. The historic homeland of the Tuscarora was in eastern North Carolina
North Carolina
North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...
, in and around the Goldsboro
Goldsboro, North Carolina
Goldsboro is a city in Wayne County, North Carolina, United States. The population was 37,597 at the 2008 census estimate. It is the principal city of and is included in the Goldsboro, North Carolina Metropolitan Statistical Area. The nearby town of Waynesboro was founded in 1787 and Goldsboro was...
, Kinston
Kinston, North Carolina
Kinston is a city in Lenoir County, North Carolina, United States. The population was 23,688 at the 2000 census. The population was estimated at 22,360 in 2008. It has been the county seat of Lenoir County since its formation in 1791 . Kinston is located in North Carolina's Inner Banks...
, and Smithfield
Smithfield, North Carolina
Smithfield is a town in Johnston County, North Carolina, United States. In 2008, the estimated population was 12,965. It is the county seat of Johnston County...
areas. Some Tuscarora descendants, though few, still live in this region. The name Tuscarora means "hemp people," after the Indian hemp
Indian hemp
Indian hemp may refer to any of various fiber bearing plants:* Apocynum cannabinum* Cannabis indica* Sida rhombifolia* Asclepias incarnata* Hibiscus cannabinus...
or milkweed which they use in many aspects of their society. Skarureh refers to the long shirt worn as part of the men's regalia, hence "long shirt people".
Tuscarora is a living but severely endangered
Endangered language
An endangered language is a language that is at risk of falling out of use. If it loses all its native speakers, it becomes a dead language. If eventually no one speaks the language at all it becomes an "extinct language"....
language. As of the mid-1970s, only about 52 people spoke the language on the Tuscarora Reservation
Tuscarora Reservation, New York
The Tuscarora Reservation is an Indian reservation in Niagara County, New York. The population was 1,152 at the 2010 census...
(Lewiston, New York
Lewiston, New York
Lewiston is a village in Niagara County, New York, United States. The population was 2,781 at the 2000 census. The village is named after Morgan Lewis, an early 19th-century governor of New York. It is part of the Buffalo–Niagara Falls Metropolitan Statistical Area.The Village of Lewiston,...
) and the Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation (near Brantford, Ontario
Brantford, Ontario
Brantford is a city located on the Grand River in Southern Ontario, Canada. While geographically surrounded by the County of Brant, the city is politically independent...
). The Tuscarora School in Lewiston has striven to keep the language alive, teaching children from pre-kindergarten to sixth grade. Despite this, Ethnologue reports a total of only 11 to 13 speakers in the 1990s, all of whom are older adults.
The Tuscarora language can appear complex to those unfamiliar with it, more in terms of the grammar
Grammar
In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...
than the sound system. Many ideas can be expressed in a single word. Most words involve several components that must be considered before speaking (or writing). It is written using mostly symbols from the Roman alphabet, with some variations, additions, and diacritic
Diacritic
A diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...
s.
Vowels
Tuscarora has four oral vowels, one nasal vowel, and no diphthongs. The vowels can be both short and long, which makes a total of eight oral vowels, /i ɛ a u iː ɛː aː uː/, and two nasal vowelNasal vowel
A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the velum so that air escapes both through nose as well as the mouth. By contrast, oral vowels are ordinary vowels without this nasalisation...
s, /ə̃ ə̃ː/. Nasal vowels are indicated with an ogonek
Ogonek
The ogonek is a diacritic hook placed under the lower right corner of a vowel in the Latin alphabet used in several European and Native American languages.-Use:...
, long vowels with a following colon, < : >, and /ɛ/ (which may actually be [æ]) with
| Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also... |
Central Central vowel A central vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel... |
Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark... |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Close Close vowel A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.This term is prescribed by the... |
/i/ /iː/ | /u/ /uː/ | |
| Open-mid Open-mid vowel An open-mid vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of an open-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned two-thirds of the way from an open vowel to a mid vowel... |
/ɛ/ /ɛː/ | /ə̃/ /ə̃ː/ | |
| Open Open vowel An open vowel is defined as a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels in reference to the low position of the tongue... |
/a/ /aː/ |
The /ə̃/ is often rather written ę. Thus in the official writing system of Tuscarora, the vowels are a e i u ę.
Consonants
The Tuscarora language has ten symbols representing consonants, including three stops (/k/, /t/, and /ʔ/), three fricatives (/s/, /θ/, and /h/), a nasal (/n/), a rhotic (/ɾ/), and two glides (/w/ and /j/). These last four can be grouped together under the category of resonants. (Mithun Williams, 1976) The range of sounds, though, is more extensive, with palatalization, aspiration, and other variants of the sounds, that usually come when two sounds are set next to each other.| Dental | Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth... |
Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate... |
Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum).... |
Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider... |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :... |
n [n] | ||||
| Stop Stop consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &... |
t [t] | (č t͡ʃ) | k [k] | ʔ [ʔ] | |
| Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or... |
θ [θ] | s [s] | h [h] | ||
| Rhotic Rhotic consonant In phonetics, rhotic consonants, also called tremulants or "R-like" sounds, are liquid consonants that are traditionally represented orthographically by symbols derived from the Greek letter rho, including "R, r" from the Roman alphabet and "Р, p" from the Cyrillic alphabet... |
r [ɾ] | ||||
| Approximant Approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no... |
y [j] | w [w] |
There may also be the phonemes /b/ and /f/, although they probably occur only in loan words. The phonemic consonant cluster /sj/ is realized as a postalveolar fricative [ʃ].
Stops
Tuscarora has three stops: /t/, /k/, and /ʔ/; in their most basic forms: [t], [k], and [ʔ]. [kʷ] could be considered separate, although it is very similar to /k/+/w/, and can be counted as a variant phonetic realization of these two sounds. Each sound has specific changes that take place when situated in certain positions. These are among the phonetic (automatic) rules listed below. Since, in certain cases, the sounds [ɡ] and [d] are realized, a more extended list of the stops would be [t], [d], [k], [ɡ], and [ʔ]. In the written system, however, only t, k, and ′ are used. /k/ is aspirated when it directly precedes another /k/.Fricatives and Affricates
The language has two or three fricatives: /s/, /θ/, and /h/. /s/ and /θ/ are only distinguished in some dialects of Tuscarora. Both are basically pronounced [s], though in some situations /s/ is pronounced [ʃ]. /h/ is generally [h]. There is an affricate is /ts/.Resonants
Resonants are /n/, /ɾ/, /w/, /j/. A rule (below) specifies pre-aspiration under certain circumstances. The resonants can also become voiceless fricatives (as specified below). A voiceless /n/ is described as "a silent movement of the tongue accompanied by an audible escape of breath through the nose." When /ɾ/ becomes a voiceless fricative, it often sounds similar to /s/.Automatic Rules
- V = a vowel
- C = a consonant
- R = a resonant
# = the beginning or end of a word- Ø = sound is dropped
/s/ followed by /j/ or sometimes /i/ often becomes [ʃ].
Used here is a type of linguistic
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
notation. Aloud, the first bullet point would read, "/s/ becomes [ʃ] when preceded by /t/."
- s → ʃ / t_
- θ → ts / _ {j, i}
- k → ɡ / _ {w, j, ɾ, V}
- t → d / _ {w, j, ɾ, V}
- {h, ʔ} → Ø / #_C
- V → Vh / _#
- k → kʰ / _k
- k → kj / _e
- i → j / _V{C, #}
- {h+ʔ, ʔ+h} / h
- R → hR / _{ʔ, h, #}
- R → R / _{h, ʔ, s, #}
Verbs
The basic construction of a verbVerb
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...
consists of
- Prepronominal Prefixes
- Pronominal Prefixes
- The Verb Base
- Aspect Suffixes
in that order. All verbs contain at least a pronominal prefix
Prefix
A prefix is an affix which is placed before the root of a word. Particularly in the study of languages,a prefix is also called a preformative, because it alters the form of the words to which it is affixed.Examples of prefixes:...
and a verb base.
Prepronominal Prefixes
These are the very first prefixes in a verb. Prepronominal prefixes can indicate- tenseGrammatical tenseA tense is a grammatical category that locates a situation in time, to indicate when the situation takes place.Bernard Comrie, Aspect, 1976:6:...
- direction
- location
In addition, these can mark such distinctions as dualic, contrastive, partitive, and iterative. According to Marianne Mithun Williams
Marianne Mithun
Marianne Mithun is a leading scholar of American Indian languages and language typology. She is currently Professor of Linguistics at the University of California at Santa Barbara....
, it is possible to find some semantic similarities from the functions of prepronominal prefixes, but not such that each morpheme is completely explained in this way.
Pronominal Prefixes
As it sounds, pronominal prefixes identify pronouns with regards to the verb, including person, number, and gender. Since all verbs must have at least a subject, the pronominal prefixes identify the subject, and if the verb is transitiveTransitive verb
In syntax, a transitive verb is a verb that requires both a direct subject and one or more objects. The term is used to contrast intransitive verbs, which do not have objects.-Examples:Some examples of sentences with transitive verbs:...
, these prefixes also identify the object. For example:
Tuscarora word: rà:weh
Translation: He is talking.
Breakdown: masculine + 'talk' + serial
The rà is the masculine pronominal prefix, indicating that a male person is the subject of the sentence.
On account of various changes in the evolution of the language, not all of the possible combinations of distinctions in person, number, and gender are made, and some pronominal prefixes or combinations thereof can represent several acceptable meanings.
The Verb Base
The verb base is, generally, exactly what it sounds like: it is the barest form of the verb. This is a verb stem that consists solely of one verb root.Verb stems can be made of more than just a verb root. More complex stems are formed by adding modifiers. Roots might be combined with many different kinds of morphemes to create complicated stems. Possibilities include reflexive, inchoative, reversive, intensifier, and distributive morphemes, instrumental, causative, or dative case markers, and also incorporated noun stems. The base may be further complicated by ambulative or purposive morphemes.
Aspect Suffixes
Aspect suffixes are temporal indicators, and are used with all indicative verbs. "Aspect" is with respect to duration or frequency; "tense" is with respect to the point in time at which the verb's action takes place. Three different aspects can be distinguished, and each distinguished aspect can be furthermore inflected for three different tenses. These are, respectively, punctual, serial, or perfective, and past, future, or indefinite.Nouns
Nouns, like verbs, are composed of several parts. These are, in this order:- the pronominal prefix
- the noun stem
- the nominal suffix
Nouns can be divided two ways, formally and functionally, and four ways, into formal nouns, other functional nouns, possessive constructions, and attributive suffixes.
Pronominal Prefix and Noun Gender
The pronominal prefix is very much like that in verbs. It refers to who or what is being identified. The prefixes vary according to the gender, number, and "humanness" of the noun. Genders include:
- Neuter
- Masculine Singular
- Feminine-Indefinite Human Singular
- Indefinite Human Dual
- Indefinite Human Plural
The prefixes are:
- Neuter
- ò
- à:w
- Masculine Singular
- ra
- r
- Feminine-Indefinite Human Singular
- e
- v́
- Indefinite Human Dual Nouns
- neye
- Indefinite Human Plural Nouns
- kaye
Noun Stem
Most stems are simple noun roots that are morphologically unanalyzable. These can be referred to as "simplex stems." More complex stems can be derived from verbs this is commonly done as:
(verb stem) + (nominalizing morpheme).
The process can be repeated multiple times, making more complex stems, but it is rarely the case that it is repeated too many times.
Nominal Suffix
Most nouns end in the morpheme -eh. Some end in -aʔ, -vʔ, or -ʔ.
Other Functional Nominals
In addition to the formal nouns mentioned above, clauses, verbs, and unanalyzable particles can also be classified as nominals. Clausal nominals are such things as sentential subjects and compliments. Verbal nominals usually describe their referents.
Unanalyzable particles arise from three main sources which overlap somewhat.
- onomatopoeia
- onomatopoeia from other languages
- other languages
- verbal descriptions of referents
Onomatopoeia, from Tuscarora or other languages, is less common than other words from other languages or verbal descriptions that turned to nominals. In many cases a pronominal prefix has dropped off, so that only the minimal stem remains.
Possessive Constructions
Ownership is divided into alienable and inalienable possession, each of which type has its own construction. An example of inalienable possession would be someone's body part—this cannot be disputed. An example of alienable possession would be a piece of paper held by someone.
Attributive Suffixes
Attributive suffixes come in many forms:
- AdjectivalAdjectivalAdjectival may refer to:* Adjective, a part of speech that modifies a noun or a pronoun* Adjectival noun or sometimes "adjectival", a noun that functions as an adjective, especially in Japanese grammar...
- Locative
- Characterizer
- Populative
- Customary
- Intensifier
- Decessive
- Diminutives
- Augmentives
A diminutive
Diminutive
In language structure, a diminutive, or diminutive form , is a formation of a word used to convey a slight degree of the root meaning, smallness of the object or quality named, encapsulation, intimacy, or endearment...
indicates something smaller; an augmentive makes something bigger. A simple example would be a diminutive suffix added to the word "cat" to form a word meaning "small cat." A more abstract example would be the diminutive of "trumpet" forming "pipe." Both diminutives and augmentives have suffixes that indicate both smallness and plurality. A (certain) diminutive can be added to any functional nominal. Augmentives usually combine with other morphemes, forming more specific stems.
Attributive suffixes can be added to any word that functions as a nominal, even if it is a verb or particle.
Word Order
The basic word order in Tuscarora is SVO (subject–verb–object), but this can vary somewhat and still form grammatical sentences, depending on who the agents and patients are. For example:If two nouns of the same relative "status" are together in a sentence, the SVO word order is followed. Such is the case, for example, in a Noun-Predicate-Noun sentence in which both nouns are third person
Grammatical person
Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event; such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns...
zoic (non-human) singular. If one is of a "superior" status, it can be indicated by a pronominal prefix, such as hra, and as such SVO, VSO, and OSV are all grammatically correct. The example given in Grammar Tuscarora is:
wí:rv:n wahrákvʔ tsi:r
(William he-saw-it dog.)
wahrákvʔ wí:rv:n tsi:r
(he-saw-it William dog.)
tsi:r wí:rv:n wahrákvʔ
(dog William he-saw-it.)
In all cases, the translation is "William saw a dog." Mithun
Mithun
Mithun, Midhun, Mithen can refer to:* Methun, another name for gayal, the domesticated form of the gaur cattle species* Methun, one of the names of the Hindu god Krishna* Methun, a month in the Hindu calendar* Methun, means patient in Sanskrit...
writes:
"[I]t is necessary but not sufficient to consider the syntactic case role
Case role
In linguistic semantics, a case role is any of the spatially-distinguished parts of a process.In the sentence, "The dog ate food", the subject "dog" has the case role of "agent" and the object "food" has the case role of "theme"....
s of major constituents. In fact, the order of sentence elements is describable in terms of functional deviation from a syntactically defined basic order." (Emphasis added.)
A sentence that is ambiguous on basis of its containing too many ambiguous arguments is:
tsya:ts wahrá:nv:t kv:tsyvh
George he-fed-it fish
This could be translated either as "George fed the fish" or "George fed it fish."
Case
Tuscarora appears to be a nominative-accusative languageNominative-accusative language
Nominative-accusative is a form of morphosyntactic alignment in which subjects of transitive and intransitive verbs are distinguished from objects of transitive verbs through word order, case marking, and/or verb agreement...
.
Tuscarora has a case
Grammatical case
In grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun is an inflectional form that indicates its grammatical function in a phrase, clause, or sentence. For example, a pronoun may play the role of subject , of direct object , or of possessor...
system in which syntactic case is indicated in the verb. The main verb of the sentence can indicate, for example, "aorist
Aorist
Aorist is a philological term originally from Indo-European studies, referring to verb forms of various languages that are not necessarily related or similar in meaning...
+1st-person
Grammatical person
Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event; such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns...
+objective+human+'transitive-verb
Transitive verb
In syntax, a transitive verb is a verb that requires both a direct subject and one or more objects. The term is used to contrast intransitive verbs, which do not have objects.-Examples:Some examples of sentences with transitive verbs:...
'+punctual+dative
Dative case
The dative case is a grammatical case generally used to indicate the noun to whom something is given, as in "George gave Jamie a drink"....
." (In this case, a sentence could be a single word long, as below in Noun Incorporation.) Objective
Objective (grammar)
An objective pronoun in grammar functions as the target of a verb, as distinguished from a subjective pronoun, which is the initiator of a verb. Objective pronouns are instances of the oblique case....
and dative
Dative case
The dative case is a grammatical case generally used to indicate the noun to whom something is given, as in "George gave Jamie a drink"....
are indicated by morpheme
Morpheme
In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest semantically meaningful unit in a language. The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone, whereas a word,...
s.
Noun Incorporation
Tuscarora definitely incorporates nouns into verbs, as is evident from many examples on this page. This is typical of a polysynthetic languagePolysynthetic language
In linguistic typology, polysynthetic languages are highly synthetic languages, i.e., languages in which words are composed of many morphemes. Whereas isolating languages have a low morpheme-to-word ratio, polysynthetic languages have extremely high morpheme-to-word ratios.Not all languages can be...
. In Tuscarora, one long verb can be an entire sentence, including subject and object. In fact, theoretically any number of arguments could be incorporated into a verb. It is done by raising nominals realized as noun stems. Datives are not incorporated.
Examples are as follows:
nvkheyaʔtsiʔrá:’nihr
Breakdown:
n + v + k + h + ey + aʔ + tsiʔr + aʔn + ihr
dualic + future + 1st-person + objective + human + reflexive + 'fire' + 'set'
Translation: I'll set my fire on him. or I'll sting him.
waʔkhetaʔnaratyáʔthahθ
Breakdown: waʔ + k + h + e + taʔnar + a + tyáʔt + hahθ
aorist + 1st-person + objective + human + 'bread' + joiner + 'buy' + dative-punctual
Translation: I bought her some bread.
yoʔnaʔtshárhv
Breakdown: yo + ʔn-aʔ-tshár + h + v
non-human-objective + 'door' + 'cover' + perfective
Translation: The door is closed.
Vocabulary Examples
(From Grammar Tuscarora by Marianne Mithun Williams.)tswé:ʔn
[tšwæʔṇ]
'hello'
stá:kwi:ʔ
[stɒ´:kwi:ʔ]
'high'
kè:rih
[kyæ´:rih]
'I think'
ótkwareh
'blood'
otá:ʔnareh
'bread'
Relations
Tuscarora is classed as a Northern Iroquoian language. This branch of Iroquois includes MohawkMohawk language
Mohawk is an Iroquoian language spoken by around 2,000 people of the Mohawk nation in the United States and Canada . Mohawk has the largest number of speakers of the Northern Iroquoian languages; today it is the only one with greater than a thousand remaining...
, Oneida
Oneida language
Oneida is an Iroquoian language spoken primarily by the Oneida people in the U.S. states of New York and Wisconsin, and the Canadian province of Ontario. There are an estimated 160 native speakers left. Language revitalization efforts are in progress...
, Onondaga
Onondaga language
Onondaga Nation Language is the language of the Onondaga First Nation, one of the original five constituent tribes of the League of the Iroquois ....
, Seneca
Seneca language
Seneca is the language of the Seneca people, one of the Six Nations of the Iroquois League. About 10,000 Seneca live in the United States and Canada, primarily on reservations in western New York, with others living in Oklahoma and near Brantford, Ontario.-Phonology:Seneca words are written with...
, and Cayuga
Cayuga language
Cayuga is a Northern Iroquoian language of the Iroquois Proper subfamily, and is spoken on Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation, Ontario, by around 100 Cayuga people.-Dialects:...
along with Tuscarora and its historic neighbor, Nottoway.
Wallace Chafe
Wallace Chafe
Wallace Chafe is an American linguist.Chafe was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He graduated from Yale University, where he obtained his doctorate in 1958. From 1975 to 1986 he was the director of the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages at the University of California, Berkeley...
posits that a larger language, reconstructed as "Proto-Northern-Iroquois," broke off into "Proto-Tuscarora-Cayuga," and then broke off onto its own, having no further contact with Cayuga or any of the others.
However, Lounsbury (1961:17) classed Tuscarora, along with Laurentian, Huron-Wyandot, and Cherokee as the "peripheral" Iroquoian languages — in distinction to the five "inner languages" of the Iroquois proper. Blair Rudes, who did extensive scholarship on Tuscarora and wrote a Tuscarora Dictionary, concurred with Lounsbury, adding Nottoway and Susquehannock (which Lounsbury ignored in his comparisons) to the list of "peripheral" Iroquoian languages.
Amerind
AmerindAmerind languages
Amerind is a higher-level language family proposed by Joseph Greenberg in 1960. Greenberg proposed that all of the indigenous languages of the Americas belong to one of three language families, the previously established Eskimo–Aleut and Na–Dene, and with everything else—almost universally believed...
is Joseph H. Greenberg's criticized theory of one massive proto-language from which all American Indian languages descended. In his Amerind Etymological Dictionary he cites Tuscarora 42 times, as part of the Amerind branch he calls Keresiouan. Examples of these citations include:
- aˇchuri ‘eat’, in relation to *it'io, 'tooth'
- ku…reh ‘acorn’, in relation to *kul, 'tree'
- nyatar ‘sea’, in relation to *na, 'water'