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This article requires authentication or verification by an expert. Please assist in recruiting an expert or improve this article yourself. See the talk page for details. (June 2008) |
| Iroquois | |
|---|---|
| Geographic distribution: |
eastern North America |
| Genetic classification: |
Iroquois |
| Subdivisions: | |
 Pre-European contact distribution of the Iroquoian languages. |
|
The Iroquoian languages are a Native American language family. The language family, amongst others, includes Mohawk, Huron-Wyandot and Cherokee.
Every language in this family has at least one nasal vowel phoneme. Cherokee's is a nasal schwa, written in transliteration as 'v' (for example, "Hv?" sounds like "Huh?" nasalized, and means the same thing).[citation needed]
Family division
The Iroquoian family comprises 11 languages:
- Southern Iroquoian
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-
- 1. Cherokee
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-
- Northern Iroquoian
- Tuscarora-Nottoway
- Huronian
- Five Nations and Susquehannock
What has been called the Laurentian language appears to be actually more than one dialect or language.
In 1649 the tribes constituting the Huron and Petun confederations were displaced by war parties from Five Nations villages (Mithun 1985). Many of the survivors went on to form the Wyandot tribe. Ethnographic and linguistic field work with the Wyandot (Barbeau 1960) yielded enough documentation to be able to make some characterizations of the Huron and Petun languages.
The languages of the tribes that constituted the Neutral and the Erie confederations were very poorly documented. These groups were called Atiwandaronk meaning 'they who understand the language' by the Huron, and thus are historically grouped with them.
The group known as the Meherrin were neighbors to the Tuscarora and the Nottoway (Binford 1967) and may have spoken an Iroquoian language, but there is not enough data to determine this with certainty.
The Huronian languages, Nottoway, and Susquehannock are all now extinct.[citation needed]
External relations
Attempts to link the Iroquoian and Caddoan languages in a Macro-Siouan family are suggestive but remain hypothetical.[citation needed] Similar attempts to find a connection with the Algonkian languages has been partially useful, but not enough evidence for linguists to propose a hypothetical Macro-Algonkian/Iroquoian language family.[citation needed]
Bibliography
- Barbeau (1960), Huron-Wyandot Traditional Narratives in Translations and Native Texts, National Museum of Canada Bulletin 47; Anthropological Series 165, [Ottawa]: Canada Dept. of Northern Affairs and National Resources, OCLC 1990439.
- Binford, Lewis R. (1967), "An Ethnohistory of the Nottoway, Meherrin and Weanock Indians of Southeastern Virginia", Ethnohistory 14 (3/4): 103-218, http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0014-1801%28196722%2F23%2914%3A3%2F4%3C103%3AAEOTNM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-7.
- Chilton, Elizabeth (2004), "Social Complexity in New England: AD 1000-1600", in Pauketat, Timothy R.; Loren, Diana Dipaolo, North American Archaeology, Malden, MA: Blackwell Press, pp. 138-160, OCLC 55085697.
- Goddard, Ives, ed. (1996), Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 17: Languages, Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, ISBN 0160487749, OCLC 43957746.
- Lounsbury, Floyd G. (1978), "Iroquoian Languages", in Trigger, Bruce G., Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 15: Northeast, Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, pp. 334-343 [unified volume Bibliography, pp. 807-890], OCLC 58762737.
- Mithun, Marianne (1984), "The Proto-Iroquoians: Cultural Reconstruction from Lexical Materials", in Foster, Michael K.; Campisi, Jack; Mithun, Marianne, Extending the Rafters: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Iroquoian Studies, Albany: State University of New York Press, pp. 259-282, ISBN 0873957814
- Mithun, Marianne (1985), "Untangling the Huron and the Iroquois", International Journal of American Linguistics 51 (4): 504-507, http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0020-7071%28198510%2951%3A4%3C504%3AUTHATI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Q., OCLC 9646457.
- Mithun, Marianne (1999), The Languages of Native North America, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521232287, OCLC 40467402.
- Rudes, Blair A. (1993), "Iroquoian Vowels", Anthropological Linguistics 37 (1): 16-69.
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