Siouan ( ), also known as Siouan–Catawban ( ), is a

language family A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term ''family'' is a metaphor borrowed from biology, with the tree model used in historical linguistics ...

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres. North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South Ameri ...

located primarily in the

Great Plains The Great Plains is a broad expanse of plain, flatland in North America. The region stretches east of the Rocky Mountains, much of it covered in prairie, steppe, and grassland. They are the western part of the Interior Plains, which include th ...

Ohio Ohio ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Erie to the north, Pennsylvania to the east, West Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Indiana to the ...

and

Mississippi Mississippi ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Deep South regions of the United States. It borders Tennessee to the north, Alabama to the east, the Gulf of Mexico to the south, Louisiana to the s ...

valleys and southeastern North America with a few other languages in the east.

Name

Authors who call the entire family ''Siouan'' distinguish the two branches as Western Siouan and Eastern Siouan or as "Siouan-proper" and "Catawban". Others restrict the name "Siouan" to the western branch and use the name ''Siouan–Catawban'' for the entire family. Generally, however, the name "Siouan" is used without distinction.

Family division

The Siouan family consists of some 20 languages and various dialects: * Siouan ** Western Siouan ***

Mandan The Mandan () are a Native American tribe of the Great Plains who have lived for centuries primarily in what is now North Dakota. They are enrolled in the Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation. About half of the Mandan still ...

**** Nuptare **** Nuetare *** Missouri River Siouan (a.k.a. Crow–Hidatsa) ****

Crow A crow is a bird of the genus ''Corvus'', or more broadly, a synonym for all of ''Corvus''. The word "crow" is used as part of the common name of many species. The related term "raven" is not linked scientifically to any certain trait but is rathe ...

(a.k.a. Absaroka, Apsaroka, Apsaalooke, Upsaroka) – 3,500 speakers ****

Hidatsa The Hidatsa ( ) are a Siouan people. They are enrolled in the federally recognized Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota. Their language is related to that of the Crow, and they are sometimes considered a pa ...

(a.k.a. Minitari, Minnetaree) – 200 speakers *** Mississippi Valley Siouan (a.k.a. Central Siouan) ****

Mitchigamea The Michigamea were a Native American tribe in the Illinois Confederation. The Mitchigamea may have spoken an Algonquian or a Siouan language, and historical accounts describe them as not being fluent in the Illinois language. Little is known ...

? **** Dakotan (a.k.a. Sioux–Assiniboine–Stoney) ***** Nakoda ******

Assiniboine The Assiniboine or Assiniboin people ( when singular, Assiniboines / Assiniboins when plural; Ojibwe: ''Asiniibwaan'', "stone Sioux"; also in plural Assiniboine or Assiniboin), also known as the Hohe and known by the endonym Nakota (or Nakoda ...

– 150 speakers ****** Stoney – 3,200 speakers *****

Sioux The Sioux or Oceti Sakowin ( ; Dakota/ Lakota: ) are groups of Native American tribes and First Nations people from the Great Plains of North America. The Sioux have two major linguistic divisions: the Dakota and Lakota peoples (translati ...

– 25,000 speakers ******

Lakota Lakota may refer to: *Lakota people, a confederation of seven related Native American tribes *Lakota language Lakota ( ), also referred to as Lakhota, Teton or Teton Sioux, is a Siouan languages, Siouan language spoken by the Lakota people of ...

– 2,100 speakers ****** Dakota (sometimes classified as Western and Eastern Dakota) – 290 speakers **** Chiwere-Winnebago ***** Chiwere ***** Winnebago – 250 speakers ****

Dhegihan The Dhegihan languages are a group of Siouan languages that include Kansa– Osage, Omaha–Ponca, and Quapaw. Their historical region included parts of the Ohio and Mississippi River Valleys, the Great Plains, and southeastern North America. T ...

***** Omaha–Ponca – 85 speakers ***** Kansa-Osage ****** Kansa ****** Osage , on ongoing revival *****

Quapaw The Quapaw ( , Quapaw language, Quapaw: ) or Arkansas, officially the Quapaw Nation, is a List of federally recognized tribes in the United States, U.S. federally recognized tribe comprising about 6,000 citizens. Also known as the Ogáxpa or � ...

– 1 speaker *** Ohio Valley Siouan **** Virginia Siouan *****

Tutelo The Tutelo (also Totero, Totteroy, Tutera; Yesan in Tutelo) were Native American people living above the Fall Line in present-day Virginia and West Virginia. They spoke a dialect of the Siouan Tutelo language thought to be similar to that of th ...

*****

Moneton The Moneton were a historical Native Americans in the United States, Native American tribe from West Virginia. In the late 17th century, they lived in the Kanawha Valley near the Kanawha River, Kanawha and New River (Kanawha River), New Rivers. ...

**** Mississippi Siouan *****

Biloxi Biloxi ( ; ) is a city in Harrison County, Mississippi, United States. It lies on the Gulf Coast of the United States, Gulf Coast in southern Mississippi, bordering the city of Gulfport, Mississippi, Gulfport to its west. The adjacent cities ar ...

***** Ofo ** Eastern Siouan/Catawban *** Catawba *** Woccon ''()'' –

Extinct language An extinct language or dead language is a language with no living native speakers. A dormant language is a dead language that still serves as a symbol of ethnic identity to an ethnic group; these languages are often undergoing a process of r ...

Siouan languages can be grouped into

Western Siouan languages The Western Siouan languages, also called Siouan proper or simply Siouan, are a large language family native to North America. They are closely related to the Catawban languages, sometimes called Eastern Siouan, and together with them constitut ...

and Catawban. The Western Siouan languages are typically subdivided into Missouri River languages (such as

and

, Mississippi River languages (such as Dakota, Chiwere- Winnebago, and

Dhegihan languages The Dhegihan languages are a group of Siouan languages that include Kansa– Osage, Omaha–Ponca, and Quapaw. Their historical region included parts of the Ohio and Mississippi River Valleys, the Great Plains, and southeastern North America. ...

), and

Ohio Valley Siouan languages The Ohio Valley Siouan, or Southeastern Siouan, languages are a subfamily of the Western Siouan languages, far to the east and south of the Mississippi River. The group has Ofo and Biloxi, in the Lower Mississippi River valley, and Tutelo, histo ...

( Ofo,

, and

). The Catawban branch consists of Catawban and Woccon. Charles F. Voegelin established, on the basis of linguistic evidence, that Catawban was divergent enough from the other Siouan languages, including neighboring Siouan languages of the Piedmont and Appalachia, to be considered a distinct branch. Voegelin proposes that Biloxi, Ofo and Tutelo consistute one group which he terms Ohio Valley Siouan. This group includes various historical languages spoken by Siouan peoples not only in the Ohio River Valley, but across the Appalachian Plateau and into the Piedmont regions of present-day Virginia and the Carolinas. Some of these groups migrated or were displaced great distances following European contact, ending up as far afield as present-day Ontario and southern Mississippi. Collectively, Siouan languages of Appalachia and the Piedmont are sometimes grouped under the term

, Tutelo-Saponi, or Yesah (Yesa:sahį) as the language historically spoken by the Monacan,

Manahoac The Manahoac, also recorded as Mahock, were a Indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands, who lived in northern Virginia at the time of European contact. They spoke a Siouan language and numbered approximately 1,000. They lived primarily a ...

, Haliwa-Saponi, and

Occaneechi The Occaneechi are Indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands whose historical territory was in the Piedmont region of present-day North Carolina and Virginia. In the 17th century they primarily lived on the large, long Occoneechee Island ...

peoples.

Proto-Siouan

Proto-Siouan is the reconstructed ancestor of all modern Siouan languages.

Previous proposals

There is a certain amount of comparative work in Siouan–Catawban languages. Wolff (1950–51) is among the first and more complete works on the subject. Wolff reconstructed the system of proto-Siouan, and this was modified by Matthews (1958). The latter's system is shown below: With respect to vowels, five oral vowels are reconstructed: and three

nasal vowel A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the soft palate (or velum) so that the air flow escapes through the nose and the mouth simultaneously, as in the French vowel /ɑ̃/ () or Amoy []. By contrast, oral vowels are p ...

s . Wolff also reconstructed some consonantal clusters .

Current proposal

Collaborative work involving a number of Siouanists started at the 1984 Comparative Siouan Workshop at the University of Colorado with the goal of creating a comparative Siouan dictionary that would include Proto-Siouan reconstructions. This work yielded a different analysis of the phonemic system of Proto-Siouan, which appears below:

Consonants

In Siouanist literature (e.g., Rankin et al. 2015), Americanist phonetic transcriptions are the norm, so IPA * is Americanist *š, IPA *j is Americanist *y, and so on. The major change to the previously-proposed system was accomplished by systematically accounting for the distribution of multiple stop series in modern Siouan languages by tracing them back to multiple stop series in the proto-language. Previous analysis posited only a single stop series. Many of the consonant clusters proposed by Wolff (19501951) can be accounted for due to

syncopation In music, syncopation is a variety of rhythms played together to make a piece of music, making part or all of a tune or piece of music off-beat (music), off-beat. More simply, syncopation is "a disturbance or interruption of the regular flow of ...

of short vowels before stressed syllables. For example, Matthews (1958: 129) gives *wróke as the proto-form for 'male.' With added data from a larger set of Siouan languages since the middle of the twentieth century, Rankin et al. (2015) give *waroː(-ka) as the reconstructed form for 'male.' Unlike Wolff and Matthew's proposals, there are no posited nasal consonants in Proto-Siouan. Nasal consonants only arise in daughter languages when followed by a nasal vowel. In addition, there is a set of sounds that represent obstruentized versions of their corresponding sonorants. These sounds have different reflexes in daughter languages, with *w appearing as or in most daughter languages, while *W has a reflex of b or The actual phonetic value of these obstruents is an issue of some debate, with some arguing that they arise through geminated *w+*w or *r+*r sequences or a laryngeal plus *w or *r.

Vowels

Previous work on Proto-Siouan only posited single vowel length. However, phonemic vowel length exists in several Siouan languages such as

Ho-Chunk The Ho-Chunk, also known as Hocąk, Hoocągra, or Winnebago are a Siouan languages, Siouan-speaking Native Americans in the United States, Native American people whose historic territory includes parts of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois ...

, and

. Rankin et al. (2015) analyze numerous instances of long vowels as present due to common inheritance rather than common innovation. The five oral vowels and three nasal vowels posited by earlier scholars is expanded to include a distinction between short and long vowels. The proposed Proto-Siouan vowel system appears below:

External relations

The

Yuchi The Yuchi people are a Native American tribe based in Oklahoma, though their original homeland was in the southeastern United States. In the 16th century, the Yuchi lived in the eastern Tennessee River valley. By the late 17th century, they had ...

isolate may be the closest relative of Sioux–Catawban, based on both sound changes and morphological comparison. In the 19th century, Robert Latham suggested that the Siouan languages are related to the Caddoan and

Iroquoian languages The Iroquoian languages () are a language family of indigenous peoples of North America. They are known for their general lack of labial consonants. The Iroquoian languages are polysynthetic and head-marking. As of 2020, almost all surviving I ...

. In 1931, Louis Allen presented the first list of systematic correspondences between a set of 25 lexical items in Siouan and Iroquoian. In the 1960s and 1970s,

Wallace Chafe Wallace L. Chafe ( ; September 3, 1927 – February 3, 2019) was an American linguist. He was Professor Emeritus and research professor at The University of California, Santa Barbara. Biography Chafe was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He wa ...

further explored the link between Siouan and Caddoan languages. In the 1990s,

Marianne Mithun Marianne Mithun ( ; born 1946) is an American linguist specializing in American Indian languages and language typology. She is a professor of linguistics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she has held an academic position sinc ...

compared the morphology and syntax of all the three families. At present, this Macro-Siouan hypothesis is not considered proven, and the similarities between the three families may instead be due to their protolanguages having been part of a

sprachbund A sprachbund (, from , 'language federation'), also known as a linguistic area, area of linguistic convergence, or diffusion area, is a group of languages that share areal features resulting from geographical proximity and language contact. Th ...

References

Bibliography

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External links

Comparative Siouan DictionarySiouan languages mailing list archive
{{Authority control Language families Indigenous languages of the North American Plains Sioux culture Indigenous languages of Maryland