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57 Chitimacha

  • Daniel W. Hieber
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Abstract

Chitimacha is a language isolate that was spoken in southern Louisiana until the death of the last native speaker in 1940. Modern tribal members are now revitalizing the language on the basis of documentary materials compiled between 1802 and 1934, but the field of linguistics has advanced drastically since that earlier documentation was made. As such, it is still possible to discover facets of the language and its structure that earlier researchers overlooked, most especially: features not common in Indo-European languages (such as agent-patient alignment); features caused by contact with other languages of the U.S. Southeast; and discourse-level phenomena (such as topic marking). This chapter gives an overview of our current state of knowledge of Chitimacha grammar in a way that aims to be accessible to Chitimacha language teachers and learners. It is the first updated grammatical sketch of the language since Swadesh (1946).

Abstract

Chitimacha is a language isolate that was spoken in southern Louisiana until the death of the last native speaker in 1940. Modern tribal members are now revitalizing the language on the basis of documentary materials compiled between 1802 and 1934, but the field of linguistics has advanced drastically since that earlier documentation was made. As such, it is still possible to discover facets of the language and its structure that earlier researchers overlooked, most especially: features not common in Indo-European languages (such as agent-patient alignment); features caused by contact with other languages of the U.S. Southeast; and discourse-level phenomena (such as topic marking). This chapter gives an overview of our current state of knowledge of Chitimacha grammar in a way that aims to be accessible to Chitimacha language teachers and learners. It is the first updated grammatical sketch of the language since Swadesh (1946).

Heruntergeladen am 7.10.2025 von https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110712742-057/html?lang=de
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