The Lower Mississippi Valley as a Language Area By David V. Kaufman Submitted to the graduate degree program in Anthropology and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. ________________________________ Chairperson, Carlos M Nash ________________________________ Bartholomew Dean ________________________________ Clifton Pye ________________________________ Harold Torrence ________________________________ Andrew McKenzie Date Defended: May 30, 2014 ii The Dissertation Committee for David V. Kaufman certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: The Lower Mississippi Valley as a Language Area ________________________________ Chairperson Carlos M Nash Date approved: June 9, 2014 iii Abstract It has been hypothesized that the Southeastern U.S. is a language area, or Sprachbund. However, there has been little systematic examination of the supposed features of this area. The current analysis focuses on a smaller portion of the Southeast, specifically, the Lower Mississippi Valley (LMV), and provides a systematic analysis, including the eight languages that occur in what I define as the LMV: Atakapa, Biloxi, Chitimacha, Choctaw-Chickasaw, Mobilian Trade Language (MTL), Natchez, Ofo, and Tunica. This study examines phonetic, phonological, and morphological features and ranks them according to universality and geographic extent, and lexical and semantic borrowings to assess the degree of linguistic and cultural contact. The results show that: (1) the LMV is a Sprachbund on par with other well known Sprachbünde of the world such as the Balkans and South Asia; (2) there are possibly three different overlapping Sprachbünde spanning the northern Gulf from northeastern Mexico to the Atlantic seaboard; (3) Totonac, a Mesoamerican language, shares several features with the LMV and scores higher than several languages geographically closer to the LMV; (4) grammatical features, such as positional verb auxiliaries, form a major component of the LMV Sprachbund; (5) discursive and pragmatic features, such as focus- and topic-marking, which have been little studied in analyses of Sprachbünde, play a major role in the LMV Sprachbund; and (6) several calques and lexical borrowings, which includes exchanges of “basic” vocabulary, suggest intense contact and intercommunication within the area. iv Acknowledgments First and foremost I would like to thank my Chair, Carlos Nash, and my other committee members for guiding me through the lengthy and, at times, difficult, dissertation process. I am also indebted to David Costa for providing me with voluminous copies of the handwritten language data of both Mary Haas and Morris Swadesh. I also want to thank Daniel Hieber for providing me with multiple Chitimacha examples, analyses, and helpful comments. Likewise, I want to thank Geoffrey Kimball for providing helpful feedback and analyses of a heretofore unpublished Natchez text. I also want to thank my student assistants, Samantha Spurlock and Nicole Koenig, for their many hours of data transcription and the creation of LMV language lexicons. Further, I would like to thank the late Robert Rankin, Professor Emeritus of the KU Linguistics Department, for his many hours of mentoring and conversations with me regarding Siouan and Muskogean linguistics before his unfortunate passing earlier this year. His vast knowledge of Siouan linguistics will be sorely missed by me and many others. Last but certainly not least, I want to thank my family and friends who, over the past several years, have had undending faith and confidence in me to attain doctoral success! v Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................. iii Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................. iv Table of contents .................................................................................................................v Abbreviations ..................................................................................................................... xi Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................... 1 1.0 Introduction ............................................................................................................ 1 1.1 The Lower Mississippi Valley: Geography and environment ...............................4 1.1.1 Geography and environment ..........................................................................5 1.1.1.1 Rivers ...................................................................................................5 1.1.1.2 Mobile Bay ...........................................................................................8 1.1.1.3 Geology ................................................................................................9 1.1.1.4 Flora and fauna ....................................................................................9 1.2 The Peoples of the Lower Mississippi Valley .....................................................10 1.2.1 Atakapas ................................................................................................11 1.2.2 Biloxis ...................................................................................................12 1.2.3 Chitimachas ...........................................................................................13 1.2.4 Choctaws and Chickasaws .....................................................................14 1.2.5 Natchez .................................................................................................16 1.2.6 Ofos .......................................................................................................18 1.2.7 Tunicas ..................................................................................................19 1.3 History of the Lower Mississippi Valley .............................................................21 1.3.1 Archaeological periods ................................................................................22 1.3.2 Mounds, plazas, and moundbuilders ...........................................................24 1.3.3 Ceramics and artifacts ..................................................................................28 1.3.4 Trade ...........................................................................................................29 1.3.5 Agriculture .................................................................................................31 1.3.6 Cahokia and Mississippian culture .............................................................33 1.3.7 Summary ....................................................................................................35 1.4 Movements of peoples ........................................................................................35 1.4.1 Atakapas .....................................................................................................37 1.4.2 Chitimachas .................................................................................................37 1.4.3 Natchez ......................................................................................................37 1.4.4 Proto-Muskogeans .....................................................................................38 1.4.5 Proto-Siouans .............................................................................................. 38 1.4.5.1 Biloxis ............................................................................................... 40 1.4.5.2 Ofos ....................................................................................................41 1.4.6 Tunicas ........................................................................................................42 1.4.7 Summary .....................................................................................................44 1.5 Language contact .................................................................................................44 1.5.1 Language origins ........................................................................................45 1.5.2 ‘Genetic’ (internal) vs. contact (external) language origins ....................... 45 1.5.3 Definition of Sprachbund ............................................................................50 1.5.4 Well known Sprachbünde ...........................................................................51 vi 1.5.4.1 The Balkan Sprachbund .....................................................................51 1.5.4.2 The South Asia Sprachbund ...............................................................52 1.5.4.3 The Pacific Northwest Sprachbund ...................................................53 1.5.4.4 The LMV Sprachbund .......................................................................55 1.5.5 Summary .....................................................................................................56 1.6 Objectives ............................................................................................................56 1.6.1 Research questions ......................................................................................57 1.6.2 Hypothesis ...................................................................................................57 1.7 Summary of Chapter 1 .........................................................................................58