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Home , Iroquoian languages

B3

Mohawk and the Iroquoian

Mohawk is a languageof the Iroquoian farnily. The Erie, and Neuffal, moved west to Sandwich,, family consist$ of two major branches: Southem and became known as the Wyandot. Many subse- Iroquoianand Northem lroquoian.Southem Iroquoian qu€ntly moved southward, ultimately ending up in is representedby just one ,, now Oklahoma. The Wyandor dialect of Huron was last spokenprimarily in North Carolinaand Oklahoma. spoken in the rnid-twentieth century. French rnission- Noi1hem Iroquoianhas severalsub-branches. The ariesamong the Huron, pailiculady during the seven- first offshoot of Nofihem lroquoian developed into teenth and eighteenth centuties, left rich records of the Nottoway, Meheirin, and Tuscarora. The Nottoway language.Wyandot texts and lexical and grarnraatical people were first encountered by Europeans near the materialwere recordedin the early twentiethcentury. Virginia coast in 1650. The language,which disap- , Neuaal, Wenro, and Erie are known only peared during the mid-nineteenth century, is kno\rn through somenames. tbroughjust two wordlists from the early part of that Five of (he remainingNorthem lroquoian groups. century. The people were first encount€red the Seneca,Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk, in 1650 near the coast,but by 1730 formed a strong political alliance known as the League they had mergedwith the Tuscarora.All that remains ofthe Five Nationshoquois. Their territoriesstretched of their language are two town narnes.The Tuscarora essentiallyfrom the westem€dge of modernNew York were first encounteredin easternNorth Carolina. Early State,where the Senecaswere known as the Keepers in the eighteenth century, most began to move north- of the Westem Doot to the easternedge, wherc the ward, where thefu descendantsreside today in trro Mohawks were the Keepers of the Eastem Door locationsr near Niagara Falls in eastem Another group to the north, now lalown as the State and at Six Nations in southem Ontario. Few Laurentian, was not part of the League, nor was a speakersremain. group to the south, the . The The second offshoot of Northem Iroquoian was Lauentians met JacquesCartier in 1534at the mouth Huron. The earliestmention of the Huron peopleis in of the St. LawrenceRiver, but they had disappeared Champlain'saccount of his 1615visit to what is now from the area by the time of Champlain'sarrival in southem Ontario. The Huron Conf€deracy, consisting 1603.Vocabulary lists of their languagesremain from of four aibes, was decimatedin 1649by attacksfrom the time of Cartier'svoyage, and it is from them that the Five Nationslroquois. Somesurvivors fled toward we have the name Cqnadq, a term that persists in the Qu6bec City, where their descendants live today at modernFive Nationslanguages today meaning 'setde Lorette. The language is no louger spoken there. ment, town'. The Susquehannockto the south, also Others settled with other Iroquoian groups in the area. known as the Andaste, suffered during the colonial Some of thesegroups were subsequentlydefeated as period from European diseasesand atfacks from well. and the survivors, a rnixture of Huron, Petun, colonistsand the other hoquois until the last survivors MOHAWK AND THE ]ROQUOIAN LANGUAGES

were nurdered in 1763. Their language is known Nouns are basedon a noun stem,which may be a through a wordlist recordedby a Swedishmissionary noun root or a nominalizedverb stem,Moryhological in hisjournalpublisbed in 1696. nounsbegin with a noun prefix. In unpossessednouns, The Five Nations languagesare all still spoken the prefix encod€sthe gender of the referent, like the today primarily by elders,although all communities Neutero- in c-t.riiftkw-a''fist, knot, knob,puck'. If the havelanguage classes. Seneca is spokenin thr€€com- noun is possessed,the prefix encodesthe person,num- munitiesin westemNew York: Cattaraugus,Allegany, ber, and genderof the possessor,as in qfu-atsihkwa' and Tonawanda.Cayuga is spokenat Six Nations in '.!!y puck'. Different sets of possessiveprefixes are southem Ontario, where many Cayugas fled after the used for Alienable and Inalienable possession.The American Revolution. Other Cayugas moved into prefix akrr- 'my' in lny puck' indicatesAlienable pos- Oklahorna,where the languagewas spokenuntil the session(meaning that the possessedis not an integral late twentiethcentury. Onondaga is spokenin central part of the possessor).The prefix k- lmy' in k-atsihk New York southof Syracuseand at Six Nations-Some wit:ke '10y fist' indicates Inalienable possession Oneidasremain in N€w York State,but most movedto (rneaningthat the possessedis an integral part of the southernOntario nearLondon. and to Wisconsinnear possessor).Inalienable possessions include mostbody GreenBay. There are six main Mohawk communities: parts,but not hair or intemal organssuch as the head Six Natiolrsin Ontario;Tayendinaga near Deseronto in or stomach.Separated body partssuch as eyelashesor Ontario; Ahkwesahsne with territory in Ontado, fingemails areAlienable. Terms for most kinsnen do ,and New York State;Kanehsatake at Oka to not describepossession, tlut rather the relationship, the northwestof Montrealt Kahnawakeon the south- snchas r-4[9'niha'rny father', literally 'he is father to em shoreof the St. Lawrenceacross from Montr€al: me', or thereciprocal g4jara'si:'a'my cousin',liter- and Wahta at Gibson in Ontario. There are several ally 'we two are cousinsto eachodrer'. thousand speakersof Mohawk, more than any of the Morphological nouns end in a noun suffix. The other Northern languages.The agesof the youngest most common is -a' as in otsihkw-q: 'knob'. Various speakersvary from comnunity to community, but grarmnatical paiticle can be added to words se ing as there are irnmersion schools in four of them, at Six nominals, as in Kahnawa'kehronon'kAnhd"forrner Nations(Ohsweken), Ahkwesahsne, Kanehsatake, and Kahnawake residents': ka-hnaw-a'= ke= hronon'= Kahnawake. A number of speakers of lroquoian lan- ke n h a' Nruret-r apids-NouN.suFFtx=LocATIVE=REsr- guagesreside outside of thesecommunities as w€ll. DENTIAL= DECESSI\.E. Although dre languagesare not mutually intellig! Ve*)s are potentially the most complex words and ble, their basic shucturesare similar. They are illus- by far the rnost frequent in speecb. All verbs contain a trated here with examples from Mohawk. pronominal prefix. a verb sten, and, apart from com- The consonantinventory is small: t, k, k1',ts, s, n, r, mands, an aspect suflix. Tlris st{ucture can be seen,for y, w, ft, 7.There is a notableabsence of labials(such as exarnple, in katerohrdkha' 'l watch' k-aterohrok-hq' p, b, or m). The vowel inventoryis similarly s all: i, I-watch-HABrruAL. The pronominal prefix represents e, a, o, fi, l.TheMohawk communitieshave agreed on the core argum€nts of the clause, that is, the one or two a practical orthography, which represents the conso- major persons or objects involved. These specify per- nantsas t, & kw, ts, s, n, t i, w, h, qnd ' (with i for the son (first, inclusive, exclusive, second, or third), num- glide [j] and apostrophefor glottal stop).Th€ vowels ber (singular, dual, or plural), and in third person, are spelledi, e, a, o, on, and en, with nasalizationindi- gender (masculine, neuter-zoic, or felninine-indefi- catedby a following n. Stressoriginally occured on nite). The grarnmatical roles of the arguments are the penultirnatesyllable of a word, atthoughthe pat- specifi€d as well, but not in terms of subjects and tem can be obscuredby the additionof vowels within obj€cts, but rather as grammatical Agents (typicauy the word. The stressedsyllable carries distinctive those perforning actions and confolling situations) (pitch).An acuteaccent marks high or rising tone (.i), and grammadcal Patients (typically rhose affected by and a graveaccent marks falling tone (d). The falling the situation but not in control.) and Patients (the enti- tone appearswhere a stressedvowel imnediately pre- ty undergoing an event or statel. The categories are ceded a laryngeal (such as ,), as in *iahrat6hrok', semantically based, but they are crystallized in the lex- which becarneiahati:roke' 'he climbed under dlere'. icon and the grammar, so that speakershave no choic- If a syllable endedin a laryngeat,the laryngeal was es about degrees of agency as they speak. Verb forrns lost, which was compensatedby length€ning the are simply leamed with the appropriate prefixes. The @ vowel. Open, stressedsyllables are lengthened,as in inkansitive verb eni4Lyateruhrtikia' '!g'll go watch ff:ken 'this'. Length is markedorthographically with a it' contains the Agent pronominal prefix iakw- 'we colon:. all'. The intransitive vert) [onk\e4n:ten 'u9 are poor' MOHAWK AND THE IROQUOIAN LANGUAGES has the Patient pronominal prefix ionlart- 'we'. The have-t|,rcHoATIvE-puNcTUAL). The same verb can be Agent and Patientcomponents of transitivepronomi- part of a larger sentence:wa'onkwanohskwai4nla'ne' nal prefixes are often fused. The transitive verb lkgL d:rhar 'we got a dog'. Verbs can serve othel syntactic wi:iatskwe' 'yq called hi.u' has the transitive functions as well. They can function syntactically as pronorninal prefix shakwa- 'we/him'. The aansitive nominals, much like nouns. Some are lexicalized as \eft entonkhiia'tahser(in:ni''fu will &ess q! up' norninals, so that speakers understand thern first as containsthe pronominalprefix ionkhi- 'shellts'. names for €ntities, such as tewa'd:raton 'lacrosae The verb stem rnay itself be complex.-[his stem strck' (te -w -a' ar-a-l-rrn clsLocATIvE-NEUTER-net- -eruhrok 'watch' containsa Middle pref:x -ate-.Verb STEM.JoNER-be.in-STATIVE'it has a net in it'). Some stems may also contain an incorporatednoun stem, are used altemately as predicates or nominals, like like - ahskv)- 'domestic anirnal' in ranahskwiidhne' tahontsihkwd:'eks 'they hit the puck, they play 'he was a beautiful anifial''. ra- ahskw-iio-hne'x'tr'.s- lacrosse' or'lacrosse players' (ta-hon-tsihkw-a-'ek-s cULINE.AGENT-anirnal-be.beautiful.srATrvE-pAST('he cIst,ocATIVIt-MAScULINE.pLURAL.AGaNT-puck- was beautiful in the way domestic animals are'). STEM.JoINER-hit-HABr-fuAL).Full verbs are also used Incorporatednouns qualify the meaningof the verb. for many functions served by adjectives and adverbials Nounsare incorporatfd both to createsingle words for in other languages. r€curring concepts,as above, and to manipulatethe Because the verb plovides a full grammatical skele- flow of infonnation. When speakerswish to dilect ton of the sentence,word order is used for purely prag- specialattention to an object,they generallydesignate matic purposes. Nouns are strikingly rare in connected it with a separate,independent noun. If the objectis an speech; sentencesmost often consist ofjust a verb and establislredpart of the scene,or incidentalto fhe point various particles. When independent nominals are at hand,it may be backgroundedby incor?oration. present in a clause, all possible constituent orders can Verbsmay contdn various additionalprefixes and occur. although not all would be pragmatically felici- suffixes. Among the prefixes are a Contrastivefor tous. After various orienting particles, the rnost impor- unexp€ctedsituations, a Coincidentfor similarity or tant elements tend to occur early in the clause, with simultaneity('the same,when'), a Pafiitive 'so' fhat successively more predictable and peripheral informa- appears in a variety ol synlactic constructions.a tion expressed later. Negative'not', aTranslocative'thither', a Factualtyp- Some of these structures can be seen in the excerpt ically usedfor pastevents, a Duplicativethat indicates below from an anecdote told by Watshenni:ne' Sawyer variouskinds of 'two-ness',including repetitionof arl of Kahnawake. (Abbreviations include M for MASCU- event or a shift in position or state,a Future tense LINE, N 1bTNEUTER, PL foT PLURAL,PRT foT PARTTTIVE,SJ 'will', an Optative 'might, should, would, could', a for srEM JoINER,and sr for srATrvE.) Cislocative 'hither, there', and a Repetitive 'again, ND:ne ti:nen back'. rt ls now Among the zuffixes are an Inchoative 'become', 'Now then several Causatives ('cause'), Inshumental Applicatives('do wirh ...'), BenefactiveApplicatives wq'-onkwa-nqhskw-a-iAnia'-ne' D:rhar. ('do fof'), Reversives('un-'), Distributives('here and FACTUAL.1 - PL- PATIENI-ANIM L-S]-LI€- there'), and Purposives('go in order to ...' ). All verbs INCHOATIVE-PLNCTUAL dog exceptcommands contain one ofthe threebasic aspec- we acquired a dog. tual suffrxes: Habitual. Punctual, or Stative. The Ra-nahskw-iid-hne' ken'=k ni-:r-a e:rhar I{abitual is used for recurring events and, with solne M.AGENT-animal- litde=just PRT-M.SG. dog verbs, for ongoing activities. The Punctual is a be.nice.sr-P^ST AGENT- Perfective, used for evelts viewed as wholes. The be.a.size Stativeis used for states.With someverbs, it is also He was a beautiful little dog. used for activities in progress, and with sorne verbs it is also used as a Perfect. The Habitual and Stative may Butch ronwd: -iat- s-kwe' be followed by a postaspectual suffix: Past, 3-PL/M.sc-call-HABrru^L-PAsr Continuative, or Progressive. His name was Butch. Because all verbs contain pronominal reference to Toka' ki:ken Ka-hnaw-a'=ke=hni:non' their cofe arguments,they can serye as complete sen- and this NE!-rER-rapi ds-NouN. sur,T,IX= tences in themselvesr wa' onkwanahskwai/n: ta' ne' place=RESIDENIIAL ' w e a pet' (wa' -onkwa-nahskw-a-ient-a'-n' F\ans- Eot And folks in Kahnawake, AL- l pLURAL.PATIENT-domestic.ani mal-srEM. JoINER- MOHAWK AND THE IROQUOIAN LANGUAGES thi ionkw-6n:ten shen's ki' wdhi' en-i akw - ate - ro h ni k-ha -' ki:ken. that 1.PL.P,\TIEMT-b€.poorfonn€rly just TAG FUTT'RE-I -PL.EXCLUSIVE,AGENT- this we were poor then,you know, MIDDLE-watch-puRposlvE-puNcru^L to watch the game.' dnska=k ki' nd:'a one=only just I guess I guesswe only had one References (r-' wa' I -hon-t I ihkw- Ak- f | -ha' Chafe, Wallace. 1976. The Caddoan, Iroquoian, and Siouan FACTUAL-DUpLrcATrvE-M.pL.AGEN'I-puck-sJ-hit-D{srRU- Ianguag€s.Th€ Hague: Mouton. MENTAL. APPLICATryE-HABI'f UAL Froman, Frances, Alfred Keye, Lottie Kcye, and Carrie Dyck. ball ('they hit the puck with it', i.e. 'they played 2002. E.glish-Cayuga Cayuga-English dictionary. Toronto: lacrossewith it'). University of Toronto. Michelson, Karin, and Mffcy Dox|aror. 2002. Oneida-English Ahkwesdhs=ne n-en-l-hdn:n-e- English-Oneida diclionary. Toronto: University of Toronto. Ahkwesahs=place pARTTTIvE-FLrruRE-cIsLocATIvE-Miftun, Marianne. l9?9. Iroquoian. The lanSuages of native Amelica: histodcal and comparative assessment,ed. by Lyle M.PL.AGENI-gO-PUNCTUAL Campbell and . Austin and London: They would come fi:om Ahkwesahsne, University of Texas. Mithun, Marianne. 1999 and 2001. The languaSes of ralive ta-hon -tI i hkw -d : -' ek -s North Anerica. CambridSe. UK: Cambridte University. crsLocATrvE-M. pL.AGENT-puck-hiI-HABnUAL Rudes, Blair A. 1999. Tuscarora-English English-Tuscarora the lacrosse players dictionary. Torontoi Universiry of Toronto. Trigger Bruce G. (ed.) 1978. Nonheast: handbook of North aw-cnt-a-tokenhti-'=ke io-t-ohetst-on n=entie'. American lndians. Vol. 15. Washington: Smithsonian N-dav-sJ-be.holv-NoMINALIZER N.PATIENT- thc=noon Insdtution. =place MIDDLE-paSS-ST Woodbury, Hanni. 2003. Onondaga-English English-Onondaga dictionary. Toronto: University of Toronto. Sunday aftemoon. MARIANNE MmntN Sok en-ionkhi-ia't-a-hseftin:ni-' isl4n:'4 then FUTURE-NDEFINTE/ mother Seeaho Noun Incorporation I -Pl-body-sJ-plepare-P So then my motherwould dressus up sok i-en-ionkhi-ia'L4nhaw-e' tlren TRANSLoCATIVE-FUTURE-INDEFINITE/1.pl--body- take-PUNcruAL and then she'd takeus over there