Reprintedfrom NancyC. Dorian (ed.) Investigaingobsolescence: studies in languagecontraaion and death(Str:dtes n the Socialand Culn:rat Foundations of Language7) @ CambridgeUniversity Press,1989 Print€din &eat Britain 16 The incipientobsolescence of polysynthesis:Cayuga in and

MARIANNE MITHUN

Cayuga,an Iroquoian language,was originally spokenin what is now State. When first encounteredby Europeans,the Cayuga lived in villagesaround Cayuga Lake, surroundedby the other relatedFive Nations . To the west were the Seneca,to the eastthe Onondaga,beyond them the Oneida, and finally, the Mohawk. Due to a seriesof unfortunate events,Cayuga speakers now live in two distantlyseparated communities, one in Ontario and the other in Oklahoma.While the languageis still very much alive in Ontario, it is recedingin Oklahoma, as fewer and fewer speakersuse it on rarer and rarer occasions.Not surprisingly,the Cayuga spokenin Oklahomahas begun to differ in subtleways from that spokenin Ontario.

1. Historical background The Cayugahad occupiedthe sameland for centuriesbefore the American Revolution. When war erupted, they were drawn into battle on the side of the British, and in 1779an American expedition destroyedtheir villages. This led to their dispersal.Some Cayugasremained with their land, but otherswent to live with Senecasat Buffalo Creek, and still otherswent with other Iroquoiansto Ontario to form the Six NationsResewe. By the end of the Revolution, only about 130Cayugas remained at CayugaLake,350 were with the Senecaat Buffalo Creek, and 382 were at Six Nations. (For a detaileddiscussion ofthe historyofthe Cay'rrga,see Sturtevant 1978;White, Englebrechtand Tooker 1978.) In the yearsfollowing the war, the Cayugaremaining at CayugaLake sold mostof their land. Somethen followed their relativesto SixNations' Others went to live in Senecacommunities atBuffalo Creek,Tonawanda, Cattarau- gus,and Allegany. A numberof othersjoined otherNew York Iroquois and moved to the Lower SanduskyRiver in Ohio, where the entire group 244 Marianne Mithun becameknown as the "sandusky Senecas".During the early nineteenth century, Cayugascontinued to emigratefrom Buffalo Creek to,Sandusky' Yy tti}, ZZ)troquois were countedat Sandusky'157 of them Cayuga' Following PresidentJackson's Removal Bill in 1830'the Sanduskygroup sold their Ohio land and beganto move west again' eventuallysettling in northeastern Oklahoma. Throughout the remainder of the nineteenth century, Iroquois immigrants frorn New York and Ontario continued to join them. ihe o;iginal "sanduskySenecas"' atong with theselat€r immigrants, became the ancestors of the "Seneca" or "Sene€a-Cayuga-'wbo reside in northeasternOklahoma todaY. The Cayugalanguage was to experiencedifferent fatesin th€ areaswhere it wassooicen in New York, Ontario, and Oklahoma The Seneca,Cayrga' Onondaga,Oneida, and Mohawk languagesare mutually unintelligible' but they areiufficiently closelyrelated that speakersof onecan learn others with relative ease. In irlew York, the Ca)'ugalanguage exerted a significant influenceon Senecaand, in turn, on Onondaga'A lossof original Proto- Iroquoian *r in certaincontexts in Cayugawas imitated and generalizedin both Senecaand Onondaga,so that by the end of the eighteenthcentury, neither Senecanor Onondagahad any /ri at all (Mithun 1980)'The Cayuga languagewas not to prevail in New York, however,even though there were in New York State in 1980' 153 in the Seneca stilf 18-: Cayugas-Cattu.aogutliving community ut (Buffalo Creek had been sold)' Senecais still sookenin all ofthe Senecacommunities, but Cayugahas not beenspoken in any of them for as long as anyonecan remember' in Ontario, by contrast,there are now more speakersof Cayugathan of any other Iroquoian language.Although childrenare no longerlearning the languageas a mother tongue,approximately 375 adults speak Cayuga lt is usedboth in daily conversationand ceremonially' In Oklahoma, Cayuga is now the only Northern Iroquoian language spoken,but it is usedby few individualsand only rarely. As early as 1912, (see Sturtevant 1978) that only one family spoke Iiarbeau reported -still Seneca,and all othersspoke either Cayugaor English.By 1962'Seneca was no longer spokenat all. Cayuga"was hardly usedexcept in ritual contexts and ha? only 11 fluent speakersand 12 otherswith somecompetence, the youngestspiaker havingbeen born in 1918"(ibid': 543)' By 1980,perhaps a ialf=Jozen speakersremained, and severalof thesehave passed away since that time. Although the Oklahoma speakers consider themselves "Seneca", their languageis pure Cayuga,with little observableinfluence from the other .For the most part' they havehad little occasionto speakihe languagefor a long time. They meet primarily on ceremonial occasions, and have tended to use Cayuga primarily in ceremonialspeeches, seldom in conversation. The incipient obsolescenceof polysynthesis: Cayuga 245

2. Discourseand syntax The Iroquois have alwaysenjoyed a reputationfor eloquence.The earliest European descriptionsof the New World include commentarieson the rhetoricalskills of the Iroquois, andthe tradition hascontinued to this dayin all communities. Skillful use of languageis discussed,appreciated, and cultivatedby speakersin all contexts,not only in formal oratory, but alsoin informal narrativeand conversation. All ofthe languagesare rich in stylistic devices,and speakerstake greatpleasure in exploitingthem. It is difficult to measureand comparea quality asindividual asrhetorical skill. One fact might suggestsome loss of stylistic elasticityin Oklahoma Cayuga.In both Ontario and Oklahoma, traditional ceremonialspeeches are given in Cayuga. In Ontario, the ceremonieslast for days. Each morning, everyonegathers in the Longhousefor hour after hour of magnifi- centformal oratory. A singlespeaker performs, aided only occasionallyby a prompter seatedbehind him. The speechesfollow well establishedstruc- turesand containtraditional rhetorical devices, but they arenot memorized. In Oklahorna,the oratory typically lastsonly a day or so. Of course,their brevity is probably due not just to a lossof rhetorical skill, but also to the smallerpool of speakerswho rememberthe traditions andwho understand the sDeeches. Unfortunately, it was not possibleto record long stretchesof connected discoursefrom the Oklahomaspeakers. Conversations between Oklahoma speakersand an Ontario speaker,however, have provided an opportunityto compare a number of featuresof the two Cayuga dialects' The ontario speaker,Reginald flenry, usesCayuga in daily conversationand performs the traditional speechesin the Longhouse'He is a skillful speaker,keenly sensitiveto subtleintricacies of his language,and he wasquite interestedin comparing Oklahoma and Ontario Cayuga' Probably the best speaker remainingin Oklahomawas born in 1888.When interviewedin Cayuga,she often replied in English, althoughshe was quite capableof good Cayuga. Her preferencefor Englishwas clearly a matter of relativefacility and habit rather than prestige,since good control of Cayugais all the more highly valued in this community as it disappears.She enjoyed speaking the language,but felt that Mr Henry's Ontario Cayugawas the correctvemion and that shemight be making mistakes. The style and syntaxof this Oklahomaspeaker's conversation appeared to be essentiallyunaffected by English. In Cayuga, word order is not syntacticallydetermined (SVO, SOV, etc.). Sincethe roles of core argu- mentsare expressedby verbalprefixes, word order neednot reiteratethem. Instead, constituentsare ordered accordingto pragmaticconsiderations: their relativeimportance within the discourse'The mostsignificant element of a clauseappears first, followed by increasinglypredictable or incidental information (Mithun 1987).This speakerconsistently ordered constituents 246 Maianne Mithun accordingly,with no loss in stylistic elasticity.Since the newsworthy-first ordering"oibayuga usually contrasts with the typicaltheme-rheme order of English; it is lle;r that word order in oklahoma has remained largely uninfluencedbY English. (1) Tkai?ni: hati:?as u-loud-sre]]wnIra. pr.AG-sfroot-TTABITUAL 'Their shootingis loud' akatekhfgY?ne:z (2) Tkand:taQ -. clslocATlvE-N-town-lie-srarrveFAcfuAr-l'sG'Acdme-DlsLocATrvE to rcwn I am going to dine hate:ts{ts 9y6:kwe:? M.sc,AG-cure-HABrruALF[n-l-PL.ExcL'AG'gGPUNcruAL doctor we a[ $/ill go 'I am going to town with the doctor to eat' (Note the pronominal expressionof the plural agent of the last clause, typical of luogoug". of this type, renderedin English by a prepositional jhrase. Transcription conventionsare as follows. Vowels followed by a iolon are long, those accompaniedby an acute accentare stressed,those with a Polishhook are nasalized,those with a subscriptcircle are voiceless, and those with a superscript ? are glottalized. Nasalization may co-occur with any of the other features. Glossesseparated by periods indicate semantii componentsthat do not correspondto separatemorphemes in Cayuga.The sequence-ft-, for example,glossed 1.sG.Ac., is the l"stperson singularagent pronominal prefix ('I'), but it consistsof a single,unsegment- able morpheme.) Becauseoftheir rich morphology,Iroquoian languagesexhibit somewhat less grammaticizedsyntactic complexity than languageslike Fnglish All verbsare finite, and clausesare backgrounded or foregroundedby meansof discourse particles and ordering. The conversationof this Oklahoma speaker seemed to show approximately the same degree of syntactic cbmplexityas that of a typical Ontario speaker. (3) Wah6?tshU:aka:tke ng hne:? thri:ha 1vashQ: just.only FAc.1.sc-get.upnow coNTRAsrrvEthere-DlM ten niyahwihst6:?eh PARTITIVE.N-metal-strike-STATIVE 'I just now got up and here it is almostten o'clock' Ngh ki? akekhwgt6?9h 1s2 ld? ng'? katshe:np? now just 1. sc. PAr-food-finish-srerw the just it.is N-stock (9)kgnete:kh0:ni? (rur)-1.sc..a.c-feed-PUNcruAL 'Now that I havefinished eating, I will feed my stock' The incipient obsolescenceof polysynthesis: Cayuga 247

3. Lexicon Usually the first differencesnoticed by speakershearing another dialect of their languageare in vocabulary. As might be expected, Ontario and Oklahoma Cayuga are distinguishedby neologismscreated since their separation.For'tomato', for example, Ontario speakersuse ohydkhahg? 'it-fruit-divides', or 'fruit in sections'.Oklahoma speakersuse kg?nya?, which refers to the ring in a bull's nose in Ontario. For 'railroad track', Ontario speakers luse kgnyg?ghird?ke"se?'along the iron'. Oklahoma speakersuse kitrefttaya:nu:wa uha:te,'it-drags-fastroad', or'train road'. The word for 'automobile' is interesting. Ontario speakers,like other Northern Iroquoians, vsekA ehtu?'it is usedto drag'. Oklahomaspeakers .usekak$owanC?s 'it hasbig eyes'.The literal meaningis the sameas that of the Shawneeword (Ives Goddard, pers.comm.). This is no accident.Early in the nineteenth century, a group of Shawneesand Senecasknown collectivelyas the "Mixed Band" alsooccupied a reservationin Ohio. They migratedwest at the sametime as the SanduskySenecas and both groups eventuallysettled on the sameOklahoma reservation,the Mixed Band in the north, and the SanduskySenecas in the south. Surprisinglyfew wordsin OklahomaCayuga show any Senecainfluence. One may be the term for'nose'. The root -kgr- is the basicterm for'nose'in both Oklahoma Cayugaand Seneca.This root refersto the 'bddge of the nose'in Ontario Cayuga.The Ontario root for'nose'is cognateto thosein other more distant Northern Iroquoian languageslike Tuscarora,so the Oklahomashift seemsto representan innovation. A number of recent neologismsare the samein Ontario and Oklahoma Cayuga, such as k'atrehtaya:nfi:we?'train' ('it drags fast') katst)t"1Qtas 'monkey' ('it eats lice') kqthd:haz 'radio, television' ('it talks'), and shako:y4:nas'policeman' ('he arrests/grabsthem'). Since these words generally match their counterparts in the other Northern Iroquoian languages,it appearsthat they were brought into Oklahoma by the later immigrantsand visitorsfrom Ontario, whoselanguage has probably always enjoyedspecial prestige in Oklahoma. Someneologisms created in Ontario apparentlynever had counterparts in Oklahoma. Ontario and Oklalfoma Cayugashare the original terms for 'black', 'white', 'red', 'green','yellow', and'blue'. A term for'pink'has been created in both communities,but from different descriptions..The Ontario term is otkwghtsia:ke:t('it-red-white.is') 'light red'. The Oklahoma termis tkwehtsi?d:?41,(red-DrMrNurrvE) 'a little red', 'sort ofred', 'reddish'. The Ontario word for'brown', basedon the noun'dirt', wasunderstood in Oklahomaas'purple'. The Ontario term for'gray'is an innovationbased on the noun'ash', but there is no counterpart in Oklahoma. (Both dialects retain an older term for'gray-haired'.) Neither has a special term for 'orange'. 248 Marianne Mithun Lexical lossin OklahomaCayuga shows a predictablepattern' Words for obiectsno longer discussedhave been forgotten, suchas 'moose', 'beaver" 'mink', and 'w-easel'.Some sPecific terms seemto be disappearingbefore more generalones. The Ontario speakerremarked that h€.wouldbe more likely io say (4a), for'Come on in the house" where an Oklahomaspeaker said (4b). (4)a. Ontario: KanPhskf: tats9h! x-house-in crsloc-mvr-2-sc'eccnter (4)b, Oklahoma: Kanqhsk{: ti:*z x-house-in crsrocerrre-2'srrc'ec-go When asked for a word for 'thigh', the best Oklahoma speaker supplied the term for'leg'. Although sheknew'foot" shecould not comeup with 'ankle' never or 'toes'. F; 'hip', sh! suggested'buttocks'' Sheknew'e1'es', but had heardthe Ontarioword for'eyebrow'. She knew'facd'but not'cheeks''

4. MorPhologY Cavusamomhology is not only complex,it is also highly productive' and lf a particular eooOioeateis manipulateit extensivelyfor stylisticpurposes llement of meaningis in focus,it is usuallyexpressed by a separateword: a Darticle.noun, orverb. Ifit merelyprovidesbackground information, it may Le expressedby a boundmorpheme within the verb' A separateparticle and a verial affix may cooccur. A speaker wishing to emphasizethat an event ocruned again, might use a separateparticle meaning'again'. as well as a reoetitiveirbal prifix somethinglike Englishre- If the repetitionis not the mlin ooint of theitause, or jf it isestablished information, the prefix aloneis sufficient.Good speakerscan pack a considerableamount of background information into verbsby meansof afnxation' Productivity is probably one of the first aspects of morphology to be receding in Ollahoma Cayuga' The best Oklahoma speaker could use all of the affixes,but on occasion,she would hesitateto combineseveral within a singleword. When there were few other prepronominalpr-efixes' she used th;epetitive prefix s- with the particle 4:? 'again" as an Ontario speaker would. (5)a, aqtatirtany(rtuh 'shebeat her up' b. sagtati?tanyri?6:? 'shebeat her up again' When more prepronominalprefixes were present, she relied on the separate particle aloni to carry the meaning'again'' An Ontario speakerwould have iimply combined prefixes in that context' (6) Ontario: tgsasatkahat6:nih DUALIC-REPETITIVE-2.SG-SEMI.REFLEXIVE-tUIn.ATOUNd 'turn back around,re-turn' The incipientobsolescence of polysynth?sis:Cayuga 249

Oklahoma: teskaa:t6:ni 622 oulrrc-2.sc.lc-sBMT.REFLExIvE-turn.aroundagain 'turn aroundagain' At other times, the Oklahoma speaker did use expressionscontaining multiple prepronominal prefixes.These may have been somewhatmore familiar combinations. (7) Ka:oa iatetese:tih toward pARTrrrvE-ou,rlrc/crsrocetlvr-2sc.par-throw 'Throw it back here' The reluctanceto combine morphemeswithin single words extendsto noun incorporation.In all of the Northern Iroquoian languages,verbs may incorporate noun stemsreferdng to their patients. Incorporation can be usedfor severalpurposes. It often functions as a word-formation device, creating unitary lexical items to representunitary concepts.Many of the resultingverbs normally function aspredicates, like -tftwgta?'finisheating' ('meal-finish'),-atekhgni'eat' ('self-meal-make').Many others have been coinedto function asnominals, especially in responseto the introductionof so many new objectsrequiring names over the pastseveral centuries. Terms formed in this way include kagtanihkwih 'horse' ('it-log-haul-s') and kayd?takrahs'goat' ('it-body-stink-s'). Such words are not formed anew each time a speakeruses them, of course.The majority are learned and rememberedas lexicalunits in both Ontario and Oklahoma. Incorporationcan also be usedas a stylisticdevice in discourse,as a means ofbackgroundingestablished or incidentalinformation. When an important entity is first introducedinto discourse,or is in focus,it usuallyappears as a separatenoun. Onceits identityhas been established, it is usuallyreferred to only pronominallyor by an incorporatednoun. A characteristicof especially admi,redspeakers is the profusion of incorpor.ition in their speechfor stylistic effect . Somenoun-verb combinationsare usedvery often, while othersmay be quite rare. The best Oklahoma Cayugaspeaker used combinationsthat would be familiar asfrequently recuning units. For'she hasa big house/her houseis big', sheused nearly the sameword asthe Ontario speakerwould havechosen. Having a big houseis a frequentlyoccurring conceptual unit, in which neither the house nor its size is in focus. (She did omit the patient pronominalprefix for 'her'.) (E)Ontario: konghsowa:neh F.SG.PAT-houselafge.STATTVE Oklahoma: kanghsuw6:ngh N-houselarge .srATrvE The Oklahoma speakerused rarer combinationsless often, if at all. Where 250 Marianne Mithun sheused a simplexverb with a separatenoun, asbelow, the Ontario speaker noted that heiould haveused a verb with incorporatednoun' (As before, she did not specifythe possessorof the onion.) (9)Ontario: k6nQhsow6:ngh ko-?nQhs-owang r.sc.P,rr-onion-large.srAnvE 'shehas a big onion' Oklahoma: kuwa:n{ ?nfhsa? k-uwane ?nQhs-az l-big.srnrrvr onion-lot'm'rll'surnx 'the onion is big' Morphophonemicalternations, which can be quite complex in Cayuga, are essentiallythe same in both dialects'The shapeof the stem for 'leg' originally -hsin-, has been remodeledto -ahsin-, probably by analogyto ;foot'. in someforms, -olilrt- The differencehas alwaysbeen neutral?ed \ke ohsi:na?'aleg' andohs?ta? 'afoot'. In other forms, original differences have been leveledin Oklahoma. Compare Ontario, kqsihbkeft'on its leg' its leg' and and wqs?ftkeh'on its foof , with Oklahoma rygsihhkeh'on .oritik"h 'on its foot'. It is interestingthat sucha frequentword could be sutject to remodeling.

5. PhonologY same in Most phonologicaldistinctions and processes-have.remained the salientto Ontario and O-klahoma.One Oklahomavowel shift is particularly *o in all Ontario speakers: appearsas a lax' fronted, barely rounded [u] contexts. It is actually quite close to the Oklahoma Ca1'ugaspeakers' pronunciationof the vowel in Englishroo' (10) Ontario: [oth6:wee]'cold' Oklahoma: [uth*:wer] It could be hypothesizedthat the Oklahomavowel is simply the result of contaminationirom English.This seemsextremely unlikely, giventhe intact state of the rest of the phonology. All other vowels, including nasalized' creaky,and voicelessonis, haveremained just asin Ontario Furthermore' cause thereis nothingarticulatorily complex about the vowel [o] that should instability. Better hypothesescome from historicalconsiderations' The Huron' who occuoied w-hatis now Ontario until the mid-seventeenthcentury, were linguisticallyrelated to the Five Nations Iroquois, but they-constitutedan oniosins political unit. Although the Huron languageis no longer spoken' r."orO. j.ft by seventeenth-and eighteenth-centuryFrench missionaries The tncipient obsolescenceof polysynthesis: Cayuga 257 showseveral interesting phonetic alternations present in the languageat that time. In particular,the pronunciationofthe soundcorresponding to original *o Proto-Iroquoian wassometimes [o], and sometimes[u]. When they were defeated by the Five Nations Iroquois in 1649, the survivingHuron scatteredin severaldirections. Manywent eastwardtoward QuebecCity. A number of otherssettled among the Iroquois in New York State,including the Cayuga.Interestingly, some modern Ontario dialectsof Caluga show some of the same alternations recorded in seventeenth- *o century Huron. In particular, sometimesappears as [u] in certain contextsadjacent to n, y, and?, asin orui?no:lorui?nu:'itiscold' , oy1ishaq oytitsha?luyrt:6ha?'jaw' , or on62tsha?lorui?tsha?'tooth'.This [o]/[u] alter- ? nation may have originatedwith the early Huron refugees(Mithun 1985), then remained unchangedin Ontario, but been generalizedto [u] in Oklahoma. There is anotherpossible explanation behind the Oklahoma[u]. Someof the defeatedHuron bandedtogether with remnantsof neighboringtribes and fled westward toward Detroit, where they became known as the Wyandot. They eventuallymoved into northwesternOklahoma, not far from the areaoccupied by the OklahomaSeneca-Cayuga today. Although Wyandot is no longer spoken, we have excellent documentationof the languagein narrativesand notestranscribed by MariusBarbeau in the early part of this century (Barbeau 1960). From these it is clear that *o was pronounced [u] in all contexts in Wyandot. It may thus have been the Wyandotswho generalizedthe [o]/[u] alternationto [ul, thenpassed it on to the Oklahoma Cayuga.In any case,it is unlikely that rhe Oklahoma [u] is merely a mark of Englishinfluence or obsolescence. Patternsofstress and lengthare relatively complex in Cayuga,depending upon interactionsbetween syllable count from both endsof the word and syllablestructure. Phrase-medial words have ultimate stress,but in phrase- final words, stressplacement is essentiallyas follows. (The examplesare from Oklahoma Cayuga.) (a) If the penultimatesyllable of a word is even-numbered(counting from the left), it is stressed:kasd'tkeh'onitslips','mouth'. (b) If the penultimate syllable is odd-numberedand open, it is still usuallystressed: h$:ka:k 'goose'. (c) If the penultimatesyllable is odd-numberedand containsthe vowel /a/, stressmoves to the antepenult:kek$takp:'in my nose'. (d) If the penultimate syllable is odd-numberedand closed, stress moves to the antepenult: (e)sh wektha? 'cover , lid' . (e) If stresswould otherwisefall on the secondof two adjacentvowels, e it moves leftward to the first: tsi?doyg:'spider' . n For the mostpart, patterns I, these haveremained the samein both dialects. ts SeveralOklahoma words hint at incipientgeneralizations in the stressrules, Marianne Mithun however. The word'in my eye', for example'is pronouncedkel

When an odd-numberedsyllable is closedby glottal stop, the glottaliza- tion moves leftward and the entire syllable is laryngealized.In (12), the syllable-nP- is pronouncedas [ni?] when even-numbered,but-as [ii] when glottalization') odd-numbered.lepostrophes abovesonorants indicate (12) sa thro ii ta? 'your clothes' 12 3 4 The incipient obsolescenceof polysynthesis: Cayuga 253 Compare: (a) ka thrf ni? ta? 'my clothes' 72 3 45 Laryngealmetathesis is very much alivein Oklahoma,but it differsin two waysfrom the Ontario version.First, it appearsto be optionalin Oklahoma, often simply failing to operate. In the Oklahoma versionsof (13a and b), devoicingfailed to take place,a commonoccurrence. Compare the shapes of italicizedsyllables. (13)a. Underlying: keh soh ta? ke 'on my hand' L2 3 4 Ontario: k9 s6h ti keh 1234 Oklahoma: keh sfh ti keh 1234 b. Underlying: t9 hat 'he will dance' 72 Ontario: t? a:t 12 Oklahoma: tg ha:t 12 In the Oklahomaversions of (c) and (d), glottalizationfailed to spread. c. Underlying: ka? no wa? ke 'on its back' L2 34 Ontario: ki n6 fvi keh 12 34 Oklahoma: ka? nri wa? keh 12 34 d. Underlying: a ta? ti? thra? 'cane' l2 3,4 Ontario: a t6? ti thra? l2 34 Oklahoma: ta? ti? thra? 2 34 Note that in the Oklahomaversion of (13a)'on my hand', devoicingdid not spreadbut laryngealizationdid. In fact, the sameword may be pronounced sometimeswith devoicing,sometimes without. (14) Underlying: kehsa? ka hg:t 'my mouth' ('my lips have a hole') 1.234 Ontario: kg s6akp 9:t 1 Z 34 Oklahoma: kg s6r kp 9:t / keh se?kA 9:t I 2 34 12 34 254 Marianne Mithun (No doubletsoccurred in the Oklahoma corpusshowing the optionality of glottal spreadingfor a singleword, but this may simplybe an accidentof the data.) In bntario, the laryngealmetathesis is contextsensitive: it doesnot occur in syllables beginning with vowels or laryngeals, nor word-finally In Oktahoma,the processhas been generalized to all but word-finalsyllables' It appearsin vowel-initial syllablesas often as in other odd-numbered sylliUtes.(Vowel-initial syllablesoccur only word-initially') (1$ a. Ontario: ahsQh 'still' Oklahoma: ?sgh b. Ontario: ohk6:e? 'squash' Oklahoma: 9k6:er It also appears in laryngeal-initial syllables as often as in other odd- 2' numbered iyllables, whether the laryngeal is h or (16) a. Ontario: khehso:t 'mY grandmother' Oklahoma: kgsu:t b. Ontario: onfhohkwa? 'lYedhominY' Oklahoma: nfhgkwae c. Ontario: kek6hazkeh 'on mY eye' Oklahoma: kek6hikeh d. Ontario: ketsyg?oht6?ke '(on) my fingernail' Oklahoma: ketys6?9ta? 'my fingernail' The eeneral retention of the complex stressand metathesispatterns' which iepend on sflable count from the beginning of words, is especially impressivein light of anotherinnovation In Cayuga,the neuterpronominal prifix o- is often droppedbyboth Ontario and Oklahomaspeakers in certain color and animal names: (17) a. (o)nr6htd9:z 'green' b. (o)thahy6:nih'wolf' In both dialects, stressplacement and metathesisstill operate as if the missingsyllables were piesent. In the term for 'green', for example, the 2- syllabie -irah- would be unstressedand voicelessif it were initial, and -'4 would not undergometathesis if it were actuallythe secondsyllable' Oklahoma Cafuga hasextended this deletionprocess' The neuter prefix o- is usuallydropped from most nounsand stativeverbs' (18) a. Ontario: os6he?ta? 'beans' Oklahoma: s6he?tar b. Ontario: ohyuathi:yeht 'it is sharp' Oklahoma: (h)Yu?thi:Yeht No irrecoverable information is lost with a systematic dropping of the The incipient obsolescenceof polysynthesis: Cayuga 255 pronoun. The lossis not restrictedto the pronoun in Oklahoma,however. Words like thosein (19) are typical. (19) a. Ontario: owitr6:tha? 'butter' Oklahoma: ft6:tha? b. Ontario: sate:khf:nih 'eatl' Oklahoma: te:kh$:nih The loss is phonologicallyrather than morphologically conditioned. In (19a),the initial o- is the neuterpronominal prefix, but wi- is part ofthe root. In (19b), the original initial r- is the 2nd personsingular pronominal prefix, and -a- is the beginningof the semireflexive-dte-. No matter how many syllablesare deleted,however, stress and metathesiscontinue to reflectthe original syllablecount.

6, Acquisitionand deacquisition It hassometimes been suggested that obsolescinglanguages resemble child language.Those aspects of a languagethat are the mostcomplex tend to be acquiredlast and lost first. Unfortunately, moribund languagesare usually just the ones that are not being learned by children, so it is difficult to comparethe Rrstand last stagesof the samelanguage. This is the casewith Cayuga.It has been possible,however, to observesome children learning Mohawk as a first language(Mithun forthcoming).Their early Mohawk is both similar to, and different from, the Cayugaspoken in Oklahoma, in interestingways. In Mohawk, as in Cayuga,constituents are ordered accordingto their relative importanceto the discourse.Ordering principlesare consistently intact in both child Mohawk and Oklahoma Cayuga.As soon as Mohawk children use sentencesof more than one \i,ord, they order the words appropriately. Similarly, Oklahoma Cayugaspeakers have not lost their pragmaticallyconditioned order. As Annette Schmidt (1985c) has pointed out, children acquiring a languageand adultslosing one do differ in a fundamentalway. The language of you*n-uchildren is constrainednot only by structuralparameters, but also by their cognitivedevelopment. Speakers of recedinglanguages undergo no parallel shrinking of cognitive capacities:they simply use a different languagefor their purposes.This differenceis reflectedin the two Iroquoian languages. Children learning Mohawk develop syntactic complexity relativelyslowly, using few clausesper utterancefor a considerableperiod as they acquiremorphology. Oklahoma Cayuga speakers apparently continue to use sentencesof approximately normal complexity, even after their commandof productivemorphology has begun to weaken. The morphologyof the Mohawk childrenand the Oklahomaadults show striking parallels. Both the children and the adults tend to avoid long 256 Marianne Mithun combinationsof morphemes,even in caseswhere they control each affix individually. They substituteseparate particles for crucialmorphemes, and simplydo not mentionless important ones.The sameprinciplescharacterize the'use of incorporation. Both the children and adults use verbs with incorporatednouns, but they tend to useonly thosecombinations that they would have heard often as lexical items and learned and rememberedas units. There seemsto be relatively little creativeuse of the morphologyin the strictestsense for word formation, nor is there manipulationof alterna- tive morphologicalstructures for stylisticpurposes' Unforiunately, Mohawk does not share some of the most intriguing phonologicalcharacteristics of Cayuga,in particular, th€ complex stress issignmentand metathesispatterns. Child Mohawk doesshare one interest- For the first few yearsthat ing lhonological featurewith OlilahomaCayuga. ch]ldrenlearn Mohawk, there are stronglimitations on how many syllables they utter at once. Childrenbegin by pronouncingonly.the stres.sed syllable of each word, usually the penultimate or antepenultimatesyllable' This coincidessuffrciently often with a part ofthe stemso that somecommunica- tion is possible.As they progress,they add post-tonicsllables until their renditionsof words consistof the stressedsyllable plus all following ones' Once this is mastered, they begin to move leftward, so that utterances consistof the final three syllablesof words, then the final four syllables,etc' It is at about this point that their words begin to include pronominal prefixes and they discoverrnorphological structure. Limitations on the number of for a certain of time, syllablei pronounced per word still persist .length utthounh u few well-known words are pronouncedin their entirety' This tenden"cyto omit syllablesfrom the beginningsof words is reminiscent of the truncation of words in OklahomaCayuga described above'

7. Conclusion It is not clear to what extent circumstanceshave interfered with the Oklahoma speakers'initial acquisitionof Cayuga' It may be that those interviewed iearned the languagerelatively well aschildren' Their language doesnow differ in subtlewiys from that spokenin Ontario, particularlyin the areasof morphologyand phonology. Many differences between Ontario and Oklahoma Cayuga are probably due to the sortsof natural processesof changethat occur in all languages' *o to The raisingof to [u], the remodelingof the root for'leg' by.analogy contexts, 'foof , andlhe regularizationof stressassignment and metathesis areprobably in this category.It is interestingthat theselast innovationshave begun with relatively common, establishedwords This suggeststhat the striss and metathesis pattems are not necessarily mere diachronic relics oassedon with lexical items, but, rather, that they have had a certain iynchronic reality, at leastat somepoint. The incipitnt obsolucence of polysynthesi.s:Cqyuga 257 Certain other differences distinguishingOklahoma Cayuga could be interpretedas reductions, such as the shrinkingof the lexicalinventory and the truncation of words. Some of the creative devicesformerly used to expandthe systemmay be lessexploited by thesespeakers. The elaborate word-formationprocesses for the creationofnew lexicalitems are undoubt- edly usedless often now. The stylisticchoices afforded speakersby sucha productive morphology, with its rich inventory of affixesas well as noun incorporation,are probably alsoless exploited by Oklahomaspeakers than they oncewere. In the end, however,what is most striking about the Oklahomaspeakers is not the rninor ways in which they differ from Ontario speakers;it is, instead,their nearly completeretention of an amazinglycomplex morpho- logicaland phonologicalsystem, under suchlimited opportunitiesto useit.