Chitimacha language

Chitimacha (/ˌtʃɪtɪməˈʃɑː/ CHIT-i-mə-SHAH^[4] or /tʃɪtɪˈmɑːʃə/ chit-i-MAH-shə,^[5] Sitimaxa^[6]) is a language isolate historically spoken by the Chitimacha people of Louisiana, United States. It became extinct in 1940 with the death of the last fluent speaker, Delphine Ducloux.

Chitimacha
Sitimaxa Čitimaaša
Pronunciation	[t͡ʃitimaːʃa]
Native to	USA
Region	Southern Louisiana
Ethnicity	Chitimacha
Extinct	1940, with the death of Delphine Ducloux[1][2]
Revival	In progress, language learned by children through immersion program[3]
Language family	Language isolate
Language codes
ISO 639-3	ctm
Glottolog	chit1248
ELP	Chitimacha
Distribution of Chitimacha language

Although no longer spoken, it is fairly extensively documented in the early 20th-century work (mostly unpublished) of linguists Morris Swadesh^[7][8] and John R. Swanton. Swadesh in particular wrote a full grammar and dictionary, and collected numerous texts from the last two speakers, although none of this is published.

Language revitalization efforts are underway to teach the language to a new generation of speakers.^[9][10][11] Tribal members have received Rosetta Stone software for learning the language. As of 2015, a new Chitimacha dictionary is in preparation, and classes are being taught on the Chitimacha reservation.^[12]

Classification

Chitimacha has recently been proposed to be related to, or a member of, the hypothetical Totozoquean language family.^[13] An automated computational analysis (ASJP 4) by Müller et al. (2013) found lexical similarities between Chitimacha, Huave, and Totozoquean.^[14]

However, since the analysis was automatically generated, the grouping could be either due to mutual lexical borrowing or genetic inheritance.

An earlier, more speculative, proposal suggested an affinity with the also hypothetical group of Gulf languages.^[13]

Phonology

Brown, Wichmann, and Beck (2014) give the following phoneme inventory based on Morris Swadesh's 1939 analysis.^[15]

Consonants

		Bilabial	Alveolar	Post- alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m	n
Plosive	voiceless	p	t			k	ʔ
	glottalized	pʼ	tʼ			kʼ
Affricate	voiceless		t͡s	t͡ʃ
	glottalized		t͡sʼ	t͡ʃʼ
Fricative			s	ʃ			h
Approximant		w			j

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i iː		u uː
Mid	e eː	ə	o oː
Open		a aː

Orthography

Transcription has been done by researchers in a number of orthographies, including French, Spanish,^[16] and Americanist.^[17] Members of the Chitimacha tribe have developed a practical orthography using the Latin alphabet which does not use diacritics^[17] or special characters.^[18] It retains elements of the orthography earlier used by Morris Swadesh.^[18]

Grammar

Chitimacha has a grammatical structure which is not dissimilar from modern Indo-European languages but it is still quite distinctive. Chitimacha distinguishes several word classes: verbs, nouns, adjectives (verbal and nominal), quantifiers, demonstratives. Swadesh (1946) states that the remaining word classes are hard to distinguish but may be divided "into proclitics, postclitics, and independent particles". Chitimacha has auxiliaries which are inflected for tense, aspect and mood, such as to be. Polar interrogatives may be marked with a final falling intonation and a clause final post-position.

Chitimacha does not appear to have adopted any grammatical features from their interactions with the French, Spanish or Americans.^[19]

Pronouns

Verbs are inflected for person and number of the subject. Ambiguity may be avoided by the use of the personal pronouns (shown in the table below), but sentences without personal pronouns are common. There is no gender in the personal pronouns and verbal indexes. Subject and object personal pronouns are identical.

	singular	plural
1st person	qix [ʔiš]	qux [ʔuš]
2nd person	him(q) [himʔ]	was [was]
3rd person	hus [hus]	hunks [hunks]
[20]

Pronouns are more restricted than nouns when appearing in a possessive construction. Pronouns cannot be proceeded by a possessive unlike nouns.

Nouns

There are definite articles in Chitimacha.^[21] Nouns are mostly uninflected; there are only approximately 30 nouns (mostly kinship or referring to persons) which distinguish a singular or plural form through a plural suffix or other formations.

Nouns are free, or may be possessed by juxtaposing the possessor and the possessed noun.

ʔiš ʔinž̹i = my father ("I father")

was ʔasi ʔinž̹i = that man's father ("that man father")

Sample sentences

The following sentences and translations are from the book "Modern Chitimacha (Sitimaxa)" (2008), endorsed by the Chitimata Tribal government's Cultural Department. ^[22]

Qix susbi qix gãmpi nẽ gaptk, huupup cuug, huutãnki nahpiig, gastãnk hup nãxmiig cuug, juqunk kãmcin getiki.

Qix

My

susbi

gun

qix

my

gãmpi

ammunition

nẽ

and

gaptk,

taking,

huupup

lake+to

cuug,

going,

huutãnki

boat-in

nahpiig,

over-crossing

gastãnk

north

hup

to

nãxmiig

hunting

cuug,

going,

juqunk

soon

kãmcin

deer

getiki

I+struck

Qix susbi qix gãmpi nẽ gaptk, huupup cuug, huutãnki nahpiig, gastãnk hup nãxmiig cuug, juqunk kãmcin getiki

My gun my ammunition and taking, lake+to going, boat-in over-crossing north to hunting going, soon deer I+struck

"Taking my gun and my ammunition and going toward the lake, I crossed over in a boat and hunted toward the north, where I soon killed a deer."

We nux gaptk, him susbi wey hix hi kaatẽmiig, wetk nãxmiig cuucuux, qaxtkãnki qoonãk qun kun getsuy.

We

That

nux

stone

gaptk,

taking,

him

your

susbi

gun

wey

that

hix

with

hi

thither

kaatẽmiig,

rubbing,

wetk

then

nãxmiig

hunting

cuucuux,

if+you+go,

qaxtkãnki

then

qoonãk

soon

qun

some

kun

thing

getsuy

you+will+kill

We nux gaptk, him susbi wey hix hi kaatẽmiig, wetk nãxmiig cuucuux, qaxtkãnki qoonãk qun kun getsuy

That stone taking, your gun that with thither rubbing, then hunting if+you+go, then soon some thing you+will+kill

"If you take that stone and rub your gun with it and then go hunting, you will soon kill something."

Hãnã hup cuyqi, nẽncuu waaksti hi qehiqi.

Hãnã

House

hup

to

cuyqi,

he+went

nẽncuu

too

waaksti

late

hi

thither

qehiqi

he+arrived

Hãnã hup cuyqi, nẽncuu waaksti hi qehiqi

House to he+went too late thither he+arrived

"He went to the house, but he arrived too late."

References

1. Fogelson, Raymond; Sturtevant, William C. Handbook of North American Indians. Vol. 14: Southeast. Government Printing Office. ISBN 978-0-16-087616-5.
2. Chitimacha at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
3. Hieber, Daniel W. (July 27, 2015). "Renaissance on the Bayou: The Revival of a Lost Language". The Conversation. Archived from the original on July 28, 2015.
4. Brightman, Robert A. (2004). "Chitimacha". In Sturtevant, William (ed.). Handbook of North American Indians. Vol. 14: Southeast. p. 642.
5. Waldman, Carl (2009). Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes. Infobase. ISBN 978-1438110103.
6. Granberry, Julian (2008). "7". Modern Chitimacha (Sitimaxa) (2nd ed.). München: LINCOM Europa. ISBN 978-3895863523. Called Sitimaxa by its speakers - 'Language of Many Waters,' the lanuguage has been spoken since time immemorial in southern Louisiana along the Gulf Coast from the Mississippi River Delta West to the Texas border.
7. Swadesh, Morris (1948). "Sociologic Notes on Obsolescent Languages". International Journal of American Linguistics. 14 (4): 226–235. doi:10.1086/464009. JSTOR 1262876. S2CID 144458026.
8. Swadesh, M. (1934). "The phonetics of Chitimacha". Language. 10 (4): 345–362. doi:10.2307/409490. JSTOR 409490.
9. "YouTube – Chitimacha Language Episode – Finding Our Talk 3". youtube.com. Retrieved January 26, 2010.^{[dead YouTube link]}
10. "Press Release, Media Room, Rosetta Stone". Archived from the original on October 20, 2017. Retrieved August 26, 2012.
11. Larry Abramson (Director) (February 2, 2010). "Software Company Helps Revive 'Sleeping' Language". All Things Considered - NPR. Retrieved August 26, 2012.
12. Heflin, Judy (August 2015). "The Successful Revival of the Chitimacha Language". Language Magazine. Retrieved October 3, 2015.
13. Brown, Cecil H.; Wichmann, Søren; Beck, David (2014). "Chitimacha: A Mesoamerican language in the Lower Mississippi valley". International Journal of American Linguistics. 80 (4): 425–474. doi:10.1086/677911. S2CID 145538166.
14. Müller, André; Velupillai, Viveka; Wichmann, Søren; et al. (October 2013). "ASJP World Language Trees of Lexical Similarity". 4.
15. Swadesh, Morris (1939). "Chitimacha grammar, texts and vocabulary" (Document). Philadelphia: Franz Boas Collection of Materials for American Linguistics, American Philosophical Society. Mss.497.3.B63c G6.5.
16. Nathalie, Dajko; Walton, Shana (2019). Language in Louisiana: Community and Culture. University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 978-1-4968-2386-1. OCLC 1137797868.
17. Hieber, Daniel W. (2019). "Semantic Alignment in Chitimacha". International Journal of American Linguistics. 85 (3): 313–363. doi:10.1086/703239. ISSN 0020-7071. S2CID 198714798.
18. Dagostino, Carmen; Mithun, Marianne; Rice, Keren, eds. (2023). The Languages and Linguistics of Indigenous North America A Comprehensive Guide. DeGruyter. doi:10.1515/9783110600926. ISBN 978-3-11-059798-1.
19. Swadesh, Morris (1946). "Chitimach". In Hoijer, Harry (ed.). Linguistic structures of native America. New York: Viking Fund. pp. 312–336.
20. Granberry, Julian (2008). "5. Sitimaxa Particles". Modern Chitimacha (Sitimaxa). München: LINCOM Europa. p. 86.
21. Kaufman, David V. (2014). The Lower Mississippi Valley as a Language Area (Doctoral dissertation). University of Kansas.
22. Granberry, Julian (2008). "Sample Siximaxa Sentences". Modern Chitimacha (Sitimaxa). München: LINCOM Europa. pp. 101–104.

Further reading

• Brown, Cecil H.; Wichmann, Søren; Beck, David (2014). "Chitimacha: a Mesoamerican language in the Lower Mississippi Valley". International Journal of American Linguistics. 80 (4): 425–474. doi:10.1086/677911. JSTOR 10.1086/677911. S2CID 145538166.
• "Chitimacha Language and the Chitimacha Indian Tribe (Chitamacha, Chetimacha, Shetimasha)". Native Languages. Retrieved August 26, 2012.
• Swanton, John Reed (1919). A structural and lexical comparison of the Tunica, Chitimacha, and Atakapa languages. Govt. Printing Office. Retrieved August 25, 2012.
• Toomey, Thomas Noxon (1914). Relationships of the Chitimachan Linguistic Family. Hervas Laboratories. Retrieved August 25, 2012.

External links

• OLAC resources in and about the Chitimacha language