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The Chickasaw language (Chikashshanompa’, IPA [tʃikaʃːanompaʔ]) is a Native American language of the Muskogean family. It is agglutinative and follows the pattern of Subject Object Verb. The language is closely related to, though perhaps not entirely mutually intelligible with, Choctaw. It is spoken by the Chickasaw tribe, now residing in Southeast Oklahoma, centered around Ada.

Sounds

Consonants

Chickasaw has 16 consonants. In the table below, the consonants are written in the standard Chickasaw orthography. The phonetic symbolization of each consonant is written in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to the right of each orthographic letter when the orthography differs from the IPA symbol.

• /w/ is labiovelar.
• Voiceless stops /p t k/ have a small amount of aspiration [pʰ tʰ kʰ], especially at the beginning of words.^[1]
• Voiced stops /b d ɡ/ may undergo lenition to voiced fricatives [β ð ɣ] between vowels.^[1]
• All consonants except for the glottal stop may be geminated and most consonants can occur in biconsonantal clusters.^[1]

Vowels

Long and short Vowels of Chickasaw. From Gordon, Munro & Ladefoged (2001:288). Nasal vowels correspond phonetically with the quality of long vowels.

Chickasaw has 9 vowels:

Chickasaw vowels contrast between short and long oral vowels and between long oral vowels and long nasal vowels. Short vowels are centralized (see chart): short i is phonetically [ɪ], short o is phonetically [o̟], and short a is phonetically [ə].

Short vowels are also phonetically lengthened when they occur in the second syllable of a sequence of even-numbered open syllables.^[3] For example, the word pisali ('I took him') is phonetically [pɪsəˑlɪ]. The lengthened short vowel is usually intermediate in length between a short vowel and long vowel. However, the phonetic realization varies depending on the individual speaker and also on phonetic environment. The lengthening does not occur at the end of words and is further restricted by certain morphological criteria.^[4]

Prosody

• pitch accent

Grammar

Verb

Pronominal affixes

Verb arguments (i.e. subject, direct object, indirect object) are indicated with pronominal affixes (both prefixes and suffixes) which are added to verb stems. The pronominal affixes are inflected according to number (singular, plural) and person (1st, 2nd).

Chickasaw has an active-stative pronominal system with two basic series of pronominal sets: an active series (I) and a stative series (II). Additionally, Chickasaw also has dative (III), negative (N), and reciprocal (IR) series.

The active series is used for active intransitive subjects and active transitive subjects. (An active subject, simply put, is a subject that is in control of the action while a stative subject does not have control of the action. This is the difference between She fell on purpose vs. She fell accidentally where the first she controlled the falling while the second she did not control the falling.) The active series is in the table below:

The third person lacks an affix and usually does not distinguish between singular and plural. The first person singular affix is a suffix while the other affixes are prefixes. The first person plural has two forms: il- which is used before vowels and ii- which is used before consonants — thus, il-iyya "we go", ii-malli "we jump". An example inflectional paradigm of the verb malli "to jump" is below (with the pronominal affixes underlined):

The stative series (II) is below. This series is used to indicate stative intransitive subjects and direct objects.

Example with stative intransitive subjects, lhinko "to be fat":

Example with direct objects, pisa "to look at (someone)" (the subject in the paradigm below is unmarked because it is in the third person):

Both active and stative affixes can occur together in which case the active affix indicates the active subject and the stative affix indicates the direct object. Active prefixes occur before stative prefixes. When ish- "active second person singular" occurs before sa- "stative first person singular", it results in issa- (the sh assimilates to s). Likewise, hash- "active second person plural" + sa- is realized as hassa-. The full paradigm of pisa "to look at" is below:

Verb grades

• verb grades (gemination, epenthesis)

References

External links

• Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Chickasaw
• A phonological and phonetic study of word-level stress in Chickasaw (pdf)
• The phonology of pitch accents in Chickasaw (pdf)

Bibliography

• Gordon, Matthew. (2004). "A phonological and phonetic study of word-level stress in Chickasaw". International Journal of American Linguistics, 70 (1), 1-32.
• Gordon, Matthew; Munro, Pamela; Ladefoged, Peter (2000), "Some phonetic structures of Chickasaw", Anthropological Linguistics 42: 366–400 
• Gordon, Matthew; Munro, Pamela; Ladefoged, Peter (2001), "Illustrations of the IPA: Chickasaw", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 31 (2): 287–290 
• Munro, Pamela (2005), "Chickasaw", in Hardy, Heather K.; Scancarelli, Janine, Native Languages of the Southeastern United States, Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, pp. 114–156 
• Munro, Pamela; & Willmond, C. (1994). Chickasaw: An analytical dictionary. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

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