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[[Category:Caddoan Mississippian culture]] |
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| Caddo | |
|---|---|
| Hasí:nay | |
| Native to | United States |
| Region | Caddo County in western Oklahoma |
| Ethnicity | Caddo people |
Native speakers | (25 cited 1997[1]) |
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-2 | cad |
| ISO 639-3 | cad |
| ELP | Caddo |
| This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. | |
Caddo is the only surviving Southern Caddoan language of the Caddo language family. It is spoken by the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma.[2] Today, only 25 elderly speakers are estimated to remain, none of whom are monolingual Caddo speakers, making Caddo a critically endangered language.[3] There are several mutually intelligible dialects of Caddo; some of the more prominent dialects include Kadohadacho, Hasinai, Hainai, Natchitoches, and Yatasi. Today, the most commonly used dialects are Hasinai and Hainai.[4] Caddo is linguistically related to the members of the Northern Caddoan language family; these include the Pawnee-Kitsai (Keechi) languages (Arikara, Kitsai, and Pawnee) and the Wichita language. Kitsai is now extinct, and Pawnee, Arikara, and Wichita each have fewer surviving speakers than Caddo does.[5] Another language, Adai, is postulated to have been a Caddoan language while it was extant, but because of scarce resources and the language’s extinct status, this connection is not conclusive, and Adai is generally considered a language isolate.[5]
As of 2012, the Caddo Nation teaches weekly language classes; language CDs, a coloring book, and an online learning website are also available.[6][7] As of 2010, a Caddo app is available for Android phones.[8]
Caddo has nineteen contrastive consonants, which is a normal-sized consonant inventory. It is somewhat unusual in that it lacks lateral consonants.[9] The IPA symbols for the consonants of Caddo are given below:
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ||||
| Plosive | Voiceless | p | t | k | ʔ | |
| Voiced | b | d | ||||
| Ejective | tʼ | kʼ | ||||
| Affricate | Voiceless | ts | tʃ | |||
| Ejective | tsʼ | tʃʼ | ||||
| Fricative | s | ʃ | h | |||
| Approximant | j | w | ||||
Caddo also features contrastive gemination (lengthening) of consonants, which is generally indicated in orthography by a double letter; e.g. /hɑ́ttih/ ‘woman’.[5]
Caddo has three contrastive vowel qualities, /i/, /ɑ/, and /u/, and two contrastive vowel lengths, long and short, for a total of 6 vowel phonemes.
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | i iː | u uː | |
| Mid | |||
| Low | a aː |
However, there is a great deal of phonetic variation amongst the short vowels. The high front vowel /i/ is generally (but not always) realized as its lower counterpart /ɪ/, and the high back vowel /u/ is similarly often realized as its lower counterpart /ʊ/. The low central vowel /a/ has a wider range of variation, pronounced (most commonly) as /ɐ/ when followed by any consonant except a semivowel or a laryngeal consonant, as a low central vowel (for which IPA lacks a symbol) at the end of an open syllable or when followed by a laryngeal consonant, and as /ə/ before a semivowel.
In general, the long vowels do not feature this kind of variation, but are simply lengthened versions of the phonemes represented in the chart.[10]
Caddo also has four diphthongs, which can be written a number of different ways; the transcription below shows the typical Caddo Nation orthography (a vowel paired with a glide) and the IPA version, represented with vowels and offglides.[5]
Caddo is a tone language. There are three tones in Caddo: low tone, which is unmarked (a); high tone, which is marked by an acute accent over the vowel (á); and falling tone, which is always long, and marked by a grave accent over the vowel (àː).
Tone occurs both lexically (as a property of the word), non-lexically (as a result of tonological processes), and also as a marker of certain morphological features; for instance, the past tense marker is associated with high tone.[10]
There are three processes that can create non-lexical high tone within a syllable nucleus.[10] (Note: see the section below for an explanation of other phonological changes which may occur in the following examples.)
There are two vowel syncope processes in Caddo, which both involve the loss of a low-tone vowel in certain environments.[10] The first syncope process is already described as Low tone-deletion (above). The second syncope process is described below:
As a result of the syncope processes described above, several consonant clusters emerge which are then invariably simplified by way of phonological process. At the present stage of research, these processes seem to be unrelated, except that they represent a phonetic reduction in consonant clusters; therefore, they are listed below without much further explanation.[10]
Similar to the consonant cluster simplification process, there are four processes by which a syllable-final consonant is altered.[10]
There are three word-boundary processes in Caddo, all of which occur word-initially:
These processes are generally not applicable in the case of proclitics (morphemes which behave like an affix and are phonologically dependent on the morpheme they are attached to, e.g. an apple in English).[10]
Caddo has a glottalization process by which any voiceless stop or affricate (except p) becomes an ejective when followed by a glottal stop.[10]
Caddo has a palatalization process which affects certain consonants when followed by /j/, with simultaneous loss of the /j/.
(Melnar includes a third palatization process, /tj/ → [ts]. However, /ts/ is not a palatal affricate, so this process has not been included here. Nevertheless, it is probably the case that this third process does occur.)[10]
Caddo has three processes by which a syllable nucleus (vowel) may be lengthened.[10]
The Caddo Nation is making a concentrated effort to save the Caddo language. The Kiwat Hasinay ('Caddo Home') foundation, located at the tribal home of Binger, Oklahoma, offers regular Caddo language classes, in addition to creating dictionaries, phrase books, and other Caddo language resources. They have also made a long-term project of trying to record and digitally archive Caddoan oral traditions, which are an important part of Caddo culture.[11]
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