Assiniboine language


The Assiniboine language is a Nakotan Siouan language of the Northern Plains. The name Assiniboine comes from the term Asiniibwaan, from Ojibwe, meaning "Stone Siouans". The reason they were called this was that Assiniboine people used heated stone to boil their food. In Canada, Assiniboine people are known as Stoney Indians, while they called themselves Nakota or Nakoda, meaning "allies".

Classification

The Dakotan group of the Siouan family has five main divisions: Dakota, Dakota, Lakota, Nakoda and Nakoda. Along with the closely related Stoney, Assiniboine is an n variety of the Dakotan languages, meaning its autonym is pronounced with an initial n. The Assiniboine language is also closely related to the Sioux language and to the Stoney language, although they are hardly mutually intelligible.

Official status

The Assiniboine language is not a government-recognized official language of any state or region where Assiniboine people live. There are two Reservations located in Montana, but the official language of the state is English. An estimate of native speakers ranges from less than 50, to about 100, to about 150 Assiniboine people, most of them elderly.

Related languages

, Assiniboine, and Stoney are closely related languages of the Dakota family. Many linguists consider Assiniboine and Stoney to be dialects. However, they are mutually unintelligible. Parks and DeMallie report that they are not variant forms of a single dialect, but that Assiniboine is closer to the Sioux dialects than it is to Stoney. The exact number of interrelationships among the subdialects and dialects comprising this continuum is unknown.
DIALECT GROUPSELF-DESIGNATIONPOLITICAL DESIGNATION
Santee-SissetonDakhótaSioux
Yankton-YanktonaiDakȟótaSioux
TetonLakȟótaSioux
AssiniboineNakhótaAssiniboine
StoneyNakhódaStoney

Geographic distribution

The languages of the Dakotan group are spoken in the following regions:
The Assiniboine language, the Dakota language and the Lakota language are usually classified into a group with D-N-L subgroup classification. As suggested by the name of the system, the variation in pronunciations of certain words follows the D-N-L rule. A typical example is given below:
English meaninggreasy
Santee-Sissetonsda
Yankton-Yanktonaisda
Tetonsla
Assiniboinesna
Stoneysna

Santee-Sisseton and Yankton-Yanktonai are languages that belong to the Dakotan group and Teton is a language in the Lakotan group. The table above illustrates a typical variation amongst these three languages. Just as the name of these three tribes suggest, the Dakota language, the Lakota language and the Nakota language have respective inclinations towards /d/, /l/, and /n/ in some substitutable consonants.

Arguments against the Classification System

Some scholars argue that the D-N-L classification system may not be totally accurate due to the non-rigidness of the substitution form. Siouan Indians live on an expansive continuum such that the distinction between different languages does not manifest in a rigid, clear-cutting criterion. Historically, linguists have debated on Yankton-Yanktonai languages and their proper positions into the D-N-L classification system, but the coexistence of /d/ and /n/ phonemes made such classification doubtful. This example of lexical difference between the languages of the Siouan group illustrates another possible distinction besides the D-N-L variations.
English meaninghorse
Santee-Sissetonsúkataka
Yankton-Yanktonaisukawaka
Tetonsukawaká
Assiniboinesúkataka
Stoneysuwatága

Sounds/Phonology

The phonemic inventory has 27 consonants, which includes aspirated, plain, and ejective stops. In addition to this, it has five oral vowels and three nasal vowels. It is a structure-preserving language. Assiniboine has no definite or indefinite articles, no nominal case system, and no verbal tense marking. Clauses unmarked are "realized," while clauses marked as "potential" by means of verbal enclitic, which is successful in producing a future/non-future distinction. The verbal system is split into active and stative. The active object pronominal affixes coincide with the stative verbs of the subject pronominal affixes.
The affricates and stops of Assiniboine are often described as voiced rather than voiceless, due to intervocalic voicing rules which result in surface voiced forms.

Oral vowels

[Nasal Vowels]

Character we use:IPA SymbolAlso used as
ąãan, an, aη, aN
įĩin, in, iη, iN
ųũun, on, un, uη, uN

There are five oral vowels in Assiniboine,, and three nasal vowels,.
Words that follow above rules
Syllables are primarily of CV structure. While codas are possible, they are restricted and uncommon, often becoming restructured as the onset of the following syllable. Onsets may include up to two consonants but codas must be simplex. Possible onset clusters are given in the following table:

Grammar

Morphology

Morphological processes for Assiniboine language are primarily agglutinating. In addition, the character of morpheme alternation in Assiniboine may be classified in terms of phoneme loss, phoneme shift, contraction, nasalization loss, syllable loss, syntactic contraction, and syntactic alternation.

Morphophonemics

Examples from Levin.
Contraction->When two syllabics come into contact they contract as in:


Phoneme loss: Syllabics
when /a/ is in medial position between /k/ and /h/:
when /o/ is in the medial position between /i/ and/k/:
when /e/ is in medial position between /p/ and /k/:
Phoneme loss: semi syllabics
Phoneme loss:non syllanics
/k/ is in medial position between/u/ and/k/ or /u/ and /h/ or /u/ and /n/ or /u/ and /y/
Phoneme shift:syllanics
Phoneme shift: non syllabics
When /a/--/e/ is in medial position between/g/ and /š/
When /a/--/e/ is in medial position between/g/ and /c/
When /g/ is in medial position between /a/ and /y/
Nasalization loss exists as follows:
Syllable loss occurs as follows:
Syntactic contraction: personal inflectional morphemes
Syntactic contraction with verbal themes occurs as follows
Syntactic alternation

Syntax

Assiniboine is SOV word order. Elements order might be different from the canonical SOV, this is not free nor scrambling word order, but instead, the result of topicalization or other movements. Out of context sentences are always interpreted as SOV order even if it sounds odd. For example, 'the man bit the dog', unless an element is moved into a focus
position. Focused element sentences are highly marked, and practically, a strange semantic reading is preferred over an interpretation of OSV. For example, the following sentence was interpreted as 'A banana ate the boy' by a native speaker, and to get the OSV reading out of it the object must be stressed, for example if the sentence was given as a reply to the question 'What did the boy eat?'.

Vocabulary/lexis

  1. wąži - one
  2. nųba - two
  3. yamni - three
  4. tópa - four
  5. záptą - five
  6. šákpe - six
  7. iyušna - seven
  8. šaknoğą - eight
  9. napcuwąga - nine
  10. wikcémna - ten
  11. saba - black
  12. ska - white
  13. ša - red
  14. to - blue
More words can be found in the Dakota-English Dictionary
Class 1
wa- 1st person+singular
ya- 2nd person
Class 2
ma- 1st person+singular
ni- 2nd person
For both class 1 and 2
ũ- 1st person-singular
o- 3rd person
wica- 3rd person
ci- 1st person + singular subject/ 2nd person object