Chickasaw Guide to Linguistics: History, Phonology, and Orthography

Abstract

You may notice that this work is not titled “Guide to Chickasaw Linguistics”, nor is it titled “Linguist’s Guide to Chickasaw”. This is an intentional choice, and one that illustrates the philosophy behind its creation. A traditional grammar sketch is written by and for linguists. They are dense in complicated terminology which are often unexplained. While these grammars certainly contribute greatly to language revitalization efforts, they are not always ideal for your average community member. Another popular type of grammar sketch is a pedagogical grammar, designed to help individuals learn a second language. Many Indigenous languages have fantastic pedagogical grammars. One of my favorites is A Tohono O’odham Grammar (1983), written by my mentor Ofelia Zepeda. It was truly created by and for the language’s community, an ideal that all linguistic texts should strive for. I would imitate this and write my own pedagogical grammar, but the Chickasaw language already has a fantastic pedagogical grammar! Chikashshanompa’ Kilanompoli’ (2012), written by Pamela Munro and Catherine Willmond, is one of the greatest resources for learning about the Chickasaw language, whether as a language learner or as a linguist. This is neither a traditional grammar nor a pedagogical grammar. Its audience is not the worldwide Linguistics community, nor is it your average Chickasaw citizen. Instead, this work is intended to be read by Chickasaw people who are not (yet) linguists, but want to dip their feet into the field. At the same time, reading this will further your knowledge of the Chickasaw language itself. In many ways it is like a Linguistics 101 textbook, but instead of showing you examples from languages around the world, it is solely focused on the Chickasaw language. It can be read by people who are fluent speakers of the language, or by people with no exposure to it at all. Likewise, it can be read without any prior knowledge of linguistics. It is my hope that, by the end, you will have picked up quite a bit of linguistic theory and terminology! Though prospective Indigenous linguists are the main target audience for this work, I believe it will prove to be quite versatile. I envision Chickasaw language teachers (current or prospective) referring to this work to help them structure their lessons. In much the same way that an English teacher may take some linguistics courses to improve their ability to teach the language, a Chickasaw language teacher may use this brief foray into the field of linguistics to great effect. This text could even serve as class material for a Chickasaw Linguistics course, if such a course would draw enough interest. Members of other Indigenous communities may also draw inspiration from this work, applying the knowledge shared here to their own languages. I write this thesis with the belief that linguistics is the greatest tool to record, revitalize, and celebrate language, and the linguist is the one who wields that tool. It would be disingenuous, however, for us to not acknowledge the colonial origins of the field. Linguistics is ultimately rooted in the same Western European research traditions that have consistently pilfered knowledge from our communities and offered us little in return. Even today many linguists engage in “salvage anthropology”, extracting as much data as possible from Indigenous languages and cultures with the belief that they are doomed to go extinct. We know the truth. We are still here, our population is increasing, and our languages are waking up. Every word of this thesis is written from an explicitly and unapologetically Indigenous perspective. Linguistics remains disproportionately dominated by scholars of a colonial background, but it need not be. In order to secure a future for Indigenous languages around the world, those tools must fall into the hands of individuals with a deep passion for the topic. As there is no one more passionate about their language than Chickasaw people themselves, I hope that this grammar can inspire more of us to become true tashkanompa?— language warriors — and fight to protect Chikashshanompa! This thesis is intended to discuss phonetics, phonology, orthography, prosody, historical linguistics and sound change, syllable structure, and the basic morphological properties of nouns and verbs. As such, this thesis will not be an exhaustive exploration of Chickasaw morphology, nor will it delve into syntax, typology, constituent and clause structure, or discourse. These topics are deserving of their own entire thesis.