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Lakota
Lakhota
Spoken in: United States, with some speakers in Canada 
Region: Primarily North Dakota and South Dakota, but also northern Nebraska, southern Minnesota, and northern Montana
Total speakers: 8,000–9,000
Language family: Siouan-Catawban
 Siouan
  Mississippi Valley
   Dakotan
    Sioux
     Lakota
Language codes
ISO 639-1: none
ISO 639-2: sio
ISO 639-3: lkt
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. The United States of America —commonly referred to as the Country to "Dominion of Canada" or "Canadian Federation" or anything else please read the Talk Page North Dakota ( is a state located in the Midwestern and Western regions of the United States of America. South Dakota ( is a state located in the Midwestern region of the United States of America. Nebraska ( is a state located on the Great Plains of the Midwestern United States and Minnesota ( Native Americans demonstrated the name to early settlers Montana ( is a state in the Western United States. One-third of the state in the western part contains numerous mountain ranges (approximately 77 named of the northern List of language familiesA language family is a group of Languages related by descent from a common ancestor called the Proto-language of that family Siouan-Catawban (also Catawban-Siouan, Siouan) is a Language family of North America that is located primarily in the Great Plains The Siouan (aka Siouan proper, Western Siouan) languages are a Native American Language family of North America, and the Sioux is a Siouan language. Regional variation Sioux has 3 major regional varieties with various sub- Lects ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family ISO 639-2 is the second part of the ISO 639 standard, which lists codes for the representation of the names of languages ISO 639 -3 (ISO 639-32007 is an international standard for Language codes The standard describes three‐letter codes for identifying languages In Computing, Unicode is an Industry standard allowing Computers to consistently represent and manipulate text expressed in most of the world's

Lakota (also Lakhota, Teton, Teton Sioux) is the largest of the three languages of the Sioux, of the Siouan family. Sioux (pronounced SUE are a Native American and First Nations people The Siouan (aka Siouan proper, Western Siouan) languages are a Native American Language family of North America, and the While generally taught and considered by speakers as a separate language, Lakota is mutually understandable with the other two languages, and is considered by most linguists one of the three major varieties of the Sioux language. Sioux is a Siouan language. Regional variation Sioux has 3 major regional varieties with various sub- Lects The Lakota language represents one of the largest Native American language speech communities left in the United States, with approximately 8,000–9,000 speakers living mostly in northern plains states of North and South Dakota. Indigenous languages of the Americas (or Amerindian Languages are spoken by indigenous peoples from the southern tip of South America to Alaska and North Dakota ( is a state located in the Midwestern and Western regions of the United States of America. South Dakota ( is a state located in the Midwestern region of the United States of America.

The language was first put into written form by missionaries around 1840 and has since evolved to reflect contemporary needs and usage.

Contents

Vowels

Lakota has five oral vowels, /i e a o u/, and three nasal vowels, /ĩ ã ũ/ (phonetically [ɪ̃ ə̃ ʊ̃]). Lakota /e/ and /o/ are said to be more open than the corresponding cardinal vowels, perhaps closer to [ɛ] and [ɔ]. The open-mid vowels make a class of Vowel sounds used in some spoken Languages The defining characteristic of an open-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned Orthographically, the nasal vowels are sometimes written with a following <ƞ>, <ŋ>, or <n>, and sometimes with ogoneks underneath, <į ą ų>. The ogonek ( Polish for "little tail" the Diminutive of ogon) is a Diacritic hook placed under the lower right corner of a vowel in the

Consonants

Bilabial Dental Alveolar Palatal Velar Uvular[1][2] Glottal
Nasal m n
Plosive unaspirated p t tʃ k ʔ
voiced (b) (g)
aspirated pʰ tʰ tʃʰ kʰ
ejective pʼ tʼ tʃʼ kʼ
Fricative voiceless s ʃ χ
voiced z ʒ ʁ
ejective sʼ ʃʼ χʼ
Approximant w l j h

The voiced plosives /b/ and /g/ should perhaps be considered allophones of /p/ and /k/, since for almost all words they are in complementary distribution, with [b] and [g] occurring only before /l/, /m/, /n/, /w/, and /j/, as well as in certain morphophonemic situations. In Phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a Consonant articulated with both Lips The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet In Linguistics, a dental consonant or dental is a Consonant that is articulated with the tongue against the upper teeth such as /t/ /d/ /n/ and Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior Alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli (the sockets Palatal consonants are Consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the Hard palate (the middle part of the roof of the mouth Uvulars are Consonants articulated with the back of the Tongue against or near the uvula, that is further back in the mouth than Velar consonants Glottal consonants are Consonants articulated with the Glottis. A nasal consonant (also called nasal stop or nasal continuant) is produced with a lowered velum in the mouth allowing air to escape freely through the A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a Consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the Vocal tract. Voice or voicing is a term used in Phonetics and Phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless Voice or voicing is a term used in Phonetics and Phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless Description Voiceless consonants are produced with the Vocal cords open and voiced consonants are produced when the vocal folds are fractionally closed In Phonetics, ejective consonants are Voiceless Consonants that are pronounced with simultaneous closure of the Glottis. Fricatives are Consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together Voice or voicing is a term used in Phonetics and Phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless Voice or voicing is a term used in Phonetics and Phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless In Phonetics, ejective consonants are Voiceless Consonants that are pronounced with simultaneous closure of the Glottis. Approximants are speech sounds ( Phonemes) that could be regarded as intermediate between Vowels and typical Consonants In the articulation of approximants The voiced uvular fricative /ʁ/ becomes a uvular trill ([ʀ]) before /i/. [1][2] The voiceless aspirated plosives have two allophonic variants each: those with a delay in voicing ([pʰ tʰ ʧʰ kʰ]), and those with velar friction ([pˣ tˣ kˣ]), which occur before /a/, /ã/, /o/, /ĩ/, and /ũ/ (thus, lakhóta, /la'kʰota/ is phonetically [laˈkˣota]; [ʧˣ] does not occur). For some speakers, there is a phonemic distinction between the two, and both occur before /e/. Some orthographies mark this distinction; others do not. The uvular fricatives /χ/ and /ʁ/ are commonly spelled <ȟ> (sometimes <ĥ>) and <ǧ>.

The spelling used in modern texts is often written without diacritics, resulting in the failure to mark stress and the confusion of numerous consonants: /s/ and /ʃ/ are both written s, /h/ and /χ/ are both written h, and the aspirate stops are written like the unaspirates, as p, t, c, k.

Prosody

All monomorphemic words have one vowel which carries primary stress and has a higher tone than all other vowels in the word. In Morpheme-based morphology, a morpheme is the smallest linguistic unit that has semantic meaning. In Linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain Syllables in a word This is generally the vowel of the second syllable of the word, but often the first syllable can be stressed, and occasionally other syllables as well. Stress is generally indicated with an acute accent: <á>, etc. Compound words will have stressed vowels in each component; proper spelling will write compounds with a hyphen. Thus mánza-ská, literally "metal-white", i. e. "silver, money" has two stressed vowels, the first a in each component. If it were written without the hyphen, as manzaska, it could only have one stress.

Phonological processes

A common phonological process which occurs in rapid speech is vowel contraction, which generally results from the loss of an intervocalic glide. Vowel contraction results in phonetic long vowels (phonemically a sequence of two identical vowels), with falling pitch if the first underlying vowel is stressed, and rising pitch if the second underlying vowel is stressed: kê: (falling tone), "he said that," from kéye; hǎ:pi (rising tone), "clothing," from hayápi. The phoneME project is Sun Microsystems reference implementation of Java virtual machine and associated libraries of Java ME with source licensed under the GNU If one of the vowels is nasalized, the resulting long vowel is also nasalized: čhą̌:pi, "sugar," from čhąhą́pi[1].

When two vowels of unequal height contract, or when feature contrasts exist between the vowels and the glide, two new phonetic vowels, [æː] and [ɔː], result[1]: iyæ̂:, "he left for there," from iyáye; mithɔ̂:, "it's mine," from mitháwa.

The plural enclitic =pi is frequently changed in rapid speech when preceding the enclitics =kte, =kį, =kštó, or =na. In Linguistics, a clitic is a grammatically independent and phonologically dependent Word. If the vowel preceding =pi is high, =pi becomes [u]; if the vowel is non-high, =pi becomes [o] (if the preceding vowel is nasalized, then the resulting vowel is also nasalized): hí=pi=kte, "they will arrive here," [hiukte]; yatką́=pi=na, "they drank it and. . . ," [jatkə̃õna][1].

Lakota also exhibits some traces of sound symbolism among fricatives, where the point of articulation changes to reflect intensity: zí, "it's yellow," ží, "it's tawny," ǧí, "it's brown" (Mithun 1999:33). In Articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation (also point of articulation) of a Consonant is the point of contact where an Obstruction (Compare with the similar examples in Mandan. Mandan is an endangered Siouan language Genetic relations It was initially thought to be closely related to the languages of the Hidatsa )

Grammar

Word order

The basic word order of Lakota is Subject Object Verb, although the order can be changed for expressive purposes (placing the object before the subject to bring the object into focus or placing the subject after the verb to emphasize its status as established information). In Linguistic typology, Subject Object Verb (SOV is the type of languages in which the subject, object, and Verb of a sentence appear or usually It is postpositional, with adpositions occurring after the head nouns: mas'óphiye él, "at the store" (literally 'store at'); thípi=kį ókšą, "around the house" (literally 'house=the around') (Rood and Taylor 1996). In Grammar, a preposition is a Part of speech that introduces a prepositional phrase.

Rood and Taylor (1996) suggest the following template for basic word order. Items in parenthesis are optional; only the verb is required. It is therefore possible to produce a grammatical sentence that contains only a verb.

(interjection)(conjunction)(adverb(s))(nominal)(nominal)(nominal)(adverb(s)) verb (enclitic(s))(conjunction)

Interjections

When interjections appear, the begin the sentence. An interjection is a Part of speech that usually has no connection with the rest of the sentence and simply expresses Emotion on the part of the speaker Buechel (1983) suggests that the interjection ma is used by women, while men use wa or hohʔ (see also Men's and women's speech below).

Conjunctions

It is common for a sentence to begin with a conjunction. Both chake and yukha can be translated as and; kʔeyas is similar to English but. Each of these conjunctions joins clauses. In addition, the conjunction na joins nouns or phrases.

Adverbs and Postpositions

Lakota uses postpositions, which are similar to English prepositions, but follow their noun complement. In Grammar, a preposition is a Part of speech that introduces a prepositional phrase. Adverbs or postpositional phrases can describe manner, location, or reason. There are also interrogative adverbs, which are used to form questions.

Nouns and Pronouns

As mentioned above, nominals are optional in Lakota, but when nouns appear the basic word order is Subject-Object-Verb. In grammatical theory, a noun phrase (abbreviated NP) is a Phrase whose head is a Noun or a Pronoun, optionally accompanied Pronouns are not common, but may be used contrastively or emphatically. In Linguistics and Semantics contrast is a relationship between two discourse segments

Lakota has four articles: wa is indefinite, similar to English a or an, and ki is definite, similar to English the. In addition, wazi is an indefinite article used with hypothetical or irrealis objects, and kʔu is a definite article used with nouns that have been mentioned previously. Irrealis moods are the main set of Grammatical moods that indicate that a certain situation or action is not known to have happened as the speaker is talking

There are also five demonstratives, which can function either as pronouns or as determiners. Demonstratives are deictic words (they depend on an external frame of reference that indicate which entities a speaker refers to and distinguishes those entities from others A determiner is a Noun modifier that expresses the reference of a noun or noun phrase including quantity rather than its attributes as expressed The demonstratives are lé (this), hé (that) hena (those), henáos (those two) and é. This last, é, is less specific, and is usually translated as this.

Verbs

Verbs are the only word class that are obligatory in a Lakota sentence. Verbs can be active, naming an action, or stative, describing a property. A stative verb is one which asserts that one of its arguments has a particular property (possibly in relation to its other arguments (Note that in English, such descriptions are usually made with adjectives. In Grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntactic role is to modify a Noun or Pronoun, giving more information about the )

Verbs are inflected for first-, second- or third person, and for singular, dual or plural grammatical number. In Grammar, inflection or inflexion is the way language handles grammatical relations and relational categories such as tense, mood, voice Grammatical person, in Linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event such as the speaker the Addressee, or others Dual is a Grammatical number that some languages use in addition to singular and Plural. In linguistics grammatical number is a Grammatical category of nouns pronouns and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one"

Morphology


Enclitics

Lakota has a number of enclitic particles which follow the verb, many of which differ depending on whether the speaker is male or female. In Linguistics, a clitic is a grammatically independent and phonologically dependent Word. In Linguistics, the term particle is a word lacking a strict definition but has the function of changing the relation of the parts of the sentence to one another and is therefore

Some enclitics indicate the aspect, mood, or number of the verb they follow. There are also various interrogative enclitics, which in addition to marking an utterance as a question show finer distinctions of meaning. For example, while he is the usual question-marking enclitic, hųwó is used for rhetorical questions or in formal oratory, and the dubitative wa functions somewhat like a tag question in English (Rood and Taylor 1996; Buchel 1983). A Rhetorical question is a Figure of speech in the form of a Question posed for its persuasive effect without the expectation of a reply Oratory is the art of (public speaking In ancient Greece and Rome, oratory was studied as a component of Rhetoric (that is composition and delivery Dubitative mood is a Grammatical mood found in some languages that indicates that the statement is dubious doubtful or uncertain A Tag question (also question tag) is a grammatical structure in which a declarative statement or an imperative is turned into a question by (See also Men and women's speech below. )

Men and women's speech

There are a number of enclitics which differ in form based on the gender of the speaker. Yeló (men) marks mild assertions, and kšt (men) marks stronger assertions. K(i)štó is the version used by women corresponding to men's yeló and kšt. For men, wą marks a mild opinion and yewą́ marks stronger opinions. The corresponding women's forms are ma and yemá, respectively. Yo (men) and ye (women) mark neutral commands, yethó (men) and nithó / įthó (women) mark familiar, and ye (both men and women) and na mark requests. He is used by both genders to mark direct questions, but men also use hųwó in more formal situations. So (men) and se (women) mark dubitative questions (where the person being asked is not assumed to know the answer). Dubitative mood is a Grammatical mood found in some languages that indicates that the statement is dubious doubtful or uncertain

While many native speakers and linguists agree that certain enclitics are associated with particular genders, such usage may not be exclusive. A first language (also mother tongue, native language, arterial language, or L1) is the language a human being learns from birth Linguistics is the scientific study of Language, encompassing a number of sub-fields Gender comprises a range of differences between men and women extending from the biological to the social That is, individual men sometimes use enclitics associated with women, and vice versa (Trechter 1999).

Examples of enclitic usage

Enclitic Meaning Example[3] Translation
ha continuous yáha "was going"
pi plural iyáyapi "they went"
la diminutive záptala "only five"
ke attenuative waste`lake "pretty good"
kte irrealis uyíkte "we will go" (future)
sni negative hiyu`sni "not come out"
sʔa repeating eyápi sʔa "they always say"
séca conjecture híla séca "it seems like he came"
ló assertion (masc) b. léló "(I hereby assert) I go"
yé assertion (fem) híla yé "(I hereby assert) he came"
he interrogative khoyákiphela he? "what do you fear?"
hųwó interrogative (masc. formal) tókhiya lá hųwó? "where, I ask?"
hųwé interrogative (fem. formal) Tákula hųwé? "What is it?"
wa dubative question séca wa "can it be as it seems?"
skheʔe evidential yáha skheʔe "he was going, I understand"
kʔeʔe evidential (hearsay) yapi kʔeʔe "they went, they say"

Phrases

"Hokahe!" is a phrase used by traditional Lakota people during battle. It means "let's go". Crazy Horse was known to use it to mean "charge!" It can be contracted to just "ho!". Crazy Horse ( Lakota: Thašuŋka Witko, literally "His-Horse-is-Crazy" (ca According to a Lakota Holy Man, Eagle Voice, as recounted by Nebraska poet John Neihardt, it is literally translated as "Hold fast. Johnathan (John Gneisenau Neihardt ( January 8, 1881 – November 24, 1973) was an American Author of Poetry There is more!"[4]

"Háu kola", literally, "Hello, friend," is the most common greeting, and was transformed into the generic motion picture American Indian "How!", just as the traditional feathered headdress of the Teton was "given" to all movie Indians. As "háu" is the only word in Lakhota which contains a diphthong, /au/, it may be a loanword from a non-Siouan language. In Phonetics, a diphthong (also gliding vowel) (from Greek grc δίφθογγος "diphthongos" literally "with two sounds" or "with [1]

Learning Lakota

Few resources are available for self-study of Lakota by a person with no or limited access to native speakers of Lakota. Here is a collection of some resources currently available:

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Rood, David S. , and Taylor, Allan R. (1996). Sketch of Lakhota, a Siouan Language, Part I. Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 17 (Languages), pp. 440–482.
  2. ^ a b Lakota Language Consortium (2004). Lakota letters and sounds.
  3. ^ Deloria, Ella. 1932. Dakota Texts. New York: G. E. Stechert.
  4. ^ Bobby Bridger: singer, songwriter, storyteller, artist, teacher

Bibliography

External links

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