Full Description
2019 Choice Outstanding Academic Title
Published through the Recovering Languages and Literacies of the Americas initiative, supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
In Clues to Lower Mississippi Valley Histories David V. Kaufman offers a stunning relational analysis of social, cultural, and linguistic change in the Lower Mississippi Valley from 500 to 1700. He charts how linguistic evidence aids the understanding of earlier cultural and social patterns, traces the diaspora of indigenous peoples, and uncovers instances of human migration. Historical linguistics establishes evidence of contact between indigenous peoples in the linguistic record where other disciplinary approaches have obscured these connections.
The Mississippi Valley is the heartland of early North American civilizations. The region is a rich and diversified center of transportation for every part of eastern North America and to Mesoamerica. The Lower Mississippi Valley region emerged as the home of the earliest mound-building societies in the Americas and was home to some of the most impressive kingdoms encountered by Spanish and French explorers. The languages of the region provide the key to the realities experienced by these indigenous peoples, their histories, and their relationships. Clues to Lower Mississippi Valley Histories focuses on relationships that constitute what linguists call a sprachbund (language union), or language area. Kaufman illuminates and articulates these linguistic relationships through a skillful examination of archaeological and ethnohistorical data.
Clues to Lower Mississippi Valley Histories examines the relationship between linguistics and archaeology to elucidate the early history of the Lower Mississippi Valley.
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
Abbreviations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Methodology
Arrangement
PART 1: Geography, Archaeology, Peoples, and Languages
Chapter 1: Geography and environment
The Gulf of Mexico
Mobile Bay
Rivers
Geology
Flora and fauna
Chapter 2: Archaeology and history
Archaeological periods
Major Mississippian period settlements
Trade
Agriculture
Chapter 3: Peoples, migrations, and languages
Peoples
Migrations
Languages
The periphery
Atakapas
Biloxis .
Chitimachas
Choctaws and Chickasaws
Natchez
Ofos (Mosopeleas)
Tunicas
Other peoples and languages
Mobilian Trade Language
Sign Language
PART 2: Language Contact
Chapter 4: Language contact
Methodology
Method of data collection
Method of Analysis
Weighting features
Words and calques
Method of data organization
Method of analysis
Chapter 5: Phonetic and phonological features
Inventory of LMV phonemes
Consonant phonemes
Most relevant phonetic and phonological features of the LMV sprachbund
Chapter 6: Morphological features
Language universals
Most relevant morphological features of the LMV sprachbund.
Discourse-marking
Positional verb auxiliaries
Verbal number suppletion
Least relevant morphological features of the LMV sprachbund
Chapter 7: Word borrowings and calques
Word borrowing
Basic vocabulary
Semantic classes of borrowings
Widespread borrowings in the LMV
Calques
Thomason borrowing scale
Other
LMV lexicon and agriculture
Maize in the LMV
LMV lexicon and weaponry
Language, migration, and oral history
Possible LMV-Mesoamerica connections
Conclusion
Summary and synthesis
A caveat
Further study
Appendix
Bibliography
