Biloxi language
Biloxi is an extinct Siouan language formerly spoken by the Native American Biloxi tribe in present-day Mississippi, Louisiana, and southeastern Texas.
Biloxi is an Ohio Valley, or Southeastern, Siouan language. It is related to Ofo and Tutelo.
History
The Biloxi tribe first encountered Europeans in 1699, along the Pascagoula River. By the mid-18th century, they had settled in central Louisiana. Some Biloxi were also noted in Texas in the early 19th century.By the early 19th century, their numbers had already begun to dwindle. By 1934, the last native speaker, Emma Jackson, was in her eighties. Morris Swadesh and Mary Haas spoke with her in 1934 and confirmed that Jackson knew the language.
Phonology
Multiple possible inventories have been suggested. This article follows that of Einaudi.Vowels
Along with contrastive nasalization, Biloxi also has phonemic vowel length.| Front | Central | Back | |
| Close | |||
| Mid | |||
| Open |
Dorsey & Swanton postulated phonemic vowel length, which Haas and Swadesh verified in speaking with Emma Jackson in 1934. Their findings appeared in Haas.
Also, there may still be some uncertainty about whether certain words contain /ą/ or /an/.
| Phoneme | Word | Gloss |
| /i/ | ide | "it falls" |
| /u/ | ku | "he gives" |
| /o/ | dohi | "anything rubbed or smeared" |
| /a/ | da | "he gathers" |
| /į/ | įde | "dung, manure" |
| /e/ | ane | "louse" |
| /ǫ/ | dǫhi | "he sees" |
| /ą/ | dą | "he holds" |
Consonants
Biloxi may also have a phonemic aspiration distinction for some segments.| Phoneme | Word | Gloss |
| /p/ | pa | "head" |
| /t/ | ti | "house" |
| /k/ | ką | "when" |
| /d/ | de | "he went" |
| /m/ | ma | "ground" |
| /c/ | ci | "they lie down" |
| /x/ | xą | "where" |
| /n/ | ne | "he stands" |
| /w/ | wa | "very" |
| /s/ | si | "yellow" |
| /h/ | hą | "and" |
| /y/ | yahe | "this" |
| Phoneme | Examples |
| /b/ | |
| /f/ | |
| /š/ | koniška kšixka |
Phonotactics
Syllable structure is V or V. However, three-consonant clusters are rare.Most words end in a vowel. The others usually end in /k/ or /x/ as a result of deletion: tox from toho.
Few consonant clusters end syllables. Most exceptions are caused by vowel deletion: tohoxk from tohoxka.
The following consonant clusters are observed:
| p | t | d | c | k | s | x | h | m | n | w | y | |
| p | ||||||||||||
| t | ||||||||||||
| d | ||||||||||||
| c | ||||||||||||
| k | ||||||||||||
| s | ||||||||||||
| x | ||||||||||||
| h | ||||||||||||
| m | ||||||||||||
| n | ||||||||||||
| w | ||||||||||||
| y |
- Geminates do not occur.
- /n/ sonorants and probably /d/ occur only as the second elements of clusters.
- /h/ and /m/ are never the second element.
- Fricatives do not co-occur.
| Cluster | Example |
| pst | pstuki~pastuki |
| psd | psdehi~psudehi |
| tsp | atspąhi |
| tsk | kutska~kudeska ątska |
| kst | aksteke |
| nsk | apadenska |
| pxw | pxwe~pxe |
| txy | akutxyi |
| kxw | xoxo kxwehe įkxwe |
| kxy | pukxyi |
Grammar
Morphophonemics
There are many verb roots and two mode markers with the morphophonemically-conditioned alternation e~a~i :- de
- ande, yuke
- ye
- e
- te
- dande
| E → /a/ | E → /i/ | E → /e/ |
| xti, intensifier | elsewhere |
Nouns and verbs whose stems end in -Vhi or -Vhį change to -Vx before the plural marker -tu:
That may occur with duti also:
The rule may optionally also apply in compounds and across word boundaries if the next element starts with CV:
Nouns that end in -di and can undergo pluralization change to -x: adi + tu → axtu.
Verbs whose stems end in -Vki, -Vpi, or -si optionally lose their -i before the plural marker:
The rule may cause the previous vowel to denasalize.
Verbs whose stems end in -ti or -hi may optionally change to -x before the negative mode marker ni:
Stems ending in -si optionally become -s.
The dative marker ki becomes kiy before a vowel.
The following rule is optional in compounds and across word boundaries and obligatory everywhere else:
V1V1 → V1
V1V2 → V2
However, there are a few words with two adjacent vowels, such as naǫ and hauti.
Two morphophonemically identical syllables may not appear contiguously, but the former is dropped.
Einaudi finds one counterexample: kite + te → kite te.
C1C1 → C1
The following rule optionally applies to compounds:
XV#CY → XCY
That may lead to otherwise-disallowed clusters, including geminates:
The following rule applies to compounds:
Vn#C → V̨#C
The following rules are conditioned by person markers on nouns and verbs:
Stems beginning with h and some beginning with y undergo the following :
Y, h → ∅ or nk, ay
However, that does not apply for y-initial stems:
The following rule applies before roots and the dative marker ki:
nk → xk
nk → ǫn
nk → n
nk → nk followed by a vowel
Optionally, ay → aya~ya followed by k or x
ay → i followed by a consonant
ay → ay~y~iy followed by a vowel
The use of different allomorphs in free variation is attested for some verbs.
The next four rules combine personal affixes and so apply only to verbs:
nk + ay → į followed by a consonant
nk + ay → ny followed by a vowel
nk + ∅ → axk
The subjunctive mode marker xo undergoes the following rule:
xo → xyo after i or į
The habitual mode marker xa optionally undergoes the following rule:
xa → xya after a vowel
The auxiliary ande' undergoes the following rule:
ande → antk
Morphology
The three word classes in Biloxi are verbs, substantives, and particles. Only the first two take affixes.Verbs are always marked for person and number and may also take dative, reciprocal, reflexive, and/or instrumental markers as well as mode markers, the object specifier, and auxiliaries. They are at or immediately before the end of clauses.
All nominal affixes may also be used with verbs, but nouns use a subset of the verbal affixes. They may not use dative, reciprocal, reflexive, or instrumental markers, or mode markers, or auxiliaries.
Particles serve many functions, including noun phrase marking and acting as adverbials.
Inflection
Nouns
Nouns may be inflectable or, as most are, non-inflectable.The former group inflects for person and number. It contains names of body parts and kin terms, which must inflect, and a few other personal possessions, with optional inflection. The person markers are nk- for the first person, ay- for the second person, and Ø- for the third person.
They may be pluralized with the marker -tu. The noun's number itself is not marked explicitly.
Examples of inflected nouns are below:
Here are examples of optionally inflected nouns:
Personal pronouns are formed by inflecting the root indi for person and number. Pronouns are always optional and emphasized. Singular pronouns may occur as the subject or the object, but the plurals are always subjects.
| nkindi | nkįxtu |
| ayindi | ayįxtu |
| indi | įxtu |
Biloxi has two common demonstratives: de and he. They may be marked for plurality as denani and henani, but that is very rare since they are used if plurality is unmarked elsewhere, and it is marked on the verb in noun phrases with classificatory verbs:
Verbs
Verbs inflect for person, number, and mode.Morphemes within verbs have the following order:
| person | thematic | dative, reciprocal, reflexive | instrumentals | root | number | mode |
Verbs may either be classificatory or normal. Classificatory verbs specify the subject's position and differ from normal verbs in that the first person is not inflected for person.
Inflection for person and number is identical to inflected nouns:
Because of the rules determining the surface manifestations of some combinations of person markers, 2nd-person-on-1st and 3rd-person-on-1st forms are identical, e.g. yaxtedi. Also, 2nd-person-subj., 2nd-person-on-3rd, and 3rd-person-on-2nd are identical; for example, idǫhi'.
-tu marks animate plurality.
However, -tu is not used:
- In the presence of the plural auxiliary yuke :
- : dǫhi yuke
- When the sentence has already been marked as plural:
- : aditu ką, hidedi nedi
- If it is followed by a plural motion verb:
- : dą kahi hą
But there are counterexamples :
The morpheme daha marks plural objects when they are not specified elsewhere. It comes after -tu and before all mode markers.
There are two examples of daha being reduced to ha:
a- may be added to some verb roots to mark an unspecified indefinite object:
Mode markers
There are many mode markers in Biloxi. Some are common and well understood, while others are infrequent and have elusive meanings.Derivation
Nouns
Nouns may be derived either through nominalizing verbs or by compounding.Verbs are nominalized via the prefix a-:
Compound nouns may be formed by combining two nouns or a noun and a verb.
noun + noun:
noun + verb:
Pronouns
For the personal pronoun indi, see above. įkowa may be used as a reflexive pronoun. It is possible that both of these, and perhaps the reflexive pronoun -įxki- are derived from a root in.Interrogatives
A number of interrogatives come from the prefix ca- :Some are derived from pronouns:
Verbs
Verbal derivation may occur by root derivation or stem derivation.Reduplication
Reduplication, common in Biloxi, is used for intensification or distributiveness. Usually, the first CVC of the root is reduplicated, but sometimes it is only the first CV:Compounding
Verbal compounds may be noun + verb or verb + verb.It seems that most noun-verb compounds are formed by using the verb ǫ :
Examples of verb-verb compounds:
Some of the above compounds end up having adjacent vowels, since syncope in compounds is optional.
Thematic prefixes
Thematic prefixes come after person markers and before dative markers and instrumentals.| Prefix | Meaning | Examples |
| a- | habitual action | dǫ → kadǫ ni duse → aduse |
| a- | directional indicator: "there, on" | dǫhi → adǫxtu ta yihi → ayihi |
| a- | transitivizer | hį → ahįtu kuhi → akuhitu |
| į- | instrumental prefix: "with" | ayą + į + duko → ayįduko į + das + k + ǫ → įdaskǫ |
| u- | "within a given area" | toho → utoho kci → unakcikci de |
Dative, reciprocal, and reflexive markers
The dative marker ki- is used after thematic prefixes.It is peculiar in that it may be used if someone else's body parts are the direct object.
It appears as kik- before ǫ and gives it a benefactive gloss; for example, kikǫ daha.
The reduplicated kiki- marks reciprocity. The plural marker -tu is then optional.
įxki- marks reflexives. It normally comes immediately after person markers, but in some third-person cases, ki- may come before it:
Instrumental prefixes
Instrumentals serve to mark how the event was carried out and immediately precede the root.| Prefix | Meaning | Examples | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| da- | "with the mouth or teeth" | AdverbsAdverbs may be derived from connectives, pronouns, verbs, and particles via a number of affixes:
|