Unami language

Unami is an Algonquian language initially spoken by the Lenape people in the late 17th century and the early 18th century, in the southern two-thirds of present-day New Jersey, southeastern Pennsylvania, and the northern two-thirds of Delaware. The Lenape later migrated, largely settling in Ontario, Canada, and Oklahoma. Today, it is spoken only as a second language.
Unami is one of two Delaware languages; the other is Munsee. The last fluent Unami speaker in the United States, Edward Thompson, of the federally recognized Delaware Tribe of Indians, died on August 31, 2002. His sister Nora Thompson Dean provided valuable information about the language to linguists and other scholars.
Lenni-Lenape literally means 'Men of Men', but is translated to mean 'Original People'. The Lenape names for the areas they inhabited were Scheyichbi, which means 'water's edge', and Lenapehoking, meaning 'in the land of the Delaware Indians'. It describes the ancient homeland of all Delaware Indians, both Unami and Munsee. The English named the river running through much of the traditional range of the Lenape after the first governor of the Jamestown Colony, Lord De La Warr, and consequently referred to the people who lived around the river as "Delaware Indians".

History

Unami is an Eastern Algonquian language. The hypothetical common ancestor language from which the Eastern Algonquian languages descend is Proto-Eastern Algonquian. An intermediate group, Delawarean, that is a descendant of Proto-Eastern Algonquian consists of Mahican and Common Delaware, the latter being a further subgroup comprising Munsee Delaware and Unami Delaware. The justification for Delawarean as an intermediate subgroup rests upon the high degree of similarity between Mahican and the two Delaware languages, but relatively little detailed argumentation in support of Delawarean has been adduced.
Compared to Munsee, Unami has undergone extensive phonological innovation, coupled with morphological regularization.
The PEA vowel system consisted of four long vowels *i·, *o·, *e·, *a·, and two short vowels *a and ə. The vowel history is as follows:

*i·,

" *o·,

*e·, and
*a·, and
*a.

This system was continued down to Common Delaware, but Munsee and Unami have innovated separately with respect to the vowel systems.

Revival attempts

The dominant modern version of the Southern Unami dialect called Lenape is taught by the Delaware Tribe of Indians, headquartered in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, which manages the Lenape Language Preservation Project. The same dialect was spoken by the Delaware Nation in Anadarko in the southwestern part of Oklahoma. Both Oklahoma and Delaware tribes have recorded native speakers and produced written lessons for instruction, which are available for sale from Various Indian Peoples Publishing Company, located in Texas. These efforts, in conjunction with other community efforts, comprise an attempt to preserve the language.
Some descriptions of the Northern Unami dialect as spoken during the 18th century are given by Moravian missionary John Heckewelder.

Phonology

Consonants

Unami has been analyzed as having contrastive geminate and non-geminate obstruent consonants, although this contrast is relatively weak. A full analysis of the status of the geminates, also known as long consonants, is not available, and more than one analysis of Delaware consonants has been proposed. The long consonants are described as having low functional yield, and they differentiate relatively few pairs of words but occur in contrasting environments. Some examples of contrastive geminate pairs include: ná k·ə́ntka·n 'then you danced' versus ná kə́ntka·n 'then there was dancing'; ní p·ɔ́·m 'his thigh' versus ní pɔ́·m 'the ham'; and nsa·s·a·k·ənə́mən 'I stuck it out repeatedly' versus nsa·sa·k·ənə́mən 'I stuck it out slowly'.
There are also rules that lengthen consonants in certain environments. The length mark is used to indicate gemination of a preceding consonant or vowel length, although in the literature on Unami the raised dot is often used for these purposes, as other diacritics may be used above vowels.

In the following chart, the usual transcription used in the sources is given with the IPA in brackets.

	Bilabial	Dental	Postalveolar	Velar	Glottal
Plosive	p	t	č	k
Fricative		s	š	x	h
Nasal	m	n
Lateral		l
Semivowel	w		j

Vowels

Unami vowels are presented as organized into contrasting long–short pairs. One asymmetry is that high short is paired with long, and the pairing of long and short is noteworthy. and are not distinguishable before,, and. Additionally, vowels are classified as strong and weak, which plays an important role in determining stress. Long vowels and vowels before consonant clusters are automatically strong. Certain short vowels, which are differentiated with a breve – – are also strong vowels because they are treated morphophonemically as long vowels, even though they are pronounced as short. In a sequence of syllables containing a short vowel followed by a consonant or consonant and , the odd-numbered vowels are weak, and the even numbered vowels are strong.
Furthermore, some short vowels are strong even in a weakening environment; such exceptions are often marked with a grave accent. Additionally, some vowels which are unaffected by predicted vowel syncope are marked with an acute accent. There is a predictable tendency, additionally, to nasalize and lengthen a vowel before and, so that is realized closer to from underlying.

	Front	Central	Back
Close
Mid
Open

	Front	Central	Back
Close
Mid
Open

Syllable structure

Syllable structure is diverse, permitting a certain amount of consonant clustering. The following consonant clusters can occur:

Additionally, certain consonants may combine with the semivowel. Some underlying forms may also contain and, but these are always removed by morphophonemic processes.

+
Stress

is generally predictable in Unami. The rightmost nonfinal strong vowel is stressed, or a strong vowel in final position if it is the only one in the word. Often when stress would be expected to fall on the antepenult it is shifted to the penult. This change is found in three conjunct endings:,, and. In the last case, the accent shifts to the penultimate only if it would otherwise fall on an antepenultimate short vowel, and if the consonant between them is voiced.

Phonological processes

Unami phonology is extremely complex, with various morphophonological rules, and a theoretical form usually undergoes a set of predictable phonological processes to produce the true form found in speech. There are about 17 such rules common to both Munsee and Unami, and another 28 unique to Unami, though this analysis ignores predictable exceptions, such as the class of static words which may skip many of these rules. These rules govern things such as consonant lengthening/shortening, vowel syncopation, metathesis, vowel coloring, etc.
A list of processes unique to Unami follow. These are written in linguistic notation. Thus, → ∅ / _V when are weak means that the sounds and become null in the context of when they are weak and appear before either or and another vowel. The slash means 'in the context of', and the underscore _ indicates where the or must occur. In some notations the pound symbol appears, indicating word boundaries. Regular parenthesis indicate optional conditions when framing phonemes or additional information about phonemes: "C=stop". The capital letters C, V, and N mean 'consonant', 'vowel', and 'nasal' respectively.

U-1: Weak and strong vowel marking
U-2: Weak short vowel loss before gutturals and : versus
* when are weak→ ∅ / _V
U-3: Vowel-coloring; underlying may be color to or in various environments.
*ə → o / _ -- although Goddard notes that this orthography may be imperfect because surface-phonemic and are not distinct before, and. Cf. with but .
*ə → i / _
*ə → o / _ h
*ə → i / _ h elsewhere
*ə → o / _ and // w_Nk
*ə → i / _ Nk elsewhere
*ə → o / _x
*ə → a / _x elsewhere
U-4: Vowel shortening before primary cluster of a nasal and another consonant
*V̅ → V̌ / _ NC
U-5: Semivowel assimilation
*h → hh / V̌_
U-6: Stop lengthening
*C^ → C· / V_ where V is strong
U-7: /h/-metathesis
*V̌hC → hV̌C except / VC_ where V is weak
U-8: An adjustment in vowel length before
*V → V̌ / _hC '
*V → V̅ / _hC '
U-9: -loss before stop consonant
*hC ' → C
U-10: Nasal assimilation, part 1
*NC ' → homorganic nasal + voiced stop
*NC ' → ⁿC / V_
U-11: Vowel-weakening and syncope
*a → ah / CV except some a ' → ∅ / #n_CV '
*ə → ∅ / _CV ' and / l_, y_l, w_w, m_m and / #_V
U-12: Nasal assimilation, part 2
*nC ' → homorganic nasal + C ' / #_
*VⁿC → Ṽ·C '
U-13: Voiced consonant assimilation
*CC ' → C^yC^y
U-14: Vowel syncope before, in which exceptions are marked with a grave accent
*V̌ → ∅ / _CV except / VC_ '
U-15: -loss in clusters
*h → ∅ / _
U-16: Vowel shortening
*V̅ → V̌ / _hCV and // _CC and / _C·ah
U-17: -loss
*V́hməna· → V́hna·
U-18: -insertion
*∅ → ə / h_ and / #_C
U-19: Metathesis of. Does not affect the roots 'well' and 'pull'.
*wC¹ → Cw / #_V if C¹=
*wC → Cw / #_
* → / #_
*w → / C_
*x → xw / o_
*wx → xw / #_
U-20: -coloring of -vowels and -loss
*w → / _ where C is not and V is not
*w → ∅ / V¹_V² where V¹ is not and V² is not
*w → ∅ / _o
U-21: -adjustment
*y → ∅ / V̄_V¹ where V¹ is not
*∅ → y / V¹_V² where V¹ is a front vowel and V² is a back vowel
*w → y / _k '
U-22: Final -loss. The dropping of the is optional, but the option is exploited differently by the two morphemes it affects.
*l → / _#
U-23: Final-vowel shortening
*V̄ → V̆ / _#
U-24: Final -, -, and -loss
*h → ∅ / _#
*w → / V̄_#
*w → ∅ / o_#
*w → ∅ / #_tə
*y → ∅ / i_#
U-25: Initial cluster and syllable loss. Initial clusters arising from morphophonemic rules U-11 and U-14 above are simplified; many initial weak-vowel syllables are lost. There are many exceptions, however, such that Goddard does not attempt to describe the pattern.
U-26: Consonant-shortening
*C· → C / _
U-27: Consonant-lengthening
*C → C· / #hV̆_V#
U-28: Negative vowel assimilation in forms with ₅, which was a recent innovation at the time Goddard was writing.
*V̄^xi → V̄^xV̆^x / _#