Tone and Accent in Oklahoma Cherokee

Tone and Accent in Oklahoma Cherokee
Author: Hiroto Uchihara
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2016-03-04
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0191059846

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This book examines the tone and accent of Oklahoma Cherokee, in which six possible pitch patterns can occur on a syllable: low, high, low-high, high-low, lowfall, and superhigh. It provides a comprehensive description and analysis of these patterns, examining their distribution, their source, the principles that determine their positions, and the nature of tonal alternations. The tone and accent of Oklahoma Cherokee displays some typologically unusual features, such as the glottal stop as the historical source for both high and lowfall tones, the coexistence of tonal and accentual systems, the existence of multiple accentual systems, and the morphosyntactic use of accents. Studies on tones in general have focused mainly on analytical languages or languages with little morphology, but Cherokee is unique in that it is polysynthetic at the same time as tonal. The emergence of tones in Oklahoma Cherokee is recent and its source is easily traceable, but the language has already developed a complex tonal alignment and tonal phonology. Hiroto Uchihara's description of tone and accent in Oklahoma Cherokee will not only contribute to a deeper understanding of the sound system of Cherokee, but will also advance the historical study of Iroquoian languages as a whole, and the typological study of tonal and accentual systems more generally.

Cherokee Reference Grammar

Cherokee Reference Grammar
Author: Brad Montgomery-Anderson
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages: 537
Release: 2015-09-08
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 0806149337

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The Cherokees have the oldest and best-known Native American writing system in the United States. Invented by Sequoyah and made public in 1821, it was rapidly adopted, leading to nineteenth-century Cherokee literacy rates as high as 90 percent. This writing system, the Cherokee syllabary, is fully explained and used throughout this volume, the first and only complete published grammar of the Cherokee language. Although the Cherokee Reference Grammar focuses on the dialect spoken by the Cherokees in Oklahoma—the Cherokee Nation and the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians—it provides the grammatical foundation upon which all the dialects are based. In his introduction, author Brad Montgomery-Anderson offers a brief account of Cherokee history and language revitalization initiatives, as well as instructions for using this grammar. The book then delves into an explanation of Cherokee pronunciation, orthography, parts of speech, and syntax. While the book is intended as a reference grammar for experienced scholars, Montgomery-Anderson presents the information in accessible stages, moving from easier examples to more complex linguistic structures. Examples are taken from a variety of sources, including many from the Cherokee Phoenix. Audio clips of various text examples throughout can be found on the accompanying CDs. The volume also includes three appendices: a glossary keyed to the text; a typescript for the audio component; and a collection of literary texts: two traditional stories and a historical account of a search party traveling up the Arkansas River. The Cherokee Nation, as the second-largest tribe in the United States and the largest in Oklahoma, along with the United Keetoowah Band and the Eastern band of Cherokees, have a large number of people who speak their native language. Like other tribes, they have seen a sharp decline in the number of native speakers, particularly among the young, but they have responded with ambitious programs for preserving and revitalizing Cherokee culture and language. Cherokee Reference Grammar will serve as a vital resource in advancing these efforts to understand Cherokee history, language, and culture on their own terms.

Prosodic Phonology in Oklahoma Cherokee

Prosodic Phonology in Oklahoma Cherokee
Author: Samantha Lee Cornelius
Publisher:
Total Pages: 247
Release: 2019
Genre: Cherokee language
ISBN:

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In this dissertation, I provide an analysis for word level prosody in Cherokee, a Southern Iroquoian language spoken in Northeastern Oklahoma and Western North Carolina. Focusing on Cherokee as it is spoken in Oklahoma, I analyze right edges of Cherokee words, showing that the boundary tone is predictable, though its distribution is conditioned by lexical tonal phonology and other word-final phenomena. In order to account for the distribution of the boundary tone, I must first provide an analysis of lexical tone in Cherokee. There have been previous comprehensive tone analyses (Lindsey 1985; Wright 1996; Uchihara 2013), which argue for a tonal inventory with two underlying tones (high and low fall), a super high accent, and a default low which does not interact with the tonal phonology. I summarize these previous analyses and discuss what generalizations they can and cannot account for. I also argue that some low pitches in Cherokee are the surface realization of an underlying low tone. By including an underlying low tone in the tonal inventory of Cherokee, problematic surface pitch sequences from previous research can be explained. Before analyzing the boundary tone, I show all possible syllable shapes and discuss Word-Final Vowel Deletion, an optional fast speech process which often results in nonvicanonical word-final codas. I argue that there is a prosodic word which maps to a morphosyntactic word, as well as a larger prosodic word which includes enclitics. I also describe clitic linearization and attachment, and discuss how Cherokee clitics show a number of typologically unusual properties. Finally, I describe all possible alignments of the boundary tone. While mentions of the boundary tone in previous literature claim that the boundary tone only appears on word final vowels, I show a much wider range of possible surface positions for the boundary tone: 1) the boundary tone appears on a word-final vowel, 2) the boundary tone appears on anon word-final vowel, and 3) the boundary tone does not appear at all. I use a Stratal OT framework to account for the alignment of the boundary tone, as well as interactions between the surface position of the boundary tone and lexical tonal phonology, clitic attachment, and Word-Final Vowel Deletion.

Master's Theses Directories

Master's Theses Directories
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2005
Genre: Dissertations, Academic
ISBN:

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"Education, arts and social sciences, natural and technical sciences in the United States and Canada".

Beginning Cherokee

Beginning Cherokee
Author: Ruth Bradley Holmes
Publisher:
Total Pages: 332
Release: 1976
Genre: Cherokee language
ISBN: 9780806113616

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The Cherokee Nation

The Cherokee Nation
Author: Robert J. Conley
Publisher: UNM Press
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2005
Genre: History
ISBN: 0826332358

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Robert Conley's history of the Cherokees is the first to be endorsed by the Cherokee Nation and to be written by a Cherokee.