Eastern Algonquian languages
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The Eastern Algonquian languages are a subgroup of the larger Algonquian family, itself a member of the Algic family; prior to European contact, the family consisted of around 17 languages, which streched from Newfoundland south into North Carolina. Eastern Algonquian languages descend from a putative proto-language, Proto-Eastern Algonquian. While Algonquian languages are often grouped into three large groups based on shared similarities (Plains Algonquian, Central Algonquian, and Eastern Algonquian), only Eastern Algonquian constitutes a separate genetic subgroup.
Family division
The languages are listed below along with dialects and subdialects. This classification follows Goddard (1996) and Mithun (1999).
1. Eastern Abenaki (also known as Abenaki or Abenaki-Penobscot)
- * Penobscot (also known as Old Town or Old Town Penobscot)
- * Caniba
- * Aroosagunticook
- * Pigwacket
3. Etchemin (uncertain - See Note 1)
4. Lenape (also known as Delaware)
- * Munsee
- * Northern Unami
- * Southern Unami
6. Loup B (uncertain - See Note 1)
7. Mahican (also known as Mohican)
- * Stockbridge
- * Moravian
- * Maliseet (also known as Malecite)
- * Passamaquoddy
- * North Shore
- * Natick
- * Wampanoag
- * Nauset
- * Cowesit
11. Mohegan-Pequot 12. Nanticoke (also known as Nanticoke-Conoy)
- * Nanticoke
- * Choptank
- * Piscataway (also known as Conoy)
14. Pamlico (also known as Carolina Algonquian, Pamtico, Pampticough, Christianna Algonquian)
15. Powhatan (also known as Virginia Algonquian)
16. Quiripi-Naugatuck-Unquachog 17. Shinnecock (uncertain)
Notes
Etchemin and Loup were ethnographic terms used inconsistently by French colonists and missionaries. There is some debate whether distinct groups could ever have been identified with those names.
Etchemin is only known from a list of numbers from people living on the coast of Maine between the St. John and Kennebec Rivers recorded in 1609 by Marc Lescarbot. The name Etchemin has also been applied to other material from what many scholars of Algonquian ethnography and linguistics believe to be Maliseet, Passamaquoddy, or Eastern Abenaki.
Some of the attested Loup vocabulary can be identified with different eastern Algonquian communities, including the Mahican, Maliseet, Passamaquoddy and other groups. Loup A and Loup B refer to two vocabulary lists which cannot be conclusively identified with another known community. Loup A may well be the Nipmuck language of central Massachusetts or possibly the neighboring Pocumtuck. It is somewhat similar to Agawam. Loup B seems like a composite of different dialects. It is closest to Mahican and Western Abenaki. They also may represent unknown tribes or bands, or may have been interethnic trade pidgins of some kind. Documentary evidence for Loup B is very thin (14 pages); the documentary evidence for Loup A is much more extensive (124 pages), being documented in a manuscript dictionary from the French missionary period. See [Uncertain/Extinct Algonquian Languages].
See also
External links
Bibilography
- Campbell, Lyle. (1997). American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509427-1.
- Goddard, Ives. 1994. The West-to-East Cline in Algonquian Dialectology. In William Cowan, ed., Papers of the 25th Algonquian Conference 187-211. Ottawa: Carleton University.
- Grimes, Barbara F. (Ed.). (2000). Ethnologue: Languages of the world, (14th ed.). Dallas, TX: SIL International. ISBN 1-55671106-9. Online edition: http://www.ethnologue.com/, accessed on Mar. 3, 2005.
- Mithun, Marianne. (1999). The languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-23228-7 (hbk); ISBN 0-521-29875-X.
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