Кроу: состояние и перспективы сиуанского языка долины Миссури

Missouri Valley Siouan language of Montana, US

Crow is closely related to Hidatsa spoken by the Hidatsa tribe of the Dakotas; the two languages are the only members of the Missouri Valley Siouan family. Despite their similarities, Crow and Hidatsa are not mutually intelligible.

According to Ethnologue with figures from 1998, 77% of Crow people over 66 years old speak the language; "some" parents and older adults, "few" high school students and "no pre schoolers" speak Crow. 80% of the Crow Nation prefers to speak in English. However, R. Graczyk claims in his A Grammar of Crow (2007) that "[u]nlike many other native languages of North America in general, and the northern plain in particular, the Crow language still exhibits considerable vitality: there are fluent speakers of all ages, and at least some children are still acquiring Crow as their first language." Many of the younger population who do not speak Crow are able to understand it. Almost all of those who do speak Crow are also bilingual in English. Graczyk cites the reservation community as the reason for both the high level of bilingual Crow English speakers and the continued use and prevalence of the Crow language. Daily contact with non–American Indians on the reservation for over one hundred years has led to high usage of English. Traditional culture within the community, however, has preserved the language via religious ceremonies and the traditional clan system. Currently, most speakers of Crow are 30 and older but a few younger speakers are learning it. There are increased efforts for children to learn Crow as their first language and many do on the Crow Reservation of Montana, particularly through a Crow language immersion school that was sponsored in 2012. Development for the language includes a Crow language dictionary and portions of the Bible published from 1980 2007. The current literacy rate is around 1 5% for first language speakers and 75 100% for second language learners. Teens are immersed in Crow at the Apsaalooke language camp sponsored by the Crow Nation.

Crow is closely related to Hidatsa spoken by the Hidatsa tribe of the Dakotas; the two languages are the only members of the Missouri Valley Siouan family.

Crow is a polysynthetic language.

Basic stems consist of one to four syllables (with four being rare) and always end in a vowel. Monosyllabic stems have long vowels or diphthongs, e. g., bií, 'stone, rock'; bía, 'woman'. The vast majority of nouns in Crow are derived stems. Derivational processes in nominal morphology include affixation and compounding.

Prefixes will render a relative clause into a derived noun. ak 'agent nominalizer': creates agentive nouns (ex. 'singer', 'dancer') from active verbs or verbs plus incorporated objects. ala 'locative, temporal, or manner nominalizer': 'where, when, how' derived from verbs or verbs plus incorporated nouns. In some cases, ala may follow the noun creating a lexicalized relative clause. baa 'indefinite nominalizer': Derived from stative verbs, inalienably possessed nouns plus stative verbs, active transitive verbs, and from active intransitive verbs. ii 'instrumental nominalizer': Derived from active transitive and intransitive verbs, and from transitive verbs plus incorporated nouns. bale 'depossessivizer': Allows an inalienably possessed noun to occur without a possessor.

There are two basic types of compounding in Crow: noun noun compounds and noun verb compounds. Noun noun compounds often involve a whole part relationship: the first noun refers to the whole and the second to the part. Members of the compound may also be themselves compounds or derived nouns. Noun verb compounds consist of a noun plus a stative verb. There are a number of select exceptions.

Personal names constitute a distinct morphological class of nouns in Crow. They are marked with the definite determiner suffix /sh/, which attaches to the stem rather than to the citation form.

Verbal derivational morphology is composed of prefixes, suffixes, one infix (chi, 'again; possessive reflexive') and reduplication, which expresses an "iterative, distributive, or intensive sense to the meaning of the stem."

The morphological verb classes in Crow mirror a semantic distinction: Crow is an active–stative language, meaning that the subject of an active verb is treated differently than the subject of a stative verb. Active verbs and stative verbs are marked with distinct sets of pronominal affixes: the "A set" for active verbs and the "B set" for stative verbs. Active verbs may have one, two, or three arguments (making them respectively intransitive, transitive, or ditransitive). An intransitive verb takes a subject (SV), a transitive verb takes a subject and an object (SOV) and a ditransitive verb takes a subject and two objects (SO1O2V). In a relative clause built on an active verb, when the subject of the verb is the head of the relative clause and it is an animate noun phrase, it is marked by ak. Stative verbs may have zero (impersonal), one, or two arguments. In a relative clause, the subject of a stative verb is marked with m or in elevated discourse, dak. There may also be an absence of marking on the head noun where the entire relative clause is marked with the indefinite nonspecific determiner m.

Crow is a subject–object–verb (SOV) language; it is a verb final and head marking. In noun phrases, the order is possessor–possessum, with the person marker of the possessor identified by a prefix to the possessum. Subordinate clauses precede matrix clauses, and are marked by a suffixed clause final marker. Relative clauses are internally headed. Crow has postpositional phrases, with the postposition often occurring as a prefix to the following verb. There is no distinct category of adjectives; instead, stative verbs function as noun phrase modifiers. Crow is an active–stative language, with verbs divided into two classes, active (both transitive and intransitive) and stative, largely on semantic grounds. This is also often called a "split intransitive" language.

Relative clauses in Crow are complex and subject to theoretical debates. There are two types of relative clauses in Crow: lexically headed and non lexically headed. There are two basic relativizers /ak/ and /ala/, several composite forms based on ala plus baa 'indefinite pronoun' and instances with no relativizer. /ak/ indicates the subject of the relative clause is relativized and marks the subject as animate, and generally agentive. It can occur in both lexically and non lexically headed clauses. /ala/ may indicate a locative, temporal or manner adverbial is the head of the relative clause. In non lexically headed relative clauses, /ala/ can sometimes be interpreted as the head of the clause itself. It can also occur in both lexically and non lexically headed clauses. The relativizers are bound, with many exception, but they are generally prefixed to the word that contains the verb of the relative clause. Relative clauses are marked with final determiners. If the definite referent of the relative clause has already been accounted in the discourse or is otherwise obvious, the relative clause is marked with the definite / sh/. Relative clauses can also be marked with the indefinite determiner marker / m/; generally this is used to imply that the referent is being introduced into the discourse for the first time. However, the nominal head is almost always marked by the indefinite determiner / m/.