Язык Унами: история и сохранение языка народа Ленапе

Language spoken by the Lenape people

Unami was an Algonquian language 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. 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. 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".

Unami is an Eastern Algonquian language. The hypothetical common ancestor language from which the Eastern Algonquian languages descend is Proto Eastern Algonquian (PEA). 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· (from PEA merger of Proto Algonquian (PA *i· and *i to PEA *i·), *o· (from PEA merger of PA *o· and *o ), *e· (from Proto Algonquian *e·), and *a· (from Proto Algonquian *a·; the short vowels are*ə (from Proto Algonquian *e), and *a (from Proto Algonquian *a). This system was continued down to Common Delaware, but Munsee and Unami have innovated separately with respect to the vowel systems.

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.

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.

Third person participants are marked for gender (animate versus inanimate), obviation (proximate versus obviative), and presence (nonabsentative versus absentative). Generally, the inanimate, obviative, and absentative categories are more marked than their opposites (i. e. animate, proximate, and nonabsentative), but it is not clear whether animacy or inanimacy is the more marked of the opposition. The first and second persons are not marked for presence or obviation and are always animate.

The first mentioned and/or primary animate third person is proximate; all other third persons are obviative, unless they act in conjunction with the proximate participant. Verbs are also inflected to indicate whether the verbal action is proximate on obviate or obviate on proximate.

Third person participants can be marked by a special set of endings indicating their absence from the general area of the focus of discourse. For example, absentative endings are used when speaking of the deceased (even if the corpse is physically present), as in the sentence no·lăčahko·ná·na nkahe·səná·na ('our (excl.) mother (abv.) treated us well'), in which both verb and noun are marked with the absentative ending.

Nouns in Unami are classified as animate or inanimate, which is reflected in verbal conjugation. Animate nouns denote human beings, animals, spirits, trees, and certain fruits, tubers, root vegetables, and other unpredictable exceptions like ko·n ('snow') and nhíkaš ('my fingernail'). (However, berries, nuts, and vegetables growing above ground are generally inanimate.) Thus, té·hi·m ('strawberry'), xáskwi·m ('corn'), ke·skúnthak ('pumpkin'), mpi ('water'), and nhíka·t ('my leg') are inanimate, while lə́nu ('man'), xho·k ('snake'), mahtán'tu ('Devil') and hɔ́pəni·s ('potato') are animate. However, traditionally inanimate nouns which are directly addressed or personified are treated as animate. Thus, traditionally inanimate ăsǝ́n ('stone') is treated as animate in the sentence šá·i a· ăsǝ́nak kǝnčí·mowak ('the stones would immediately cry out').

+ Inanimate intransitive independent indicative Person màxhe· 'be red' alǝt 'rot' IN máxke·(w) alǝ́t IN pl. maxké·yɔ(l) alǝ́t·o(·l)

Verbal prefixes are used only in the independent order, although some forms of the independent order lack a prefix. There are three of them: (first person), (second person), and (third person). If a stem has an underlying initial vowel, a is inserted after the prefix, and before this and other stem initial consonants a is inserted. Sometimes, this contracts with a stem initial to except when the would be phonetically shortened via rule U 4a. Examples include: ('I get up from lying') versus ('he gets up'). Two roots with initial extend the syllable with when adding prefixes; these roots are ('there') and ('so many'), e. g. náni ntəntala·wsí·ne·n ('that is where we live [our lives]') from the animate intransitive stem
Prefixes are mutually exclusive and are selected based on the following rule: if one of the participants is second person, the second person prefix is used; if not, if one of the participants is the first person, then the first person prefix is used; if none of these applies, other forms, if they take a prefix, take the third person prefix. This is the well known Algonquian 2 1 3 precedence rule.

Suffixes are grouped into eight positional classes. These are:

The second position consists of diminutives in 2 and pejoratives in 2 (in both of these, the is unstable.) An example of a diminutive is ('the little one comes'), contrasted with the pejorative ('the undesirable one came'). The use of in the formation of diminutives seems to be an innovation of Unami, as many other Algonquian languages use or (in fact, the diminutive of Munsee is ).

In position three are the affixes 3, which marks the obviative third person, and 3, which marks the plural.

Position four contains the negative affix 4 and prohibitive imperative and future imperative forms, which have complex series of alternants.

Position six contains the affix endings: marks the preterite, and ~ mark the present.

Position seven contains peripheral endings, which are used to mark the nominal category of some 3rd person participants in forms in the independent and conjunct (but not imperative) orders.

Position eight reflects the subjunctive, prohibitive, and future modes.