Alabama language

Alabama
Albaamo innaaɬiilka
Spoken in	United States
Region	Texas
Native speakers	100  (date missing)
Language family	Muskogean Eastern Muskogean Alabama
Language codes
ISO 639-3	akz

Alabama (also known as Alibamu) is a Native American language, spoken by the Alabama-Coushatta tribe of Texas. It was once spoken by the Alabama-Quassarte Tribal Town of Oklahoma, but there are no more Alabama speakers in Oklahoma. It is a Muskogean language, and is believed to have been related to the Muklasa and Tuskegee languages, which are no longer extant. Alabama is closely related to Koasati and Apalachee, and more distantly to other Muskogean languages like Hitchiti, Chickasaw and Choctaw.

Phonology

Consonants

There are fourteen consonant phonemes in Alabama:

	Bilabial/ Labiodental		Alveolar		Postalveolar/ Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Plosive/ Affricate	p	b	t		tʃ	k
Fricative	f		s	ɬ			h
Nasal	m		n
Lateral			l
Semivowel	w				j

/s/ is apico-alveolar, [s̺]. The voiceless stops (p, t, k) are typically fortis and unlike in many other Southeastern languages they are not voiced between vowels. All consonants can occur geminated. The post-alveolar affricate /tʃ/ is realized as [s] when it occurs as the first member of a consonant cluster, but the geminate /tʃtʃ/ is realized as [ttʃ]. The only voiced obstruent in Alabama is /b/, which is realized as [m] when it occurs in coda (syllable final) position. The geminate /bb/ is therefore realized as [mb]. The two nasal phonemes become allophonically velar [ŋ] before the velar stop /k/. In syllable-final position, /h/ is often realized as lengthening of the preceding vowel.

Vowels

There are three vowel qualities, /i o a/. Vowel length is distinctive. Vowels can be nasalized in certain morphological contexts.

Prosody

In Alabama, the final syllable generally carries the primary stress, except in the case of certain grammatical operations which move the stress. There is also a pitch accent system with two contrastive tones: high-level and high-falling. The two phonemic tones have several different allophonic realizations depending on vowel length and neighboring consonants.

References

Bibliography

• Davis, Philip; & Hardy, Heather. (1988). Absence of noun marking in Alabama. International Journal of American Linguistics, 54 (3), 279-308.
• Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (Ed.). (2005). Alabama. In Ethnologue: Languages of the world (15th ed.). Dallas, TX: SIL International. Accessed online www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=akz on October 1, 2005.
• Hardy, Heather K. (2005). Alabama. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. pp. 75–113. ISBN 0803242353. 
• Hardy, Heather; & Davis, Philip. (1988). Comparatives in Alabama. International Journal of American Linguistics, 54 (2), 209-231.
• Hardy, Heather (2005). Native Languages of the Southeastern United States. Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press. pp. 82–84. ISBN 0803242353. 
• Hardy, Heather; & Davis, Philip. (1993). Semantics of agreement in Alabama. International Journal of American Linguistics, 59 (4), 453-472.
• Hardy, Heather; & Montler, Timothy. (1988). Imperfective gemination in Alabama. International Journal of American Linguistics, 54 (4), 399-415.
• Montler, Timothy; & Hardy, Heather. (1991). Phonology of negation in Alabama. International Journal of American Linguistics, 57 (1), 1-23.
• Rand, Earl. (1968). Structural phonology of Alabaman, a Muskogean language. International Journal of American Linguistics, 34 (2), 94-103.
• Sylestine, Cora; Hardy; Heather; & Montler, Timothy (1993). Dictionary of the Alabama Language. Austin: University of Texas Press. ISBN 0-292-73077-2. http://www.ling.unt.edu/~montler/Alabama. 

External links

• Online Alabama-English-Alabama Dictionary
• Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas
• Chíkmàa Oolahomma! – How to say "hello" in Alabama