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Shawnee ( ) is a Central Algonquian language spoken in parts of central and northeastern Oklahoma by the Shawnee people. Historically, it was spoken across a wide region of the Eastern United States, primarily north of the Ohio River. This territory included areas within present-day Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania.
Shawnee is closely related to other Algonquian languages, such as Fox language (Sac and Fox) and Kickapoo. It has 260 speakers, according to a 2015 census, although the number is decreasing. It is a polysynthetic language that is described as having freedom in .
Of the 4,576 citizens of the Absentee Shawnee Tribe around the city of Shawnee, Oklahoma, more than 100 are speakers. Of the 3,652 citizens of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe in Ottawa County, only a few elders are speakers. Of the 2,226 citizens of the Shawnee Tribe, or Loyal Shawnee in northeastern Oklahoma around White Oak, there are fewer than 12 speakers. Because of the low speaker population and the percentage of elderly speakers, Shawnee is classified as an endangered language. Additionally, language development outside of the home has been limited. A dictionary and portions of the Bible translated from 1842 to 1929 were translated into Shawnee.
The Shawnee Tribe launched a language immersion program in 2020 with virtual and in-person classes.
Conversational Shawnee booklets, CDs, and a Learn Shawnee Language website are available.
In (1) and (2), a near minimal pair has been found for Shawnee 'i' and 'ii'. In (3) and (4), a minimal pair has been found for Shawnee 'a' and 'aa'.
(1) ho-wiisi'-ta 'he was in charge'
(2) wi 'si 'dog'
(3) caaki yaama 'all this'
However, no quantitative contrasts have been found in the vowels and .
and contrast in the verbal affixes -ki (which marks third person singular animate objects) and -kki (which marks third person plural animate objects).
The Shawnee is most often derived from Proto-Algonquian *s.
Some speakers of Shawnee pronounce more like an alveolar . This pronunciation is especially common among Loyal Band Shawnee speakers near Vinita, Oklahoma.
and h are allophones of the same phoneme: occurs in syllable-final position, while occurs at the beginning of a syllable.
In Shawnee phonology, Gemination is contrastive. Words may not begin with vowels, and between a morpheme ending with a vowel and one starting with a vowel, a is inserted. Shawnee does not allow word-final consonants and long vowels.
These affixes (-ki, -kki) are object markers in the transitive animate subordinate mode. The subject is understood.
∅→h/#____V
A word may not begin with a vowel. Instead, an on-glide is added. For example:
There are two variants of the article -oci, meaning 'from'. It can attach to nouns to form prepositional phrases, or it can also be a pre-verb. When it attaches to a noun, it is -ooci, and when attached to a pre-verb it is -hoci.
∅→y/V(:)_____ V(:)
When one of the vowels is long, Shawnee allows for the insertion of .
C# → 0
A consonant is deleted at the end of a word.
In (a), a noun ends in a consonant when a locative case follows, but in (b), the consonant is deleted at the word end.
V:# → V#
A long vowel is shortened at the end of a word.
t is inserted between two vowels at the morpheme boundary.
As we know from the phonological rule stated above, a word may not begin with a vowel in Shawnee. From the morphophonological rule above, it can be assumed that ~.
-eecini(i) meaning 'Indian agent' appears as hina heecini or 'that Indian agent', and as ho-teecinii-ma-waa-li, meaning 'he was their Indian agent'. The of ho-t- fills the open slot that would otherwise have to be filled with .
When a long vowel and a short vowel come together at a morpheme boundary, the short vowel is deleted.
Shawnee shares many grammatical features with other Algonquian languages. There are two third persons, proximate and obviative, and two (or genders), animacy and animacy. It is primarily agglutination typologically, and is polysynthesis, resulting in a great deal of information being encoded on the verb. The most common word order is Verb-Subject.
The instrumental affix is not obligatory, but if it is present, it determines the type of transitivizing affix that can follow it, (see numbering scheme below) or by the last stem in the theme.
Instrumental affixes are as follows
| pw 'by mouth' | |
| n 'by hand' | |
| h(0) 'by heat' | |
| hh 'by mechanical instrument' | |
| l 'by projectile' | |
| (h)t 'by vocal noise' | |
| šk 'by feet in locomotion' | |
| hšk 'by feet as agent' | |
| lhk 'by legs' | |
| 1s | ni- + ROOT | ni- + ROOT + ki |
| 2s | ki- + ROOT | ki- + ROOT + ki |
| 3s | ho- + ROOT | ho- + ROOT + ki |
| 4s | ho- + ROOT + li | ho- + ROOT + waa + li |
| 1p (excl) | ni- + ROOT + na | ni- + ROOT + naa + ki |
| 2+1 (incl) | ki- + ROOT + na | ki- + ROOT + naa + ki |
| 2p | ki- + ROOT + wa | ki- + ROOT + waa + ki |
| 4p | ho- + ROOT + hi | ho- + ROOT + waa + hi |
| 1s | ni- + tθani | ni- + tθaniw+ali |
| 2s | ki- + tθani | ki- + tθaniw+ali |
| 3s | ho- + tθani | ho- + tθaniw+ali |
| 1p (excl) | ni- + tθane+na | ni- + tθane+na |
| 2+1 (incl) | ki- + tθane+na | ki- + tθane+na |
| 2p | ki- + tθani+wa | ki- + tθani+wa |
| 3p | ho- + tθani+wa | ho- + tθani+wa |
| Locative | tθan + eki | (unattested) |
| Diminutive | tθan + ehi |
SOV, SVO, VOS, and OVS are also plausible.
Since the person building the house (the governor) is disjointed from the person who the house is being built for (the grandfather), this disjunction is marked by placing one participant in the obviative. Since the grandfather is the focus of this narrative, the governor is assigned the obviative marking. Grammatically, kapenal-ee (-ee- < -ile- < -ileni- 'person') is the subject who is not in discourse-focus (marked by 3s OBVIATIVE), showing that grammatical relations and obviation are independent categories.
Similar interactions of inverse and obviation are found below. In Shawnee, third-person animate beings participate in obviation, including grammatically animate nouns that are semantically inanimate.
Independent Mode:
Inanimate Intransitive (II):
Refer to the examples below. Hina functions as a third-person singular pronoun.
Refer to the examples below. Hini fulfills the same functions as above for inanimate nouns. Locational and third-person singular pronominal uses are found in the following examples.
The affixes in the verb will reflect whether an animate agent is acting on someone or something lower in the animacy scale, or whether he or she is being acted upon by someone or something lower in the animacy scale.
Grammatical gender in Shawnee is more accurately signaled by the phonology, not the semantics.
Nouns ending in are animate, while nouns ending in are inanimate.Chrisley 1992:9 This phonological criterion is not absolute. Modification by a demonstrative (hina being animate and hini being inanimate, meaning 'that') and pluralization are conclusive tests.
In the singular, Shawnee animate nouns end in , and the obviative singular morpheme is .
Shawnee inanimate nouns are usually pluralized with stem +.
This causes animate obviative singular and inanimate plural to look alike on the surface.
wiskilo'θa- li
bird
inanimate plural
niipit- ali
my teeth
| beard | Kwenaloonaroll |
| general greeting (in the northeastern dialect) | Hatito |
| general greeting (in the southern dialect) | Ho |
| greetings | Bezon (general greeting)
Bezon nikanaki (general greeting spoken to a friend)
Howisakisiki (daytime greeting) Howisiwapani (morning greeting) Wasekiseki (morning greeting) |
| how are you? | Hakiwisilaasamamo, Waswasimamo |
| reply to Hakiwisilaasamamo and Waswasimamo | Niwisilasimamo |
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