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New Perspectives on Language Variety in the South
Historical and Contemporary Approaches 2nd Edition
Michael D. Picone Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Michael D. Picone, Catherine Evans Davies (eds.
ISBN(s): 9780817318154, 0817318151
Edition: 2
File Details: PDF, 5.51 MB
Year: 2015
Language: english
NEW
PERSPECTIVES
ON LANGUAGE
VARIETY IN
THE SOUTH
NEW
PERSPECTIVES
ON LANGUAGE
VARIETY IN
THE SOUTH
HIS�T ORI�C AL AND
CONTEMPORARY
APPROACHES

Edited by
MICHAEL D. PICONE
and CATHERINE EVANS DAVIES

THE UNIVERSITY OF ALA�BAMA PRESS

Tuscaloosa
 The University of Ala�bama Press
Tuscaloosa, Ala�bama 35487-�0380
uapress.ua.edu

Copyright © 2015 by the University of Alabama Press

All rights reserved.

Inquiries about reproducing material from this work should be addressed to the University
of Ala�bama Press.

Typeface: Minion and Triplex

Manufactured in the United States of America

Cover image and design: Gary Gore

The paper on which this book is printed meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI Z39.48-�1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

New perspectives on language variety in the South : historical and contemporary approaches
/ edited by Michael D. Picone and Catherine Evans Davies.
pages ; cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8173-1815-4 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8173-8736-5 (e book)
1. English language—Variation—Southern States. 2. English language—Dialects—Southern
States. 3. English language—Southern States—Pronunciation. 4. Language and languages—
Variation—Southern States. 5. Language and languages—Dialects—Southern States.
6. Language and languages—Southern States—Pronunciation. 7. Language and culture—
Southern States. 8. Americanisms—Southern States. 9. Southern States—Languages. I.
Picone, Michael D., editor. II. Davies, Catherine Evans, editor.
PE2923.N49╇2014
427'.975—dc23
2014016040
Contents

Acknowledgments ix
1. Introduction
Michael D. Picone and Catherine Evans Davies 1

PART I. HIS�TORI�CAL APPROACHES

Indigenous Languages

2. Ameri�can Indian Languages of the Southeast: An Introduction

Pamela Munro 21
3. A Profile of the Caddo Language
Wallace Chafe 43
4. The Ofo Language of Louisiana: Recovery of Grammar and Typology
Robert L. Rankin 52
5. Timucua -�ta: Muskogean Parallels
George Aaron Broadwell 72
6. Pre-Â�Columbian Links to the Caribbean: Evidence Connecting Cusabo to Taíno
Blair A. Rudes 82
Earlier Englishes of the South
7. The Crucial Century for English in the Ameri�can South
Michael B. Montgomery 97
8. South�ern Ameri�can English in Perspective: A Quantitative Comparison with
Other English and Ameri�can Dialects
Robert Shackleton 118
9. Some Developments in South�ern Ameri�can English Grammar
Jan Tillery 149
 vi / Contents

10. Francis Lieber’s AmeriÂ�canisms as an Early Source on SouthÂ�ern Speech

Stuart Davis 166
11. Earlier South�ern Englishes in Black and White: Corpus-�Based Approaches
Edgar W. Schneider 182
The Af�ri�can Diaspora
12. Some Early Creole-�Like Data from Slave Speakers: The Island of St. Helena,
1695–1711
Laura Wright 203
13. Regional Variation in Nineteenth-�Century Af�ri�can Ameri�can English
Gerard Van Herk 219
14. Prima Facie Evidence for the Persistence of Creole Features in Af�ri�can Ameri�
can English and Evidence for Residual Creole
David Sutcliffe 233
15. The Linguistic Status of Gullah-�Geechee: Divergent Phonological Processes
Thomas B. Klein 254
Earlier French of the Gulf South
16. French Dialects of Louisiana: A Revised Typology
Michael D. Picone 267
17. From French to English in Louisiana: The Prudhomme Family’s Story
Connie C. Eble 288

PART II. CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES

Across the South
18. The South in DARE Revisited
Joan Houston Hall and Luanne von Schneidemesser 301
19. The South: Still Different
Dennis R. Preston 311
20. Demography as Destiny? Population Change and the Future of
South�ern Ameri�can English
Guy Bailey 327
English in the Contemporary South: Persistence and Change
21. A Century of Sound Change in Ala�bama
Crawford Feagin 353
22. Various Variation Aggregates in the LAMSAS South
John Nerbonne 369
23. The Persistence of Dialect Features
Sylvie Dubois and Barbara Horvath 383
 Contents / vii

English in the Contemporary South: Discourse Approaches

24. South�ern Storytelling: His�tori�cal and Contemporary Perspectives
Catherine Evans Davies 399
25. The South�ern and Southwest�ern Discourse Styles of Two Texas Women
Judith M. Bean 422
26. We Ain’t Done Yet: Dialect Depiction and Language Ideology
Rachel Shuttlesworth Thompson 433
English in the Contemporary South: Af�ri�can Ameri�can Language Issues
27. Race, Racialism, and the Study of Language Evolution in America
Salikoko Mufwene 449
28. The Language of Black Women in the Smoky Mountain Region of Appalachia
Christine Mallinson and Becky Childs 475
29. The Sound Symbolism of Self in Innovative Naming Practices in
an Af�ri�can Ameri�can Community
Janis B. Nuckolls and Linda Beito 492
English in the Contemporary South: Black and White Speech
and the Complexities of Relationship
30. An Experiment on Cues Used for Identification of Voices as Af�ri�can Ameri�can
or European Ameri�can
Erik R. Thomas and Jeffrey Reaser 507
31. What We Hear and What It Expresses: The Perception and Meaning of
Vowel Differences among Dialects
Valerie Fridland and Kathryn Bartlett 523
32. A Quantitative Acoustic Approach to /ai/ Glide-�Weakening among Detroit
Af�ri�can Ameri�can and Appalachian White South�ern Migrants
Bridget L. Anderson 536
33. The Spread of the cot/caught Merger in the Speech of Memphians:
An Ethnolinguistic Marker?
Valerie Fridland 551
34. Phonological Variation in Louisiana ASL: An Exploratory Study
Robert Bayley and Ceil Lucas 565
English in the Contemporary South: Language and Identity
35. Constructing Identity: The Use of a-�Prefixing and Nonstandard Past Tense
in Narration to Create a Community Voice
Allison Burkette 583
36. Negotiating Linguistic Capital in Economic Decline: Dialect Change in
Mill Villager and Farmer Speech
Lisa D. McNair 591
 viii / Contents

37. Lexical Features of Jewish English in the South�ern United States

Cynthia Bernstein 609
Louisiana French
38. Beyond Cajun: Toward an Expanded View of Regional French in Louisiana
Thomas A. Klingler 627
39. Whither Cajun French: Language Persistence and Dialectal Upsurges
Sylvie Dubois 641
Latino Language Issues
40. Is “Spanglish” the Third Language of the South? Truth and Fantasy
about US Spanish
John M. Lipski 657
41. Language Acquisition and Social Integration of Hispanics in
North�east Mississippi
Patricia Manning Lestrade 678
42. Puerto Rican Spanish in South Texas: Variation in Subject Personal Pronouns
Carlos Martin Vélez Salas, Belinda Treviño Schouten,
Norma Cárdenas, and Robert Bayley 696
Language in the South and the Public Interest
43. Stylization, Aging, and Cultural Competence: Why Health Care in
the South Needs Linguistics
Boyd Davis and Dena Shenk 715
44. Sociolinguistic Engagement in Community Perspective
Walt Wolfram 731
Conclusion: Perspectives, Achievements, and Remaining Challenges
Walt Wolfram 748
Contributors 771
Index 773
Acknowledgments

The coeditors of New Perspectives on Language Variety in the South: His�tori�cal and
Contemporary Approaches gratefully acknowledge the many individuals, groups, and
associations whose vari�ous contributions made possible the publication of this vol-
ume. It was an immense privilege to work with the 51 different authors, both veteran
and emerging scholars, whose research is on display in this volume and who so pa-
tiently awaited the appearance of the final product. We are especially indebted to our
advisory panel of experts for their invaluable counsel and for vetting every contri-
bution that appears in this volume prior to the submission of the manuscript to the
University of Ala�bama Press: Drs. Guy Bailey (University of Texas Rio Grande Val-
ley), Cynthia Bern�stein (University of Memphis), Barbara Johnstone (Carnegie Mellon
University), Thomas Klingler (Tulane University), William Kretzschmar (University
of Georgia), Sonja Lane�hart (University of Texas at San Antonio), John Lipski (Penn�
sylvania State Univer�sity), Michael B. Montgomery (University of South Carolina), Sa-
likoko Mufwene (University of Chicago), Pamela Munro (University of California, Los
Angeles), and Walt Wolfram (North Carolina State University). We are also indebted
to the anonymous reviewers selected by the University of Ala�bama Press who took on
the gargantuan task of evaluating the entire manuscript. Greatly appreciated was the
willingness of the staff of the University of Ala�bama Press to take on this large project
and to facilitate its completion, demonstrating inexhaustible patience in the process.

This volume would not have been possible without the benefit of an initial grant awarded
by the National Endowment for the Humanities (grant no. RZ-�50220-�04). Contribu-
tions toward a sizable publication subvention came from the College of Arts & Sci-
ences of the University of Ala�bama, the Department of Modern Languages and Clas-
sics of the University of Ala�bama, the Department of English of the University of
Ala�bama, the Southeast�ern Conference on Linguistics, the Ameri�can Dialect Society,
Dr. Cynthia Bernstein, Dr. Connie C. Eble, Dr. Michael B. Montgomery, Dr. Patricia
Nichols, and an anonymous donor. For this generous support, the coeditors express
their deepest gratitude.
1
Introduction
Michael D. Picone and Catherine Evans Davies

1. THE SOUTH

Though the exact perimeters are ofÂ�ten ambiguous, the notion of the “the South” as
a region set apart—socially, culturally, and linguistically—resides in the conscious-
ness of virtually all Ameri�cans, both South�erners and non-�South�erners. The reasons
for this are complex, but the national trauma of the Civil War with its legacy of di-
vision is certainly among them. Nevertheless, perceptions of�ten outlive realities, and
the passage of time has inevitably brought about sociocultural modifications and
demographic shifts such that contemporary perceptions of the South based on past
“realities”—Â�which were really only distorted generalities, in the first place—must catch
up with an evolved social, cultural, and linguistic setting. Thus the supposed unifor-
mity of “SouthÂ�ernness,” which has ofÂ�ten lent itself to derogatory stereotyping, can
be challenged and be shown to be inaccurate both his�tori�cally and in modern times.
By documenting and exposing the rich linguistic diversity of the South, which is
not generally recognized by outsiders, dialectologists and linguists have been doing
their part to explode the myth of a monolithic South. To be sure, the complexity of
the study of language variety in the South is of�ten inextricably linked to continuing,
deep-Â�seated perceptions of “race” (we use the term advisedly; see Mufwene’s essay in
this volume) when it comes to comparing the speech of whites and blacks. But a more
complete depiction of language variety in the South must take into account a com-
plex array of phenomena. For example, outsiders are only minimally aware, at best,
of the complex social stratification in the South that is linked to ways of speaking.
The South also has a very complex history of contact among languages and dialects
(e.g., beginning in colonial times, between early European settlers and Ameri�can In-
dian groups; between English-�speaking Europeans and Af�ri�cans imported as slaves;
and among the speakers of different varieties of French in Louisiana). Contact con-
tinues unabated as groups of new immigrants move in (e.g., Ameri�cans who retire
from the North; Mexicans and Guatemalans who come to rural areas to work in the
timber and chicken-�processing industries; transplanted Vietnamese shrimpers; Ger-
mans, Japanese, and Koreans who come with their automobile manufacturing facili-
 2 / Picone and Davies

ties). Ultimately, language variety in the South is linked to a host of factors, such as
increasing urbanization, shifting (im)migration patterns, economic globalization, and
mass media representations of accent and dialect. Touching on these topics, New Per-
spectives on Language Variety in the South: His�tori�cal and Contemporary Approaches
constitutes the third installment in a series of landmark publications—all three stem-
ming from prior LAVIS symposia—that are devoted to the careful examination and
elucidation of the rich linguistic diversity of the South.

2. LAVIS I AND II

The first Language Variety in the South symposium (LAVIS I), which was planned
and arranged by Michael B. Montgomery1 and Guy Bailey and held in Columbia at
the University of South Carolina in 1981, was organized around the theme of black
and white language varieties in the South and how they might be linked. LAVIS I,
which was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH grant no.
RD-�1899-�81) with the support of the University of South Carolina, was highly suc-
cessful in presenting new knowledge about language variety in the South, in helping
to set a new standard for research in the field, and in defining many of the larger is-
sues involved. The attainments of the symposium were made available to the pub�
lic in the landmark publication Language Variety in the South: Perspectives in Black
and White (University of Ala�bama Press, 1986). While the contributors to LAVIS I
made it clear that variation is just as dependent on a number of social factors (class,
age, gender) as on race (Montgomery and Bailey 1986b: 27), no controversies con-
cerning the origins of Af�ri�can Ameri�can Vernacular English (AAVE) and the nature
of its link to white South�ern Ameri�can English (SAE) were resolved. To a great ex-
tent, these controversies have endured and even complexified because of the lack of
an appropriate his�tori�cal benchmark, in relation to which present dialectal configu-
rations can be compared (cf. Montgomery 1997: 19). Addressing this lacuna became
part of the rationale for LAVIS III.
A decade after LAVIS I, perceiving a need to assess accomplishments and deter-
mine new directions, Cynthia Bernstein, Thomas Nunnally, and Robin Sabino con-
ceived of a sec�ond Language Variety in the South symposium. With funding obtained
from the National Science Foundation (grant no. SBR-�9221890) and the support of
other foundations and associations, LAVIS II was held at Auburn University in 1993,
concurrent with the annual spring meeting of the Southeast�ern Conference on Lin-
guistics (SECOL). By holding the two meetings simultaneously and by announcing
a general call for abstracts for LAVIS II, the conference achieved a greater degree of
cross-�fertilization among new and established scholars working on South�ern dialects
and showcased the greatly expanded parameters of the research being conducted.
The central theme of LAVIS I, language and race in the South, continued to com-
mand center stage at LAVIS II, albeit benefiting from some new approaches and from
the application of more advanced methodologies. At the same time, a broader research
agenda was welcomed. Former Anglocentric preoccupations were revised and room
was made, at LAVIS II, for the inclusion of work on other languages having either his�
tori�cal or current standing in the South, in�clud�ing Chinese, Louisiana Creole, Cajun
 Introduction / 3

French, and (indirectly, via Tejano English) Mexican Spanish (Ching and Kung 1997,
Klingler 1997, Picone 1997, Bayley 1997 respectively). The contact between these lan-
guages and English was recognized to be of considerable importance in accounting
for many of the linguistic phenomena examined. Likewise, the former, narrower focus
on phonological, morphosyntactic, and lexical phenomena—Â�subdisciplines compris-
ing the traditional core of linguistic analyÂ�sis—made room, at LAVIS II, for discourse
analy�sis and pragmatics (in�clud�ing Coles 1997, Davies 1997, Johnstone 1997), be-
cause it was recognized that language use beyond the sentence level and in relation to
the extralinguistic context, in particular in the negotiation of social interaction, is of
vital importance in defining the distinctive attributes of South�ern Ameri�can English.
Like its predecessor, LAVIS II resulted in a landmark publication by the Univer-
sity of Ala�bama Press. A refereed selection of 38 papers appeared in a volume entitled
Language Variety in the South Revisited (Bernstein, Nunnally, and Sabino 1997a). Both
LAVIS I and LAVIS II publications are essential reading for any scholar of South�ern
dialectology and/or Af�ri�can Ameri�can English.

3. LAVIS III

A little over a decade after the LAVIS II symposium—and at the onset of a new mil-
lennium—it was time once again to take stock of the state of the research on language
variety in the South. Thus LAVIS III was conceived, with the aim of showcasing the
advances made on topics of concern in LAVIS I and LAVIS II while further broaden-
ing the research agenda. The LAVIS III symposium, once again taking place in con-
junction with the annual SECOL conference, was held on April 14–17, 2004, at the
University of Ala�bama in Tuscaloosa. Organized by Michael D. Picone and Catherine
Evans Davies, LAVIS III was funded by the National Science Foundation (grant no.
BCS-�0317553), the College of Arts & Sciences of the University of Ala�bama, the Deep
South Regional Humanities Center, the South Atlantic Regional Humanities Center,
the Central Humanities Center, the Ameri�can Dialect Society, the South�east�ern Con-
ference on Linguistics, and others (for a full listing of sponsors, see the L
� AVIS III web-
site: http://lavis.as.ua.edu). Co-�organizers Picone and Davies became the coeditors of
this resulting volume, which was generously funded by the National Endowment for
the Humanities (grant no. RZ-Â�50220–04; the NEH funding also supported construc-
tion of the permanent website), the College of Arts & Sciences of the University of Ala�
bama, and other associations and individuals (see the Acknowledgments at the front
of this volume for the complete listing). An advisory board of distinguished scholars,
reflective of the linguistic diversity of the South, was constituted and was consulted
during both the symposium phase and the subsequent editing process: Drs. Guy Bailey
(University of Texas Rio Grande Valley), Cynthia Bernstein (University of Memphis),
Barbara Johnstone (Carnegie Mellon University), Thomas Klingler (Tulane University),
William Kretzschmar (University of Georgia), Sonja Lanehart (University of Texas
at San Antonio), Michael B. Montgomery (University of South Carolina), Salikoko
Muf�wene (University of Chicago), Pamela Munro (University of California, Los An-
geles), and Walt Wolfram (North Carolina State University). Dr. John Lipski (Penn-
sylvania State University) was added to the advisory board for the publication phase.
 4 / Picone and Davies

Dr. Guy Bailey, renowned for his expertise in South�ern dialectology, was a co-�
organizer of LAVIS I, a coeditor of the subsequent published volume, and a keynote
speaker at LAVIS II and LAVIS III. Dr. Cynthia Bernstein was a principal organizer
of LAVIS II, and her research has included a focus on linguistics in connection with
literature and the mass media. Dr. Barbara Johnstone has done pioneering work on
South�ern discourse and the linguistic individual. Dr. Thomas Klingler is the foremost
authority on Louisiana Creole and also a distinguished authority on Cajun French.
Dr. William Kretzschmar’s work is state-Â�of-Â�the-Â�art with regard to quantitative meth-
odologies and the use of technology to access databases resulting from linguistic sur-
veys of the United States. Dr. Sonja Lanehart’s expertise lies in the area of AfÂ�riÂ�can
Ameri�can Vernacular English, and she has authored and edited several books devoted
to aspects of this topic. Dr. John Lipski, a keynote speaker at LAVIS III, is one of the
world’s foremost authorities on Spanish dialectology. Dr. Michael B. Montgomery, un-
excelled in his overall expertise concerning language in the South, was co-�organizer
of the �LAVIS I symposium, coeditor of the subsequent publication, a keynote speaker
at LAVIS II and LAVIS III, and also coauthor of the exhaustive Annotated Bibliog-
raphy of South�ern Ameri�can English (McMillan and Montgomery 1989). Dr. Salikoko
Mufwene, a keynote speaker at LAVIS III, is widely known for his work on Af�ri�can
Ameri�can English, creolistics, Gullah, and for innovative work on linguistic ecology.
Dr. Pamela Munro, a keynote speaker at LAVIS III, is one the foremost scholars work-
ing on Muskogean languages (origi�nally spoken in the South) and on other Ameri�can
Indian languages. Dr. Walt Wolfram, among innumerable contributions to dialectol-
ogy, has done distinguished work on enclave language communities and on dialect
awareness programs in the South. He was also the concluding keynote speaker at the
LAVIS III symposium.
The LAVIS I symposium and subsequent publication, Language Variety in the South:
Perspectives in Black and White (1986), constituted an initial display of the “state of re-
search” as it existed in the early 1980s and served as a model for further solid schol-
arship on language variation in the South. The LAVIS II symposium and subsequent
publication, Language Variety in the South Revisited (1997a), helped to consolidate
the achievements of prior research while showcasing methodological advances and
broadening the research agenda in the early 1990s. The LAVIS III symposium and
this subsequent publication, New Perspectives on Language Variety in the South: His�
tori�cal and Contemporary Approaches, have put on display the expanded state of re-
search at the onset of the twenty-�first century, have provided an important forum on
abiding center-�stage issues such as the relationship between black and white speech
in the South, and have showcased some innovative applications in both the qualitative
and quantitative analy�sis of linguistic data. The LAVIS III symposium and this pub-
lication have also highlighted other new methodologies, in�clud�ing those that exploit
to advantage existing databases such as LAMSAS (Linguistic Atlas of the Middle and
South Atlantic States), LAGS (Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States), DARE (the Dic-
tionary of Ameri�can Regional English), GRITS (Grammatical Investigation of Texas
English), SOD (Survey of Oklahoma Dialects), BLUR (Blues Lyrics), SPOC (South�
ern Plantation Overseers Corpus), and US Census data. Finally, the LAVIS III sym�
 Introduction / 5

posium and this present publication have broadened the research agenda, partly by
addressing the concerns expressed by Bailey (1997) for better exploitation of linguis-
tic texts and the reevaluation of data previously taken for granted, and partly by giv-
ing more space to his�tori�cal topics, to indigenous languages, to immigrant languages,
to discourse, and to the link between language and identity.2
It should be noted that a number of the contributions in the present volume in-
corporate census fig�ures from 2000 and use associated projections which came before
the onset, in the spring of 2008, of a prolonged economic downturn, having certain
demographic and migratory ramifications. These contributions will now constitute
a useful benchmark for comparison with similar studies based on the results of the
2010 census.
Using new technologies that were unavailable at the time of LAVIS I and LAVIS
II, the LAVIS III symposium was also supported by a website. With funding from
the National Endowment for the Humanities (grant no. RZ-Â�50220–04), the origiÂ�nal
symposium website has been much enhanced and converted into a permanent virtual
symposium consultable at http://lavis.as.ua.edu. All abstracts from the origi�nal sym-
posium are available for perusal, and a selection of the papers presented at the sym-
posium are accessible on the website in vari�ous forms: streaming audio, handouts,
and PowerPoint presentations. The origi�nal symposium website was created with the
valuable technical assistance of Rachel Shuttlesworth Thompson. The transformation
of the website into a virtual conference, as conceived by coeditors Picone and Da-
vies, became a reality due to the indispensable technical assistance of Laurie Arizumi.
This present publication is comprised of a subset of all of the papers presented at
the LAVIS III symposium. Every essay appearing in this present volume has been re-
vised by its author(s) after having been evaluated by our advisory board and the edi-
tors. Consequently, it is important to note that the origi�nal versions of the papers pre-
sented at the LAVIS III symposium, some of which are accessible as streaming audio
on the website, do not correspond in all points to the versions that appear in this vol-
ume. These revised essays (with revisions ranging from minor to very substantial)
have been grouped by topic for the purposes of this publication.
As mentioned, the purpose of this volume is to show the state of the research at
the period corresponding roughly to the onset of the new millennium. The vari�
ous authors revised their respective contributions in the interval between the 2004
LAVIS III symposium and the appearance of this publication, but, with few excep-
tions, revisions of content ceased in 2008. The admittedly long interval leading to ac-
tual publication was occasioned by a number of unavoidable factors.3 Though revi-
sions of content ceased in 2008, nevertheless, right up to the time of publication, the
editors systematically replaced all “forthcoming” indications with publication dates
as these became available. Likewise, the editors verified every website address men-
tioned in every contribution and revised or replaced any that were no longer active
at the time of publication.
What follows introduces the reader to the topics and the in�di�vidual essays, divided
into two general categories relating, on the one hand, to the linguistic history of the
South and, on the other, to an array of current concerns.4
 6 / Picone and Davies

4. HIS�TORI�CAL TOPICS: ESTABLISHING BENCHMARKS

LAVIS I and LAVIS II incorportated new research on earlier language varieties in the
South, in�clud�ing new work in the area of sociohis�tori�cal reconstruction (for example,
Mufwene 1997), but there remains a vast amount to do in this area before a compos-
ite his�tori�cal picture can begin to be recognizable. By making accessible 15 essays se-
lected from LAVIS III pertaining to earlier language varieties and sociohis�tori�cal re-
constructions, this present publication constitutes an important step forward toward
the establishment of accurate benchmarks against which comparisons can be made
with current linguistic profiles and configurations, so as to gauge and plot possible
trajectories of change. The section on indigenous languages of the South (the chap-
ters by Munro, Chafe, Rankin, Broadwell, and Rudes) constitutes a set of five essays
that all build on the work of John R. Swanton from the early twentieth century. One
living language (Caddo) and three extinct languages (Ofo, Timucua, and Cusabo)
are considered and, in the process, some earlier claims are confirmed, whereas oth-
ers are revised through reevaluation of the data. The section on earlier Englishes of
the South begins with Montgomery’s essay focusing on the eighteenth century, mak-
ing the claim that it is the crucial century in the formation of South�ern Ameri�can
English. New developments in quantitative methodology are showcased in Shackle-
ton’s essay, examining the transfer of linguistic features from England to America. The
other three essays in this section use a range of linguistic resources to draw conclu-
sions about earlier Englishes of the South: Schneider examines corpora of plantation
overseers’ writings and modern blues lyrics; Tillery draws from a selection of linguis-
tic databases; and S. Davis exploits to advantage a nineteenth-�century lexical and lo-
cutional compilation. Exploring possibilities for Af�ri�can substrate influence on lin-
guistic varieties in the Ameri�can South, the section on the Af�ri�can diaspora includes
essays that draw on data from the late seventeenth century (Wright), the nineteenth
century (van Herk), and the twentieth century (Sutcliffe, Klein). The section on ear-
lier French of the Gulf South begins with Picone’s comprehensive essay on earlier lin-
guistic configurations in Colonial Louisiana, contrasting the linguistic circumstances
of the eighteenth-�century colonizers and the eventual emergence of Plantation So-
ciety French, of�ten in a diglossic relation to Louisiana Creole, in the nineteenth cen-
tury. Eble offers a case study of language shift from French to English in nineteenth-�
century family documents.
4.1. Indigenous Languages
Language variety in the South did not begin with the arrival of the Europeans. The
study of regional variation must properly begin with the study of Ameri�can Indian
languages of the South. This was an acknowledged omission in LAVIS II (Bernstein,
Nunnally, and Sabino 1997b: 2). Likewise, in LAVIS I, a single contributor, writing on
Afro-�Seminole Creole, addressed a topic that had any link to indigenous populations
(Hancock 1986). Yet, clearly, upon their arrival Europeans did not enter into a lin-
guistic vacuum. Europeans and their slaves, as well as free blacks, had exchanges with
South�ern Indians that extended well into the nineteenth century. These exchanges, to
vari�ous degrees which remain to be established, had linguistic consequences for all
 Introduction / 7

groups. For many Indian groups, we know that this contact led to language death. In
the first essay in this section, Munro lays the groundwork by providing a valuable in-
troduction to the AmeriÂ�can Indian languages of the Southeast. Chafe’s essay offers an
overview of the history and geography of the Caddo language, which was origi�nally
spoken in an area in�clud�ing parts of the current states of Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas,
Oklahoma, and Missouri. Rankin’s essay builds on the careful work of an earlier eth-
nographer who collected 600 words in the Ofo language in Louisiana in the early twen-
tieth century; whereas earlier scholars had assumed that Ofo was a �Muskogean lan-
guage, Rankin is able to demonstrate that it is actually Siouan. Also critiquing earlier
claims, Broadwell examines data from the extinct Florida language isolate Timucua,
suggesting a link to Muskogean. Finally, Rudes rules out a Muskogean connection
to Cusabo, a language once spoken on the coastal plain of Georgia; rather, he finds
a similarity to Taíno and other indigenous languages of the Caribbean, suggesting a
pre-�Columbian link.
4.2. Earlier Englishes of the South
Challenging the idea that the distinctive characteristics of South�ern English arose
primarily in the post-�Civil War period (Tillery and Bailey 2003), Montgomery takes
us back, in the opening essay of this section, to the eighteenth century to make his
claim that it is “the crucial century.” Shackleton’s essay subjects corpora to phyloge-
netic analyÂ�sis to suggest a “founder effect” in understanding the transfer of features
from England to America. Also using a corpus-�based approach, Schneider draws on
two corpora of written data (SouthÂ�ern plantation overseers’ writing and blues lyrics)
to offer insight into earlier Englishes of both white and black speakers in the South.
Tillery focuses on a range of grammatical features and suggests a process of delocal-
ization and regional consolidation in the development of South�ern Ameri�can En-
glish. Finally, S. Davis examines an early compilation of “AmeriÂ�canisms” for insight
into spoken English in the South.
4.3. Af�ri�can Diaspora
Among slave populations, there is documentary his�tori�cal evidence in Louisiana that,
in certain cases, Af�ri�can languages were maintained for a time (Hall 1992, Klingler
1997) and there is also early reference to the existence of a French-�based creole. Al-
though there is considerable controversy on this point, apart from the generally recog-
nized status of Gullah as an English-�lexifier creole, direct documentary evidence for a
similar scenario seems to be scarce relative to the Anglophone Southeast, despite the
fact that many slaves were imported directly from Africa (cf. Feagin 1997). This sec-
tion begins with Wright’s essay on some early creole-Â�like data from slave speakers on
the island of St. Helena between 1695 and 1711. Whether or not an English-�lexifier
creole was ever widespread in the South, questions pertaining to the strength of the
Af�ri�can substrate remain prominent. Sutcliffe offers some contemporary data to sup-
port his his�tori�cal thesis that Af�ri�can Ameri�can English is indeed the legacy of a wide-
spread English-�lexifier creole. Van Herk examines regional variation in nineteenth-�
century Af�ri�can Ameri�can English, pointing out that substrate influences can surface
at different levels of dialect, in this case Af�ri�can influence at the phonological level. The
 8 / Picone and Davies

section ends with Klein’s essay on Gullah/Geechee which also examines phonologi-
cal aspects of dialect in relation to the creole continuum. His essay may appear to be
anomalously placed in this section, given that it draws on data from the early twenti-
eth century, but it has been located here to convey an idea of the current state of re-
search on Gullah as a heritage dialect in relation to the Af�ri�can diaspora.
4.4. Earlier French of the Gulf South
Corroborating the claim that “the South has long been far more multicultural and
multilingual than most know” (Montgomery 1997: 9), Picone begins by emphasizing
the remarkable linguistic diversity of the Lower Mississippi and adjacent Gulf Coast
at the outset of the French colonial enterprise. The synchronic diversity of that early
period was due to the multiplicity of ethnolinguistic groups and subgroups involved
(Ameri�can Indians, Europeans, Canadians, and Af�ri�cans, all having a diversity of ori-
gins). Picone addresses the question of the potential presence of vari�ous patois from
France in the early linguistic mix before moving on to examine the circumstances
surrounding the rise of a prestige dialect, Plantation Society French, during the nine-
teenth century, its diglossic relationship vis-Â�à-Â�vis Louisiana Creole, and its ultimate
demise. Also in relation to the demise of Plantation Society French, Eble’s essay makes
use of the cross-�generational papers of a planter family of stature, the Prudhommes,
from the Red River area around Natchitoches, in order to plot the trajectory of shift
from French to English.

5. CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES:
CONTINUIT Y AND EXPANSION

The present publication maintains continuity with LAVIS I and II by presenting state-�
of-�the-�art research on questions that continue to preoccupy scholars of language and
dialect in the South, and simultaneously points toward the future, by representing di-
rections of expansion. In this publication, the strong tradition of examining black and
white speech has been carried forward, but with an emphasis on mutual influence
and relationship (Thomas and Reaser, Fridland and Bartlett, Anderson, and Fridland)
along with reevaluation of data and of core assumptions regarding the nature of “race”
(Mufwene). The contribution by Bayley and Lucas demonstrates that black and white
dialectal differences also extend to Ameri�can Sign Language. The variationist tradi-
tion of applying quantitative methods to a spectrum of research concerns—ranging
from sociophonetics to dialect perception—is exemplified in a number of essays (e.g.,
Mallinson and Childs, Thomas and Reaser, Feagin, Fridland, Anderson, Preston, and
others), while Nerbonne breaks new ground using dialectometric analy�sis applied
to a preexisting database (LAMSAS).5 This publication gives attention to traditional
preoccupations in the areas of phonology (Feagin, Fridland, Anderson, and many
Â�others), morphosyntax (Vélez Salas et al.), and lexicon (Hall and von Schneidemesser)
but also moves beyond these concerns to embrace pragmatics, discourse, and cogni-
tion (e.g., Davies, Bean, and Thompson). This movement has occurred partly in re-
sponse to questions concerning the role of identity and solidarity in language varia-
tion and partly because of the need to look beyond the traditional social categories
to the individual’s creation of voice in context (Burkette, McNair, and Bernstein; and
 Introduction / 9

for an onomastic connection, see Nuckolls and Beito). The current and growing lin-
guistic complexity of the South is exemplified with essays on Spanish (Lipski, Vélez
Salas et al., and Lestrade), Louisiana French (Klingler, Dubois), Cajun English (Du-
bois and Horvath), Appalachian English (Anderson), and Jewish English (Bernstein).
(On Gullah, see the section on Af�ri�can Diaspora in Part I.) Due to population move-
ments, the linguistic landscape of the urban and rural South has changed so rapidly
in the past twenty-five years that it was imperative to include demographic analy�sis
among the contributions (Bailey). The principle of “linguistic gratuity”—that is, act-
ing on the belief that language researchers should give something back to the lan-
guage communities which they relied upon to develop their research and to advance
their own careers (Wolfram 1993), has become a motivation for many. In this spirit,
the present publication includes essays linking language to vital pub�lic interest issues
(Davis and Shenk, Wolfram; see also Lestrade).
The set of three essays in Part II’s opening section, “Across the South,” provide over-
views that complement each other in their orientation. The subsequent essays have
been organized by topic as follows. Under the broad rubric of “English in the Con-
temporary South,” five subcategories have been specified: “Persistence and Change”
(three essays), “Discourse Approaches to SouthÂ�ern English” (three essays), “AfÂ�riÂ�can
AmeriÂ�can Language Issues” (three essays), “Black and White Speech: The Complexi-
ties of Relationship” (five essays), and “Language and Identity in the South” (three es-
says). Attention then turns to “Louisiana French” (two essays), “Latino Language Is-
sues” (three essays), and “Language in the South and the Public Interest” (two essays).
Based on his closing plenary at the LAVIS III symposium, Walt Wolfram also ends
this volume, in the dual role of respondent and prognosticator, with his concluding
essay, “Perspectives, Achievements, and Remaining Challenges.”
5.1. Across the South
The purpose of this section is to orient the reader to the current linguistic situation in
the South from different, complementary perspectives. Hall and von Schneidemesser,
editors of a core resource for scholars and teachers, the Dictionary of Ameri�can Re-
gional English, revisit the South as reflected in DARE, but from the perspective of new
digital technologies, in particular the resources now available on the Web. Preston’s
essay reviews work on South�ern United States English from the point of view of per-
ceptual dialectology, and reports on the evolving state of his own research. While af-
firming that SouthÂ�ern United States English is still the “touchstone” among AmeriÂ�can
dialects, Preston suggests that this status is no longer simply related to attitudes con-
cerning language “correctness.” Finally, Bailey’s essay provides a demographic profile
(past, present, and future) of South�ern Ameri�can English, and also introduces schol-
ars to the uses of US Census data for sociolinguistic and dialectological investigation.
5.2. English in the Contemporary South
5.2.1. Persistence and Change
Feagin’s essay tracks change in the pronunciation of several features across three gen-
erations of white speakers in Anniston, Ala�bama, from the late nineteenth to the late
twentieth century. Four types of change were identified, resulting from a combina-
 10 / Picone and Davies

tion of internal and external pressures, in�clud�ing local loyalty and accommodation
to nonlocal values. In contrast to traditional variationist methods that typically con-
sider only a few features, Nerbonne uses dialectometric techniques with LAMSAS
data to attempt to measure aggregate phonetic variation. Finally, Dubois and Hor-
vath examine the vernacular English of Creole Af�ri�can Ameri�cans of French ances-
try (CAAVE) and Cajuns (CVE) living in South Louisiana, suggesting that the two
dialects persist for reasons of self-�identity, that is, as way for speakers to demarcate
their group in relation to other South�erners.
5.2.2. Discourse Approaches to South�ern English
It has become increasingly apparent that language use beyond the sentence level and
in relation to the overall extralinguistic, social-�interactive context is vitally important
in determining some of the special characteristics of South�ern Ameri�can English. This
section begins with Davies’s discourse analyÂ�sis of a particular type of production by
a professional contemporary Ala�bama storyteller, an analy�sis which is then contex-
tualized in sociohis�tori�cal perspective. Davies explores the possibility of a regional
norm for storytelling that embraces digression. Bean’s essay is concerned with gen-
der norms in discourse, and how two Texas women use stereotypes of South�ern and
West�ern femininity as cultural symbols to express in�di�vidual identity. Using inter-
view data in the examination of “strong language,” Bean also considers issues of lan-
guage ideology. Drawing on frameworks from both language ideology (Irvine and
Gal 2000) and perceptual dialectology (Preston 1997), and using data from artistic
genres (cf. Davies 1997, Picone 2002), Thompson’s essay uses literary data to exam-
ine dialect distortion in the transition from novels written by South�erners to the films
based upon them. She focuses on three features of South�ern Ameri�can English, and
explores the foundations of negative stereotypes concerning South�ern Ameri�can En-
glish in literature and films.
5.2.3. Af�ri�can Ameri�can Language Issues
An important feature of the LAVIS III symposium was the addition of a plenary by
Salikoko Mufwene (University of Chicago) on the theorizing of “race” in diaÂ�lectology
and sociolinguistics. A revised essay based on this plenary appears in the present pub-
lication. In it, Mufwene assesses and challenges some of the race-�based assumptions
that are still current in the field of linguistic enquiry. The essay by Mallinson and
Childs draws on the community of practice model to account for linguistic differences
among Af�ri�can Ameri�can women in Appalachia who share similar demographic pro-
files yet differ strikingly in terms of social relations and social practices. Finally, Nuck�
olls and Beito probe the sound symbolism of innovative naming practices among Af�
ri�can Ameri�cans in Tuscaloosa, Ala�bama.
5.2.4. Black and White Speech: The Complexity of Relationship
Whereas previously the focus was more on describing and differentiating the dialects
of black and white speakers, the LAVIS III symposium and this publication present
work that emphasizes the complexity of relationship. This section begins with an essay
by Thomas and Reaser, reporting the results of an experiment using cues to identify
 Introduction / 11

voices as Af�ri�can Ameri�can or European Ameri�can, in an attempt to discover the rela-

tive effectiveness of the different cues. Fridland and Bartlett also examine perceptions
of Af�ri�can Ameri�can and European Ameri�can speech, trying to tease out the social
meanings associated with subtle shifts in vowels. Also comparing Af�ri�can Ameri�can
and European Ameri�can speech, but using a quantitative acoustic approach, Anderson
measures /ai/ glide-�weakening among Detroit Af�ri�can Ameri�can and Appalachian
White south�ern migrants. In a sole-�authored article, Fridland explores whether the
spread of the cot/caught merger in the speech of Memphians functions as an ethno-
linguistic marker. Finally, Bayley and Lucas examine variation in Ameri�can Sign Lan-
guage between black and white signers in Louisiana.
5.2.5. Language and Identity in the South
One thrust of the LAVIS III symposium and this publication has been to make prog-
ress in exploring the relationship between language and identity in the Ameri�can
South. Previous variationist research has established correlations between the rela-
tive incidence of particular linguistic features and the social categories characterizing
the speakers, concluding that the speakers’ sense of identity is linked to social cate-
gories and that this link is signaled by resorting to particular linguistic features for
their emblematic value. In the first essay in this section Burkette uses ethnographic
data to examine how speakers in an Appalachian community use particular gram-
matical features to create what she calls a “community persona” as a kind of identity
construction. McNair examines dialect change in a Georgia textile mill town, using
a social network approach. She finds that generational changes can be explained by
shifts in socioeconomic structure, rather than by an appeal to linguistic “prestige.”
In her study, older people used language linked to occupational categories, whereas
younger people treat dialect features as linguistic capital to be negotiated. Bernstein’s
final essay in this section breaks new ground by examining, through a wide range of
data sources from literature to diaries to websites, the representation of Jewish En-
glish in the South�ern United States.
5.3. Louisiana French
The section in the his�tori�cal division of this volume, on earlier French of the Gulf
South, is paralleled here by a section on contemporary French in Louisiana. Klingler
critiques the use of the term “Cajun French,” which, according to his study, is based
on the commonly held but misguided assumption that the dialectal origins of “Ca-
jun French” are unitary and specific to Acadian French. In order to avoid obscuring
the actual dialectal complexity involved, he proposes instead the term “Louisiana Re-
gional French.” Dubois analyzes the variÂ�ous sources of linguistic variation in Cajun
French, particularly the intergenerational and geographical usage of dialectal forms.
5.4. Latino Language Issues
Since LAVIS I, the number of Spanish speakers in the South�east has increased dra-
matically. The large populations of Spanish speakers in Florida and Texas are only
part of the picture: the rest of the South has become a magnet for immigrant His-
panics and, in fact, the South�east boasts the fastest rate of increase among Hispanics
 12 / Picone and Davies

(US Census 2000) when compared to any other region of the United States, though
the economic recession beginning in the late 2000s and anti-�immigrant legislative
initiatives in certain South�ern states (such as the controversial House Bill 56 enacted
in Ala�bama in 2011) have temporarily mitigated or even reversed the rate of increase
in some areas. As Tillery and Bailey (2001) noted, “dialectologists of the 21st century
must consider the effects of international immigration and the multilingualism that
comes with it.” This section begins with a written version of Lipski’s symposium ple-
nary on the controversial notion of “Spanglish” as a mixed dialect in use in the South
and elsewhere. Framing the pertinent problems and issues for the reader, he chal-
lenges the view that “Spanglish” is a clearly definable linguistic phenomenon. His es-
say is followed by Patricia Manning Lestrade’s look at the influx of Spanish-Â�speaking
Latinos into the state of Mississippi. She considers the implications in relation to bi-
lingualism and possible language shift, basing her judgments in part on an attitudi-
nal survey that she conducted in the northeast�ern part of the state. A final selection,
which underscores the existence of Spanish dialectal diversity in the South, comes in
the form of a study of variation in subject personal pronouns in Puerto Rican Span-
ish in South Texas, by Carlos Martin Vélez-Â�Salas, Belinda Treviño Schouten, Norma
Cárdenas, and Robert Bayley.
5.5. Language in the South and the Public Interest
In the spirit of an emerging imperative in sociolinguistics, identified by Walt Wol-
fram as the “principle of linguistic gratuity” (Wolfram 1993), we include essays in
this publication that are linked to pub�lic needs and concerns. Davis and Shenk ap-
ply discourse analy�sis to recordings of narratives by two South�ern Af�ri�can Ameri�can
men, one unimpaired and the other suffering from dementia, to identify South�ern
discourse patterns constituting cultural competence; the ultimate goal of this applied
work is to develop training in multiple levels of language awareness for health practi-
tioners. Drawing on his experience with the North Carolina Language and Life Proj-
ect, Wolfram examines the obligations and opportunities that accompany sociolin-
guistic engagement in community-�based initiatives aimed at enhancing self-�esteem
via dialect awareness and preservation. In this context, he addresses three issues: re-
lations of power and authority, presentation of the nature of the linguistic research,
and social and economic capital associated with research-�community partnerships.

6. CONCLUSION

In a sec�ond essay, Walt Wolfram provides a fitting summation of the present volume.
His concluding essay is based on his remarks during the LAVIS III symposium, for
which he was called into service to provide the closing plenary. This essay, “Perspec-
tives, Achievements, and Remaining Challenges” is based on those remarks but has
also been revised to take into account the specific character of this publication. As
one of the most highly regarded and accomplished researchers in the field, Wolfram
is well positioned to provide an insightful perspective on the relevant gains made and
the challenges that remain.
In the spirit of “giving back”—and recognizing that this is a publicly financed
 Introduction / 13

project—Â�the coeditors of the present publication have made it one of their priorities
that all the essays be understandable to the educated lay reader as well as to the spe-
cialist in the field. Indeed, much of the negotiation with authors that took place dur-
ing the long editing phase revolved around the need to keep specialized jargon to a
minimum, to use transparent language, and to provide clear examples of the phe-
nomena being analyzed. The coeditors sincerely hope that this present publication,
New Perspectives on Language Variety in the South: His�tori�cal and Contemporary Ap-
proaches, and the companion website, http://lavis.as.ua.edu, will prove to be valuable
resources, not only to scholars everywhere who deal with language variation in a wide
range of academic disciplines (Linguistics, Modern Languages, Anthropology, Educa-
tion, History, Psychology, Ameri�can Studies, Af�ri�can Ameri�can Studies, Geography,
Po�liti�cal Science, Commerce and Business Administration, Communication Studies,
etc.), but also to the general reader who wants to learn more about the fascinating
and fertile topic of language variety in the South.6

NOTES

1. It is fitting to include here Michael Montgomery’s opening remarks to his LAVIS III in-
augural plenary on April 15, 2004, “The Crucial Century for English in the AmeriÂ�can South”
(see the rest of his presentation, in the form of a revised essay, in this volume):

Before I turn to my intended subject, I trust the audience will indulge me and al-
low a few his�tori�cal comments from me. It was on this precise day in 1988 that the Uni-
versity of Ala�bama formally dedicated the James B. McMillan building, for many years
home to the University of Ala�bama Press. Jim McMillan founded that Press, which for
decades was one of the few outlets for linguistic titles in this country and was home to
Ameri�can Dialect Society publications for more than twenty years. A modest man hav-
ing the lexicographer’s wit and economy of language, he had little to say at the dedication
ceremony except “I’m pleased there’s finally something else to remember the fifteenth
of April for [other than taxes].” He was a stalwart in the study of SouthÂ�ern English, but
also a perfectionist; it is a pity that his 1939 University of Chicago dissertation was not
published, because the war intervened and he did not have time to polish it to his stan-
dard. It is altogether fitting that this conference should begin with a moment of tribute
to him.
About this same season twenty-�five years ago LAVIS I was born. Guy Bailey and I
had been in graduate school together at the University of Tennessee, and we shared a
strong interest in the English of the Ameri�can South. In the 1960s and early 70s schol-
arly positions on how similar (or different) white and black speech were in this country
had hardened and become increasingly rancorous. As we talked about this, we realized
how much research had recently been undertaken or published, and the idea to orga-
nize a conference on the theme began to grow.
The goals that Guy and I had were several: to feature new research and new research-
ers and to open dialogues and work toward a consensus on the issues by bringing people
together to discuss new data and research needs for three days. At the same time, we
wouldn’t be honest if we, as SouthÂ�erners, didn’t admit aiming to show that common-
alities between white and black speech were more numerous and profound than recog-
nized by research on Af�ri�can Ameri�can English in north�ern cities. With support from
 14 / Picone and Davies

the National Endowment for the Humanities and the University of South Carolina, we
assembled two dozen speakers in Oc�to�ber 1981 for what by all accounts was a very suc-
cessful conference. A volume of papers appeared in due course.
Looking back at LAVIS I and also LAVIS II twelve years later, one realizes the dearth
of his�tori�cal studies at those conferences, a deficiency the present meeting happily goes
some distance toward rectifying — at least for the nineteenth century. Such studies en-
able us to address many important questions.

2. Along with the three LAVIS-�based volumes, researchers of South�ern English can also
profitably consult the Annotated Bibliography of South�ern Ameri�can English (McMillan and
Montgomery 1989), From the Gulf States and Beyond: The Legacy of Lee Pederson and LAGS
(Montgomery and Nunnally, 1998), and English in the South�ern United States (Nagle and Sand-
ers 2003). For a compendium of prior research on Louisiana French and Creole, interested in-
dividuals should consult French and Creole in Louisiana (Valdman 1997).
3. Both editors shouldered heavy administrative obligations as departmental chairs dur-
ing the better part of the interval, which also coincided with a period of dramatic expansion
in enrollments and attendant duties at the University of Ala�bama. The rather imposing size
of the volume meant that a very substantial publication subvention had to be secured (see the
Acknowledgements). In the intervening years, natural disasters took their toll on the energies
and attentions of the editors. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina brought death and injury, as well as
massive damage and displacement, to the Gulf region, in�clud�ing the state of Ala�bama, directly
affecting the student and staff populations of the University of Ala�bama. Then on April 27,
2011, a devastating tornado struck Tuscaloosa itself, resulting in over 50 fatalities in the city,
in�clud�ing six students enrolled at the University of Ala�bama, and causing massive destruction
to property. In their roles as departmental administrators, the editors were obligated to devote
considerable attention to recovery efforts and to dealing with the needs of students and staff.
The editors are deeply grateful for the understanding and patience of the contributors.
4. At this writing the LAVIS IV symposium is scheduled to take place on April 9–12, 2015,
at North Carolina State University, a decade after LAVIS III.
5. The Linguistic Atlas Projects website at the University of Georgia at http://us.english
.uga.edu/ gives access to data and to related tools, benefiting veteran scholars and research-
ers in training alike.
6. With considerable sadness we commemorate Blair Rudes, author of the essay “Pre-Â�
Columbian Links to the Caribbean: Evidence Connecting Cusabo to Taíno,” Jan Tillery, au-
thor of “Some Developments in SouthÂ�ern AmeriÂ�can English Grammar,” and Robert L. Rankin,
author of “The Ofo Language of Louisiana: Recovery of Grammar and Typology,” who passed
away before this publication was ready for press. All were outstanding individuals and schol-
ars who are greatly missed.

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Bernstein, Cynthia, Thomas Nunnally, and Robin Sabino. 1997b. Introduction. In Bernstein,
Nunnally, and Sabino 1997a, 1–2.
 Introduction / 15

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Hancock, Ian. 1986. On the classification of Afro-�Seminole Creole. In Montgomery and
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Irvine, Judith T., and Susan Gal. 2000. Language ideology and linguistic differentiation. In
Regimes of language: ideologies, polities, and identities, ed. Paul V. Kroskrity, 35–84. Santa
Fe: School of Ameri�can Research Press.
Johnstone, Barbara. 1997. South�ern speech and self-�expression in an African-�American
woman’s story. In Bernstein, Nunnally, and Sabino 1997a, 87–97.
Klingler, Thomas. Colonial society and the development of Louisiana Creole. In Bernstein,
Nunnally, and Sabino 1997a, 140–151.
McMillan, James B., and Michael B. Montgomery. 1989. Annotated bibliography of South�ern
Ameri�can English. Tuscaloosa: University of Ala�bama Press.
Montgomery, Michael B. 1997. Language variety in the South: A retrospective and assess-
ment. In Bernstein, Nunnally, and Sabino 1997a, 3–20.
Montgomery, Michael B., and Guy Bailey, eds. 1986a. Language variety in the South: Per-
spectives in black and white. Tuscaloosa: University of Ala�bama Press.
Montgomery, Michael B., and Guy Bailey. 1986b. Introduction. In Montgomery and Bailey
1986a, 1–29.
Montgomery, Michael B., and Thomas E. Nunnally, eds. 1998. From the Gulf states and be-
yond: The legacy of Lee Pederson and LAGS. Tuscaloosa: University of Ala�bama Press.
Mufwene, Salikoko S. 1997. Gullah’s development: Myth and sociohisÂ�toriÂ�cal evidence. In
Bernstein, Nunnally, and Sabino 1997a, 113–22.
Nagle, Stephen J., and Sara L. Sanders, eds. 2003. English in the South�ern United States. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press.
Picone, Michael D. 1997. Code-�switching and loss of inflection in Louisiana French. In Bern-
stein, Nunnally, and Sabino 1997a, 152–162.
Picone, Michael D. 2002. Artistic codemixing. Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics
8:191–207.
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1997a, 311–351.
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21st century. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the South Atlantic Region of the
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plied Linguistics 4:225–55.
I
His�tori�cal Approaches
Indigenous Languages
2
Ameri�can Indian Languages of the Southeast
An Introduction
Pamela Munro

1. INTRODUCTION

Among the relatively unsung heroes of World War I is a group of Code Talkers who
helped the Ameri�can Expeditionary Force to win several battles in the Meuse-�Argonne
campaign by telephoning military information in Choctaw (Choctaw Nation 2002),
an Ameri�can Indian language origi�nally spoken in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Ala�
bama. Almost certainly, as Perry (2002) suggests, these events helped to inspire the
better known use of Code Talkers speaking Navajo and other Ameri�can Indian lan-
guages during World War II. We know few details of their conversations, but the Code
Talkers, some of whom are pictured in Figure 2.1, must surely have mystified their
German listeners. Not only were the vocabulary and sound sys�tem of Choctaw un-
familiar, but its morphosyntactic organization—so different from familiar European
languages that native speakers ofÂ�ten describe its word order as “backward” (see sec-
tion 3.1.6)—contributed greatly to the effectiveness of the code.
The Muskogean family of languages, which includes Choctaw (the source for the
name Tuscaloosa) and Chicka�saw (the inspiration for the Indians who appear in the
novels of William Faulkner; see section 5), predominated geographically in the aborigi�
nal Southeast. Typologically, they represent the region extremely well, although the
South�east is remarkable for the genetic diversity of its languages. Most other lan-
guages of the region share with Muskogean a pattern of word order traits that is rela-
tively uncommon crosslinguistically: they have subject-�object-�verb word order, they
are basically “postpositional” (or at least nonprepositional; see section 3.1.3), geni-
tives precede possessed nouns, and, unexpectedly for such a language, adjectives fol-
low the nouns they modify. All Southeast�ern languages exhibit complex polysynthetic
verbal morphology, and there is widespread use of active-�stative agreement marking.
Thus, although there is some variation, this Muskogean type of language can be con-
sidered more generally a Southeast�ern type, not only very different from English but
rather unusual crosslinguistically.
In this essay I present an overview of the Ameri�can Indian languages of the South-
east, following such important surveys as those by Swanton (1946), Crawford (1975),
Haas (1979), Hardy and Scancarelli (2005), Sturtevant (2005), and most recently Mar-
 22 / Munro

2.1. Some of the World War I Choctaw Code Talkers and their commanding officer in 1918. Left
to right: Solomon Louis, Mitchell Bobb, James Edwards, Calvin Wilson, and Joseph Davenport,
with Capt. E. H. Horner. Source: Choctaw Nation (2002).

tin’s extensive survey in Handbook of the North AmeriÂ�can Indians covering the SouthÂ�
east (Vol. 14, 2004: 68–86), and I give a brief introduction to some features of their lin-
guistic structure. I briefly discuss the most important contribution of these languages
to the South�ern linguistic scene, and then close with a reminder of the problem of
language endangerment, which threatens this important aspect of the linguistic heri-
tage of the South.
In the context of this volume, one may appropriately ask why I am discussing the
South�east rather than the South. In large scale considerations of Ameri�can Indian
culture, the eastÂ�ern third of the United States is ofÂ�ten considered a single “EastÂ�ern
Woodlands” region, with its lower half the Southeast. Different scholars have inter-
preted the boundaries of this region differently, as I will discuss.

2. THE LANGUAGES OF THE SOUTHEAST

The aborigi�nal South�east was a region of considerable linguistic diversity, containing

one complete language family with a number of distinct members, many of which are
still spoken; languages of several other large families primarily located elsewhere; and
many other smaller groups and language isolates (languages not known to be related
to any other group). The 13 language families for whose presence in the aborigi�nal
South�east we have linguistic documentation are presented in Table 2.1.
Table 2.1. Documented languages of the Southeast (names of living languages are in
capitals)
Family Languages Location
Adai Adai Texas, Louisiana
Algonquian Powhatan Virginia, New Jersey
Atakapa Atakapa Texas, Louisiana
Caddoan CADDO, Yatasi- Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas; now,
Natchidoches Oklahoma
Calusa Calusa Florida
Chitimacha Chitimacha (also Louisiana
Chawasha, Washa)
Iroquoian:
â•… Southern Iroquoian CHEROKEE North Carolina: now, North
Carolina, Oklahoma
Muskogean Apalachee Florida
Hitchiti-MIKASUKI Alabama, Georgia, Florida: now,
(MICCOSUKEE) Florida
CREEK (MUSKOGEE- Coosa and Tallapoosa Rivers:
SEMINOLE) now, Oklahoma, Florida
ALABAMA, KOASATI, Middle and upper Tennesee
(COUSHATTA) Valley: now, Texas and Louisiana
CHOCTAW, CHICKASAW Eastern Mississippi, Alabama,
(also Chakchiuma) Tennessee: now, Mississippi,
Louisiana, Oklahoma
Natchesan Natchez (also Colapissa, Mississippi
Taensa)
Siouan-Catawban:
â•…Siouan Tutelo (also Saponi- Virginia, lower Mississippi Valley:
Occaneechi) later, New York
Ofo lower Mississippi Valley
Biloxi lower Mississippi Valley
Quapaw Arkansas: later, Oklahoma
â•…Catawban Catawba South Carolina, North Carolina
Woccon North Carolina
Timucuan Timucua Florida, Georgia
Tawasa Alabama
Tunican Tunica (also Pacaha, East of the Mississippi River
Grigra, Koroa, Tiou, Yazoo)
Yuchi YUCHI (EUCHEE) Upper Tennessee Valley: now,
Oklahoma
(contact language) Mobilian Lower Mississippi

Sources: primarily Goddard 2004 and Martin 2004

 24 / Munro

In addition to the large Muskogean family, all of whose members were located in
the Southeast, the indigenous languages of the region included languages belonging
to four other language families with representatives outside the region (Algonquian,
Caddoan, Iroquoian, and Siouan) and seven language isolates, languages that are, as
far as we know, unrelated to any other languages (Adai, Atakapa, Calusa, Chitimacha,
Timucuan, Tunica, and Euchee), several of which contain more than one recognized
language variety. The listing in Table 2.1 is based primarily on information from vol-
ume 14 of the Smithsonian’s Handbook, on the Southeast, which was previewed by Ives
Goddard (2004). However, I have taken the liberty of adding three Ameri�can Indian
languages of the South which are excluded by the Handbook’s definition of “South-
east”: Powhatan, an Algonquian language of Virginia; Quapaw, a Siouan language of
Arkansas; and Mobilian (also called Mobilian Jargon), a contact language primarily
based on Muskogean.1 The decision to add these languages to the roll of South�east�ern
languages is not mine alone: Powhatan and Mobilian are discussed in the first major
collection of technical papers on Southeast�ern languages (Crawford 1975) and Qua-
paw is considered in the sec�ond such volume (Hardy and Scancarelli 2005).
Most of the languages listed in Table 2.1 have no living speakers and are known
to us only through earlier scholars’ and explorers’ efforts at documentation. The ma-
jority died out so long ago that we have only written records of their words. Only four
of the twelve linguistic groups origi�nally present in the South�east still have living rep-
resentatives, in�clud�ing nine distinct languages.2 In addition to Choctaw, the language
of the World War I Code Talkers, these include the Muskogean languages Chicka�saw,
Creek (spoken by the Muskogee and Seminole groups), Ala�bama, Koasati (Coushatta),
and Mikasuki (Miccosukee). Almost certainly the best known Southeast�ern Indian
language is the Iroquoian language Cherokee, most of whose living relatives are spo-
ken in the Northeast. Other living Southeast�ern languages include the Caddoan lan-
guage Caddo and Yuchi (Euchee), a language isolate. (In Table 2.1, I give the alternate
forms of the names of these languages that are preferred by tribal members. I will use
these names to refer to the languages for the remainder of this essay.)
Speakers of many of the best known languages in Table 2.1 were moved to other
parts of the United States by the Federal government so that their ancestral lands could
be opened to white settlement. The most prominent such case was the forced migra-
tion of speakers of Chicka�saw, Choctaw, Creek, Seminole, and Cherokee to Oklahoma
on the “Trail of Tears” during the 1830s. A less well known movement is that of the
Tutelo, who were forced from their ancestral lands in Virginia to reservation lands
in New York State. Because of such removals, there has been relatively little linguis-
tic contact between South�ern Indians and other South�erners for 170 years. �(Calvin
S. Brown reports that when his mother asked Faulkner where he got the Chicka�
saws who people his stories—since there were no real life models for them in Ox-
ford, Mississippi—Â�“he answered matter-Â�of-Â�factly, ‘Mrs. Brown, I made them up.’↜”)3
Today, the Choctaw, Chicka�saw, Creek, Cherokee, Caddo, and Euchee languages
are spoken in Oklahoma; Ala�bama and Coushatta are spoken in Texas; Choctaw
and Coushatta are spoken in Louisiana; Choctaw is spoken in Mississippi; Cherokee
is spoken in North Carolina; and Creek and Miccosukee are spoken in Florida. Al-
though many of the other tribal groups listed in Table 2.1 are still active po�liti�cally,
all of their languages are extinct.
 American Indian Languages of the Southeast / 25

Table 2.2. “Effectively undocumented” Southeastern languages

Apparent isolates Akokisa, Bidai, Chacato, Eyeish, Opelousa, Pakana,
Pascagoula
Other languages Congaree, Coree, Cusabo, Guale, Mobila, Monacan,
Okchai, Sewee, Shoccoree-Eno, Wateree-Chickanee,
Yamasee-Tuskegee
Ethnic groups about whose Amacanos, Avoyel, Bayogoula, Cape Fear, Chisca,
languages we have no Hooks and Blackhooks, Houma, Keyauwee, Manahoac,
information at all Neusiok, Okelousa, Osochee, Pedee, Pensacola,
Quinipissa, Saluda, Santee, Sawokli, Saxapahaw,
Sugeree, Suteree, Tequesta (Tegesta), Tocobaga,
Tomahitan, Waccamaw, Waxhaw, Wetumpka, Winyaw

Source: Goddard 2004

In addition to these language groups for which we have documentation, there are
other Southeast�ern languages of whose existence we have records, but which we know
little to nothing about—they are, according to Goddard, “effectively undocumented”—Â�
as listed in Table 2.2. This list includes additional apparent isolate languages without
close relatives and other languages that may have been related to the better docu-
mented languages in Table 2.1, as well as the names of ethnic groups whose exis-
tence in the South�east is documented but about whose languages we know nothing.
There is a long history of debate about whether groups such as the 13 in Table 2.1
should be viewed as completely unrelated to each other or whether there may be fur-
ther connections among them. Many such relationships have been proposed—for ex-
ample, Joseph H. Greenberg (1987) argues that virtually all the languages of North,
Central, and South America have a common ancestor language: according to his clas-
sification, all the languages listed here are related.4 Greenberg’s classification is not
widely accepted among specialists, however. Other less global connections that have
been suggested include a Gulf group (Muskogean, Tunica, Natchesan, Chitimacha,
and Atakapa), which has been linked with Algonquian (Haas 1958); a proposed re-
lationship of Euchee and Siouan (Sapir 1929); and groupings of Caddoan with Iro-
quoian or Siouan (see Chafe 1979). All these proposals are controversial (as argued
most strongly by Campbell and Mithun 1979), however, and for the purposes of this
essay I do not deviate from the conservative presentation in Table 2.1.

3. CHICKA�SAW, A T YPICAL SOUTHEAST�ERN LANGUAGE

I will begin with a very brief sketch of the Southeast�ern language that I have researched
the most extensively, Chicka�saw, to exemplify a particular grammatical configuration.
Using this language as evidence, I will argue for the notion of a Southeast�ern linguistic
type. Although there are many important grammatical differences among the Musk-
ogean languages, all of them share the structural features of Chicka�saw presented here.5
Chicka�saw is a language of the West�ern branch of Muskogean.6 Originally spo-
 26 / Munro

ken in Ala�bama, Mississippi, and Tennessee, Chicka�saw is now spoken only in the
Chicka�saw Nation of south-�central Oklahoma. Chicka�saw is very closely related to
the better described language Choctaw (now spoken in the Choctaw Nation of south�
east�ern Oklahoma, in Mississippi, and in Louisiana), the language of the Code Talk-
ers, for which there is a complete translation of the Bible and a hymnbook (prepared
by a missionary team headed by Cyrus Byington), several dictionaries (Wright 1880,
Watkins 1892, Byington 1915), and a number of descriptive and pedagogical gram-
mars (Byington 1870, Jacob, Nicklas, and Spencer 1977, Haag and Willis 2001) and
dissertations (Nicklas 1972, Ulrich 1986, Broadwell 1990, Williams 1996, Haag 1996),
as well as other pedagogical and descriptive material.
I have been studying Chicka�saw since 1978, working primarily with my longtime
collaborator Mrs. Catherine Willmond, who was born in McMillan, Oklahoma (be-
tween Ardmore and Madill) but who now lives in Los Angeles, as well as with a great
number of fluent speakers in Oklahoma. Before I met Mrs. Willmond, there was little
previous work on the language (Humes and Humes 1973, Pulte 1975). Our collabo-
ration has produced a dictionary (1994) and many technical linguistic articles; we are
currently finishing a pedagogical grammar which has been accepted for publication
by the University of Oklahoma Press.7
I estimate the current number of fluent Chicka�saw speakers at under 200;8 all of
these, to my knowledge, are over 50, and most are over 70. No children are learning
the language, although periodically classes are offered in Oklahoma. With Mrs. Will-
mond’s help, I teach a brief introduction to ChickaÂ�saw every year or two at UCLA.9
3.1. ChickaÂ�saw’s Word Order Typology
Typologists classify languages syntactically according to the order of constituents
in clauses and vari�ous types of phrases, especially possessive phrases, adpositional
phrases, and noun-�plus-�adjective phrases, noting correlations among the orders of
elements in these phrases.
3.1.1.
Chicka�saw is an SOV language, meaning that the subject, object, and verb most neu-
trally come in that order in a simple sentence, as in example (1):10

(1) Ofi'-�
at kowi'-�a lhiyohli.
dog-�
nom cat-�acc chase
‘The dog chases the cat’

As this example shows, Chicka�saw has nominal case marking: the subject noun in (1)
is marked nominative, and the object is marked accusative. This case marking facili-
tates a certain free�dom of word order in the language: under certain discourse condi-
tions, the object can be preposed before the subject, or one noun can appear follow-
ing the verb.11 Most commonly, however, sentences with two nouns follow the SOV
order; this is certainly the basic word order in Chicka�saw.
Prototypical SOV languages like Japanese or Turkish have what has been called by
linguistic theorists a “harmonic” order (e.g. Greenberg 1966, Hawkins 1983) in which
 American Indian Languages of the Southeast / 27

every type of syntactic phrase ends with its head: thus, sentences end with the verb,
possessed noun phrases end with the possessed noun, adpositional phrases end with
a postposition, and phrases containing a noun modified by an adjective end with the
noun. Chicka�saw does not fully follow this typological pattern.

3.1.2.

As in prototypical SOV languages, Chicka�saw genitive (possessor) nouns precede

possessed nouns:

(2) Ihoo im-�

ofi'-�
at John ilbak-�a kisili.
woman dat-�dog-�nom John hand-�acc bite
‘The woman’s dog bites John’s hand’

In the phrases ihoo imofi’ and John ilbak the possessors ihoo ‘woman’ and John come
before the nouns they possess. Nouns like ofi’ ‘dog’ that are not always possessed have
a dative prefix when possessed;12 inalienably possessed nouns, like ilbak ‘hand’ and
many other kinship terms and body parts, need no such marker.

3.1.3.

It is standard in SOV languages for adpositions to follow their objects: these languages
use postpositions rather than prepositions. Chicka�saw actually has neither postposi-
tions nor prepositions. Instead, adpositional notions are expressed with applicative
verb prefixes (Munro 2000). In (3), for example, adding the prefix aa-� to the verb in
(1) licenses the addition of a locative argument to that sentence; in (4), adding the
dative prefix i-�licenses the addition of a benefactive argument:

(3) Ofi'-�
at chokk-�
a kowi' aa-�lhiyohli.
nom house-�acc cat loc-�chase
dog-�
‘The dog chases the cat by the house’

(4) Ofi'-�
at ihoo-�
a kowi' i-�lhiyohli.
dog-�
nom woman-�acc cat dat-�chase
‘The dog chases the cat for the woman’

Thus, while additional nouns like chokka' ‘house’ and ihoo ‘woman’ cannot be freely
added to a sentence like example (1), such additions are possible when the verb lhi-
yohli includes either the prefix aa-� or the prefix i-�. Note that in both (3) and (4) the
added nouns are not adjacent to the prefixes on the verb that allow their inclusion in
those sentences. Thus, the noun and the sentence item that specifies the adpositional
relationship do not form a constituent.

3.1.4.
Locative arguments like ‘house’ in (3) can be specified more precisely by the use of
relational nouns such as anonka' ‘inside’ or ashaka' ‘back’ (Munro 2002):
 28 / Munro

(5) Ofi'-�
at chokka' anonka'-� a kowi' aa-�lhiyohli.
dog-�
nom house inside-�acc cat loc-�chase
‘The dog chases the cat inside of the house’

(6) Ofi'-�at chokka' ashaka'-�a kowi' aa-�lhiyohli.

nom house behind-�acc cat loc-�chase
dog-�
‘The dog chases the cat in back of the house’

Words like anonka' and ashaka' look like adpositions, but they are not. Syntactically, it
is the aa-�prefix on the verb in (5) and (6) that allows specification of a locative object,
essentially transforming the transitive verb lhiyohli ‘chase’ to a ditransitive ‘chase in/at/
by’. Without this aa-Â�, these sentences are ungrammatical, as exemplified in (5') and (6').

(5') *Ofi'-�at chokka' anonka'-�a kowi' lhiyohli.

dog-�
nom house inside-�acc cat chase

(6') *Ofi'-�at chokka' ashaka'-�a kowi' lhiyohli.

dog-�
nom house behind-�acc cat chase

Thus, classification of Chicka�saw as either prepositional or postpositional is somewhat

problematical. However, because the language uses postnominal relational nouns,13
the language seems more postpositional than prepositional, which is consistent with
the expected SOV typology.

3.1.5.

The major way in which Chicka�saw departs from the standard SOV pattern is in the
behavior of adjectives. Chicka�saw does not, strictly speaking, have adjectives. Every
“adjective” in the language is actually a verb, taking normal verb tense, subordina-
tion, and agreement marking (Munro 2002). Moreover, adjectival verbs modifying
nouns do not precede them:

(7) Ofi' lakna-�kat kowi' tohbi-�ka lhiyohli.

dog be.brown-�ss cat be.white-�ds chase
‘The brown dog chases the white cat’

The structure of this sentence clearly indicates the verbal nature of ChickaÂ�saw “adjec-
tives”. The adjectival modifier of the subject (lakna ‘be brown’) is followed by a same-Â�
subject switch-�reference marker, indicating that it is a verb with the same subject as
the next higher verb (here, lhiyohli ‘chase’), while the adjectival modifier of the ob-
ject (tohbi ‘be white’) is followed by a different-Â�subject switch-Â�reference marker, indi-
cating that it is a verb with a different subject from the next higher verb. (Lakna and
tohbi also take other verbal inflection which I will not discuss here. Rankin [2005]
observes that “the treatment of the category labeled adjective in most studies of syn-
tactic typology has generally been quite Eurocentric”.)
 American Indian Languages of the Southeast / 29

3.1.6.
It is probably best to regard these sequences of nouns followed by adjectival verbs
used as modifiers, such as lakna ‘be brown’ and tohbi ‘be white’ in (7), as reduced rela-
tive clauses. This allows us to say that the Chicka�saw type of SOV language follows
a different “harmony” that is predicate-Â�final rather than head-Â�final (Munro 1985).14
Whatever the ultimate analy�sis of this phenomenon, Chicka�saw represents a fairly
unusual word order type. (Greenberg [1966] classifies the more usual SOV type as
Type 23, while the less common Chicka�saw type is Type 24.) The fact that Chicka�saw
differs from English in the normal order of words in a sentence, in a noun plus ad-
jective phrase, and in the order of noun plus relational noun explains why many of
its speakers ofÂ�ten remark that ChickaÂ�saw structure is “backward” relative to English.
(Scancarelli [2005] reports the same observation from Cherokee speakers.)
3.2. Other Typological Features of Chickasaw
Word order is not ChickaÂ�saw’s only grammatical phenomenon of note. In this sec-
tion I will discuss two other important features: “active” agreement marking and
poly�synthesis.
3.2.1.
We saw previously, for example in (1–2), that ChickaÂ�saw marks subject and object
nouns as nominative and accusative, similarly to European languages like German
or Latin. This case-�marking pattern is not particularly characteristic of the South-
east, but the way that pronominal agreement is indicated on the Chicka�saw verb is
remarkably typical.
ChickaÂ�saw has a complex sysÂ�tem of “active” agreement with non-Â�third-Â�person ar-
guments in a clause. In such a system, there are two groups of pronominal affixes,
one (class I) used for most active or transitive subjects, the other (class II) used for
most nonactive subjects and for most objects.15 As the examples (8–10) show, third
person arguments are not marked, but they are inferred when a bare verb is used as
a full sentence. ChickaÂ�saw does not have sex gender; I use ‘he’ and ‘him’ only for con-
venience, but ‘she’ and ‘her’ or ‘it’ would work just as well as translations.

(8) Intransitive (active): class I agreement

a. Hilha. ‘He dances.’
b. Kii-Â�hilha. ‘We dance.’
c. Ish-Â�hilha. ‘You dance.’

(9) Intransitive (nonactive): class II agreement

a. Sipokni. ‘He is old.’
b. Po-Â�sipokni. ‘We are old.’
c. Chi-Â�sipokni. ‘You are old.’

(10) Transitive: class I agreement for subject, class II agreement for object
a. Lhiyohli. ‘He chases him.’
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