Introduction

This research examined patterns in the sound structure of the Algonquian language Unami. Using computer software that was not readily available at the time of the original fieldwork, consonant length and sentence intonation patterns were objectively observed and described. This provided an analysis of these features that, for the first time, did not rely on (imperfect) human hearing.

Unami

Ollie Anderson

Unami, also known as Delaware, is an Algonquian language originally spoken in the Delaware Valley region. After the arrival of the Europeans, the Delaware tribe relocated to various locations, in particular to several in Oklahoma. The last fluent speaker passed away in 2000. For this project, recordings were analyzed that had been made between 1966 and 1970 of two Delaware women, Ollie Anderson and Martha Ellis.

Materials and Methods

• Praat is a freeware computer program that creates visual representations of various aspects of sounds, such as the pitch, intensity, and duration of the wave, as well as its component frequencies. Praat was used to analyze the linguistic properties of the 1960s recordings.

• The word-processing software, Nota Bene, was used for transcriptions of the sound files.

• Editing software (also freeware) called Cool Edit Pro was used to split larger files into more manageable sizes for use in Praat.

Though a study in 1946 described Unami as having contrasting (phonemic) short and long consonants (Voegelin 1946), these differences had not previously been independently measured. (Phonemes are the minimal units of sound that contrast in a particular language and can therefore distinguish words.) The measured duration of the consonants (t, s, x, and š) was plotted to determine if those thought to be phonemically long did indeed have longer durations than the phonemically short consonants.

The chart shows that while most of the instances pattern such that the phonemic long consonants have longer durations than the phonemic short consonants, there is overlap in the mid-range values and there are several outliers. This suggests that structurally relevant distinctions of consonant length may be signaled by other factors in addition to measurable duration.

Intonation
The pitch contour of single syntactic sentence meaning: ‘We experience happiness when it’s light here where we live.’
Two sentences have been united by the speaker through the use of the intonation. They translate as: ‘Here, we can now see where to step and where to place our hands. It is light here where we live.’
The pitch contour represents only a single sentence, but the intonation splits it into several distinct parts (marked by “\”). The translation is: ‘Everybody benefits from your divine power, Father, the way you set up this (world) here where you put us to live, \ in fact, any creature at all that has a heart, \ even the animals, and the birds, and the little birds.’
Though traditional syntactic analysis has focused on the sentence as the basic unit of analysis, this evidence shows that for prosodic (intonation) features, the sentence may not be the ideal level to examine. Prosody can function independently from the sentence structure to present multi-sentence discourse as a series of segments that highlight desired topics.

Discussion

Both the consonant length and sentence intonation data provide evidence for the complex relationship between linguistic structures and the phonetic features that express them. Further investigation of these features is required to fully understand how they function. Future research would include examining other instances of consonant length contrasts and determining the precise purpose of the intonation patterns.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Dr. Ives Goddard, my research advisor and mentor for this project. I would also like to thank all of my fellow RTP interns for their support and input.

This research was made possible through the financial support of the NMNH Office of the Director.

Reference

Voegelin, C.F. 1946. Delaware, an Eastern Algonquian language. Linguistic Structures of Native America. New York, Viking Fund Publications 6: 130-157.