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Osage Grammar

Osage Grammar

Hardcover

Series: Studies in the Anthropology of North American Indians

Indigenous Languages of the AmericasLinguisticsAnthropology

ISBN10: 0803238037
ISBN13: 9780803238039
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Published: Feb 1 2005
Pages: 491
Weight: 2.02
Height: 1.52 Width: 6.39 Depth: 9.17
Language: English
When Europeans first made contact with the Osages, they lived in present-day Missouri, along the Osage River. After being forced onto a reservation, the Osages purchased land from the Cherokees in Indian Territory and resettled in northeastern Oklahoma in the later part of the nineteenth century. Today the Osage tribe numbers about 18,000, but only two elders still speak the traditional language, a member of the Siouan family of languages.

Osage Grammar is the first documentation of how the Osage language works, including more than two thousand sentences from Osage speakers, and a detailed description of its phonology, morphology, and syntax. Also featured are such components as verb conjugations, derivation, and suffixes; kinship terms; and the nominal system. The importance of documenting a language, especially when on the verge of extinction, can hardly be overstated. Growing up in Osage County, Oklahoma, Carolyn Quintero has been documenting the Osage language for twenty years, speaking to more than a dozen elders and transcribing hundreds of hours of interviews. Her research could not now be repeated since most of the elders whose words appear on these pages are gone.

Also in

Indigenous Languages of the Americas