A Grammar of Creek (Muskogee)

Jack B. Martin

U of Nebraska Press, May 1, 2011 - Language Arts & Disciplines - 472 pages

Creek (or Muskogee) is a Muskogean language spoken by several thousand members of the Muscogee (Creek) and Seminole nations of Oklahoma and by several hundred members of the Seminole Tribe of Florida. This volume is the first modern grammar of Creek, compiled by a leading authority on the languages of the southern United States. ø Intended for scholars, students, and Creek instructors, this reference grammar describes all the major morphological and syntactic patterns in the language. Special attention is given to pitch accent and tone, active agreement, locative prefixes, tense, aspect, and switch reference. The description covers several hundred years of documentation and draws heavily on materials written by Creek speakers. It is likely to be the definitive source on the language for years to come.

Contents

• Creek and the Creekspeaking peoples: 3
• Overview of the language: 21
• Creek dialects and ways of speaking: 38
• Phonemes: 47
• General phonological processes: 62
• The organization of phonemes into higher units: 70
• Stress and tone in nouns: 75
• Stress tone and grades in verbs: 83
• Orthography: 101
• Nominalization: 107
• Compounding: 114
• Plural nouns: 127
• Possession: 133
• Pronouns: 142
• Noun forms with adverbial function: 149
• Locative prefixes: 155
• Agreement: 168
• dative and instrumental: 183
• Plural verbs: 197
• middle k causative ic: 214
• Impersonals: 228
• Verb forms with adverbial function: 238
• tense and related notions: 257
• Negation: 281
• Be auxiliaries and modality: 298
• Numbers and quantifiers: 313
• Describing motion and direction: 323
• Soundsymbolic verbs: 333
• Focus of attention clitic: 357
• Other markers: 364
• Word order and basic syntax: 371
• Clause types: 387
• Interpreting pronouns reflexives and reciprocals: 407
• Style: 416
• Paradigms: 423
• Texts: 436
• List of common affixes: 445
• References: 455
• 171: 469

About the author

Jack B. Martin is an associate professor of English at the College of William and Mary. He is the coeditor of Totkv Mocvse/New Fire: Creek Folktales and the coauthor of A Dictionary of Creek/Muskogee (Nebraska 2000). Margaret McKane Mauldin is a Creek instructor at the University of Oklahoma. She was awarded the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from the College of William and Mary for her contribution to the study and preservation of the Creek language. Juanita McGirt teaches Creek in Okemah, Oklahoma, and transcribed and translated recordings and documents for this volume.

Bibliographic information

• Title: A Grammar of Creek (Muskogee); Studies in the Native Languages of the Americas; Studies in the anthropology of North American Indians
• Author: Jack B. Martin
• Contributors: Margaret McKane Mauldin, Juanita McGirt, Indiana University, Bloomington. American Indian Studies Research Institute
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: U of Nebraska Press, 2011
• ISBN: 0803211066, 9780803211063
• Length: 472 pages
• Subjects: Language Arts & Disciplines / Reference; Social Science / Ethnic Studies / Native American Studies