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Part of
Historical Linguistics 2022: Selected papers from the 25th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Oxford, 1–5 August 2022
Edited by Holly Kennard, Emily Lindsay-Smith, Aditi Lahiri and Martin Maiden
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 369] 2025
► pp. 79–93

The classification of the Plains Algonquian languages

| University of Wisconsin–Madison
The last broad assessment of Algonquian internal relationships was over a quarter century ago, by Goddard (1994), and most research since adopts his view that the relationships almost entirely reflect an areal cline rather than subgroups, though that consensus may be beginning to break down. Such work, though, has seldom paid explicit attention to basic principles of subgrouping, including the foundational one of synapomorphy. Using a character-based approach to phonological history, I explore evidence for a new subgroup involving languages of the Great Plains: Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Atsina. This is a small step toward a fuller reorganization of the Algonquian family tree.
Keywords: subgrouping, synapomorphy, character-based approaches, Algonquian
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Algonquian subgrouping
    • 2.1A consensus
    • 2.2A move away from flat structure?
  • 3.Synapomorphy and phonological innovations
  • 4.The evidence of Plains Algonquian
    • 4.1The vowel system
    • 4.2Glide merger
    • 4.3Loss of *k
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Author queries
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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