1. Nathaniel Hunter & Emad Masroor
Prof. Michael Weiss
Linguistics 3314: Historical Linguistics
6 May 2014
Problems in the History of Iroquoian Languages
1 Introduction
This paper will attempt to address some of the linguistic history of the Iroquois language
family by looking into larger “problems” in this history.
The first item we will address, covered in Section 2, is actually a problem proper, and it
is reconciling the numerous proposed subgroupings of the Iroquoian Language family, primarily
the Northern Iroquian branch (the Southern Iroquoian branch is quite solidly defined, and made
up of only one language, Cherokee, and so there needn’t be any discussion of it).
The second item, covered in Section 3, is not a problem, per se, but rather an interesting
and unique development in the Southern Iroquoian Branch. That is the development of
phonemic tone in Cherokee, a system unique among the Iroquoian languages – it is the only
language in the family that is ‘tonemic.’
2 Diachronic Investigation of Northern Iroquoian languages
The Northern Iroquoian languages are today classified according to the following chart.

2. *Proto-Northern Iroquoian
*Proto-Tuscarora-Nottoway
Tuscarora
Nottaway
Susquehannock
Laurentian
*Proto-Mohawk-Oneida
Mohawk
Oneida
Onondaga
Cayuga
Seneca
Huron
Wyandot
This chart does not have as many sub-groupings at the lower levels as many previous
classifications of Iroquoian languages had.1
In particular, the most recent work on Iroquoian Linguistics
has (1) relegated Proto-Tuscarora-Nottoway to the same genetic level as any other Northern Iroquoian
language, instead of the older practice of placing its divergence as being decidedly the earliest historical
event. (2) Recent work has also rejected the linguistic classification known as the ‘Five Nations’ –
derived from the political alliance bearing the same name – as well as the ‘Proto-Lake Iroquoian’
proposed by Chafe and Foster 1981.These languages are spoken by peoples who were, at the time of
the first colonial settlements, settled in close proximity to each other. Hence, contemporary Iroquoian
linguistics has been characterized by a rejection of simplistic classifications that may have been based on
non-linguistic factors, such as geographical proximity and political affiliation.
1 Prehistoric Divergences and Recontacts between Cayuga, Seneca, and the Other Northern
Iroquoian Languages
Wallace L. Chafe and Michael K. Foster
International Journal of American Linguistics, Vol. 47, No. 2 (Apr., 1981), pp. 121-142
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1264434

3. 2.1 The problem of Tuscarora-Nottoway
The divergence of Tuscarora-Nottoway is an event in Iroquoian linguistic history that linguists
have had widespread agreement on. However, according to Lounsbury 1978, “there is morphological,
phonological and lexical evidence to support the hypothesis that this is the oldest division in the
Northern branch”. Julian, however, classifies Proto-Tuscarora-Nottoway at the same genetic level as
several other languages. The reason why earlier scholars cited Tuscarora-Nottoway as having diverged
much earlier than other northern Iroquoian languages may have been the fact that both of these
languages were separate from the rest of the Iroquois languages for non-linguistic reasons. The
Tuscarora people were a very late addition to the Five Nations confederacy, while Nottoway’s last
speakers were geographically isolated in south eastern Virginia. Therefore while linguistic evidence ties
both of these languages to each other, it appears that non-linguistic factors were influential in the
categorization – by older scholars such as Lounsbury – of Proto-Tuscarora-Nottoway as the oldest
division of the northern Iroquoian languages.
In another lesser-known classification of Iroquoian languages, Chafe and Foster claim that the
divergence of Tuscarora and Cayuga from the mainstream of Northern Iroquoian was the first to take
place. However, they make this claim on the basis of a single innovation, the introduction of *kaye to
represent a ‘nonsingular human agent’. (The fact that Cayuga and Tuscarora are grouped together is
itself also problematic, but a critique of that particular theory is beyond the scope of this paper) I believe
that this is not sufficient evidence to claim that the division of Tuscarora is any more ancient than other
divisions in the northern Iroquois language family.
In more recent times, Julian 2010 has, while maintaining the distinction of Proto-Tuscarora-
Nottoway as a separate group, placed it at the same level of classification as the other languages. This is
supported by the fact that Tuscarora (representative of PTN because it is the only extant language)

4. shares 69, 65, 66, 65, 65 and 67 words from the Swadesh-100 list with the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga,
Cayuga, Seneca and Huron languages respectively. All of these correlation indices fall in a narrow range
of 65-69, which strongly suggests that PTN’s divergence is approximately the same relative to all other
northern Iroquoian languages.
The close relationship of Tuscarora and Nottoway with each other can be gauged from the
correlation indices of surviving Nottoway wordlists with Tuscarora, which at 138 cognate pairs, is
significantly higher than their correlation with other northern Iroquoian languages, all of which fall
between 60 and 75. Julian also posits six sound changes which occurred in the transition from Proto-
Northern Iroquoian to Proto-Tuscarora-Nottoway:
ts > tʃ / _h, i, j ths > tʃ j > Ø / tʃ_
t > ˀt ˈV > ˈVː / _n (penultimate syllables) n > t (except before nasal vowels, kʷ,
and h)
Hence, evidence shows that (1) Tuscarora and Nottoway are much more closely related to each
other than to other north Iroquoian languages, and (2) there is no compelling evidence to show that
proto-Tuscarora-Nottoway’s separation from the mainstream is any more ancient than other divisions of
the Iroquois language family.
2.2 Proto-Five Nations and Proto-Lake Iroquoian
Traditional classifications of the Northern Iroquoian languages have included a subgrouping
called ‘Proto-Lake Iroquoian’ to comprise Laurentian, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca and Cayuga.
Within Proto-Lake Iroquoian, the ‘Five Nations’ subgroup includes Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca
and Cayuga, the languages of the five nations that make up the political alliance with the same name.

5. Earlier stages of a language cannot be posited unless a significant set of shared innovations from
present-day languages can be traced back to that stage. Much of the literature about Proto-Five
Nations, however, is lacking in rigor when it comes to a delineation of the particular shared innovations
that marked proto-Five Nations language. For example, when critically analyzing the position of Huron in
the history of Iroquoian languages, Marianne Mithun 2
states that “certain dialect differences found
within Huron also appear within individual Iroquoian languages”. For example, she cites the sound
change t > k/ _y that was supposedly an innovation in Huron. However, some speakers of Cayuga also
seem to use k before y in words for which other Iroquoian speakers would use t. Huron exhibits an
epenthetic e between kk clusters, an innovation that Mithun states also characterizes Cayuga and
Seneca. These and other similar inconsistencies with the model used by Mithun 19993
throw into doubt
the very existence of a Proto-Five Nations stage in the history of Iroquoian languages. Can Huron really
be said to have branched off at a ‘higher’ level than Five Nations languages if no significant innovations
have been shown to be common exclusively to them?
It should be noted that the presence of a political confederacy is not sufficient justification to
posit a linguistic subgrouping. Rather than trying to explain inconsistencies with the traditional model,
Mithun should have attempted a more fundamental reworking of the reconstruction of earlier stages of
Iroquoian languages. However, she claims that
2 Untangling the Huron and the Iroquois
Marianne Mithun
International Journal of American Linguistics, Vol. 51, No. 4 (Oct., 1985), pp. 504-507
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1265321
3 Mithun, Marianne. (1999). The Languages of Native North America. New York: Cambridge
University Press.

6. “[t]he case for an early separation of Northern Iroquoian into 8 parallel branches, with
subsequent convergence of the Iroquois Proper languages due to contact, would be
strengthened if we could see old, deep differences but new, superficial similarities. At present,
although we do have some evidence of contact, the differences do not appear to be very old”
And on this basis Mithun persists with the traditional classification – i.e. the existence of a Proto-Five
Nations stage – by attempting to explain the common features of Huron and the Five Nations languages
with socio-political reasons. She states that when the Five Nations confederacy conquered and subdued
the Huron people, the Huron settled in what had been traditional Five Nations homelands, such as
Western New York State. She claims that the inconsistently shared features of Five Nations languages
and Huron arose because some innovations of Huron were adopted by the social group they had
assimilated into, while most were not.
Recent work in Iroquoian linguistics has challenged this position, and, I believe, presented a
family tree of Iroquoian languages that is more consistent with the available data. Not having found a
significant number of innovations common to all Five Nations languages, Charles Julian found no reason
to posit a reconstructed proto-Five Nations stage, and instead claims that Northern Iroquoian branched
into eight different subgroupings, assuming nothing about further subdivisions except the Tuscarora-
Nottoway branch and the Mohawk-Oneida branch, for both of which there is substantial linguistic
evidence. As Julian states,
“Old, deep similarities among the Five Nations languages would first need to be
evident in order to allow grouping of the Five Nations languages as a subgroup to the
exclusion of Huron, and that old, deep similarities among the Lake Iroquoian
languages would first need to be evident in order to allow the grouping of the Lake
Iroquoian languages to the exclusion of Tuscarora-Nottoway”

7. 3 The Development of Tone in Cherokee
First, I will present some background of the Cherokee tone system. The Oklahoma
dialect of Cherokee (distinct in many relevant ways from the North Carolina dialect, such as the
lack of a lowfall tone) has five tones and one accent, though the accent is commonly cited as a
tone, due to the fact that it is a pitch accent, rather than a stress accent. The tones and accent
are:
Name Orthography Pitch Level
(1) High á [3]
(2) Low a (no marking) [2]
(3) High-Low â:/ áa [3-2]
(4) Low-High ǎ:/ aá [2-3]
(5) Lowfall à:/ àà [1] / [2-1] *
(6) Superhigh (accent) a” :/ aa” [4] / [3-4] *
*: Both Lowfall and Superhigh tones are generally realized as tone contours. However, the non-
contoured tones are not contrastive with the contoured, so they are also commonly
represented as non-contoured.
As might already be apparent by the pitch contours and orthographic conventions of the
tones, Cherokee in fact only truly possesses three tones and an accent. Tones (3) and (4) only
appear in long vowels, and so are in reality just a sequence of High-Low and Low-High
respectively, one tone assigned to each mora of the vowel . According to Uchihara, “every mora

8. of a word has either a high tone or a low tone, and a bimoraic long vowel can carry high-low,
low-high, lowfall or superhigh in addition to high and low tones.”
The superhigh functions as a simple optional accent, which may occur at either the
penultimate or antipenultimate mora of a word. In addition, Charles Julian4 reconstructs a form
of this accent in Proto-Iroquoian, and so it will not be addressed in this section.
The rest of this section will discuss the origins of the Lowfall and High tones. It will not
include the Low tone, as most literature, particularly Uchihara’s dissertation Tone and Accent in
Oklahoma Cherokee5, suggests that the low tone is essentially an unmarked, default, or non-
tone; to rephrase, it is the descendent of instances where a new tone was not developed at all,
and so there is not much to say about its development.
4 A History of the Iroquoian Languages
Charles Julian
Dissertation, University of Manitoba, 2010
5 Tone and Accent in Oklahoma Cherokee
Hirohito Uchihara
Dissertation Chapters 7 and 9, University at Buffalo, 2013

9. 3.1 The Source of the Lowfall Tone
An early theory, proposed by Lindsey6 in 1987, about the development of the lowfall
tone in Cherokee suggests that all instances of the lowfall arise from glottal stops. This is
suggested by the fact that the glottal stop and lowfall tone are in complementary distribution.
Even further, some morphemes have allomorphs that alternate between vowel-glottal stop and
vowel with a lowfall tone. For example, the classifier -naʔ- is realized with a glottal stop when
preceding a vowel and a lowfall town when preceding a consonant.
However, Uchihara proposes a theory which suggests another source which also
contributed to the creation of the lowfall tone. It states that a vowel gains a lowfall tone in
pronominal morphemes beginning with a vowel. Previously, this was analyzed as the insertion
of a glottal stop after this vowel, which would then become a lowfall tone. However, there is no
synchronic evidence for this phenomenon. Thus, the origin of these lowfall tones is believed to
be a synchronic process, rather than a diachronic one. This is supported by the fact that a
lowfall tone that orginates through this rule, termed Pronominal Tonic Lowering, cannot be
given a superhigh accent, while any other lowfall tone can.
3.2 The Source of the High Tone
It is posited that the high tone, like the lowfall tone, arises from a glottal stop. However,
Uchihara refers to it as an “incipient” tone, or one that has not been fully phonologized. This is
because the glottal stop often co-occurs with the High tone, though not in all cases, so the High
6 Cherokee Pitch Phonology
Geoffrey Lindsey
Ms. University College, London, 1987

10. tone has not yet been fully dissociated from its source. The High tone also thus appears to
lternate with the lowfall tone. The glottal stop as a ource for a high tone is logical, because
cross-linguistically, it can be observed that a glottal stop generally raises the pitch of the
preceding vowel.
3.3 Lowfall and High: Both From Glottal Stop?
These two tones both appear to hava arisen from the same source: a glottal stop. This
development is obviously exceedingly uncommon: one would expect a single segment to
generally have a single effect on pitch. So, the exact historical development of the two tones
bears some explanation.
It is believed that the High tone developed first in Pre-Cherokee (sometime between
Proto-Iroquoian and present-day Cherokee). This is primarily due to comparative evidence
between two dialects of Cherokee: the Oklahoma and North Carolina. In the North Carolina
dialect, the high tone is present in all of the expected environments; however, the lowfall tone
is not present at all, and is not part of the tonal inventory. Instead, it maintains the glottal stop
where Oklahoma has a lowfall tone.
After the High tone developed from a glottal stop, there still remained post-vowel
glottal stops which, due to various phonological and morphological factors, did not induce a
high tone on the preceding syllables. In these cases, the glottal stop was articulated with less
tension (it is normally accompanied by tensing of the cricothyroid muscle in the larynx), which
both led to a relative drop in tone, which was phonologized, and the eventual disappearance of
these glottal stops.