The phonology of the Massachusett language was re-introduced to the Mashpee, Aquinnah, Herring Pond and Assonet tribes that participate in the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project, co-founded by Jessie Little Doe Baird in 1993. The phonology is based regular sound changes that took place in the development of Proto-Eastern Algonquian from Proto-Algonquian, as well as cues in the colonial orthography regarding pronunciation, as the writing system was based on English pronunciation and spelling conventions in use at the time, keeping in mind differences in late seventeenth century English versus today. Other resources included information from extant Algonquian languages with native speakers.Baird, J. L. D. (2014). 'Project History.' Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project. Retrieved 09 February 2017.
The Massachusett language is an eastern branch Algonquian language within the Algic language family. It was historically spoken by the Massachusett people of Greater Boston, the Pawtucket of southernmost Maine, coastal New Hampshire and the lower Merrimack River watershed, the Wampanoag of southeastern Massachusetts but specifically Cape Cod and the Islands and portions of Rhode Island, the Nauset (possibly a Wampanoag sub-group) of the outer Cape and the Coweset of north-western Rhode Island, and likely spread as a common second language to many Nipmuc and Pennacook speaking groups. In a simplified Pidgin form, it was a common medium of intertribal communication across most of New England and Long Island.Goddard, Ives. 1996. "Introduction." Ives Goddard, ed., The Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 17. Languages, pp. 1–16.
The historical phonology of the language is hampered by the dormancy of the language with the death of the last speakers at the end of the nineteenth century as well as dialect leveling. Since the Bible and most of the missionary translations were based on the dialect of the Massachusett people, specifically its Natick variety, that form gained prestige. The use of Natick as a training center for Indian missionaries and teachers, who were literate and often drawn from Natick's local families, helped spread the prestige of the particular variety, so that most dialectal differences were quickly lost.Mandell, D. R. (1996). Behind the Frontier: Indians in Eighteenth-Century Eastern Massachusetts. (p. 59). Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Dialects certainly existed given the diversity of peoples that used it and its broad distribution.
Vowels Front Central Back Close Mid Open,
Massachusett vowels can be subdivided into two categories, the short vowels and and the long vowels , and —although is sometimes considered in its own category of nasal vowel.Goddard, I. (1990). 'Unhistorical features of massachusett.' J. Fisiak (Ed.), Historical Linguistics and Philology: Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs [TILSM] (Vol. 46, pp. 229-230). Berlin, Germany: Walter de Gruyter. The sequence is prevalent in inanimate intransitive verbs that translate as 'it is X', and in the colonial orthography it had unitary spellings like , e.g. PA *wapyawi > PEA *wa·pe·yɘw > PSNEA *wąpa·yɘw > Massachusett wompi (wôpay) , ('it is white.')Wiktionary. *wapyawi .
Vocalic allophones The exact values and ranges for allophonic variation of the vowels is unknown, given the death of the last native speakers a century and a quarter in the past, but given that the colonial orthography was based on English values as spoken in the seventeenth century, some clues are provided. The short vowel before was often replaced by in colonial documents. Given that open front unrounded before was often syncopated, it is likely this allophone approached .Goddard, I. (1981). p. 69. Dialectal variation aside, it is likely that may have also backed to in some environments.
The long vowel was often written with in colonial documents before or , indicating it may have shortened to in these environments. A similar process also occurs in Abenakian languages. In the development of Massachusett from Proto-Eastern Algonquian, historical *ī weakened to , which triggers k-palatization and vowel affection in certain environments, processes described further down in the article.
The long vowel is written in a myriad of ways, which may just be the difficulty in rendering the vowel according to English spelling rules as used in the colonial orthography. It is likely that most instances were generally , but it most likely backed or .
The long, nasal vowel (possibly better represented by to indicate length in addition to nasality) may also frequently approach the mid-open nasal . Before , colonial writers used , possibly indicating an allophone before . The colonial orthography assigns vowels with a circumflex to write them, but this was not done consistently. A silent (before ) and (elsewhere) was often used to indicate nasality, but writers often confused usage of the circumflex, to mark nasality, and the acute accent, to mark stress and length.Goddard, I. (1981). p. 70.
The long vowel , represented in the colonial orthography by or and in the modern one, was often written with in the earliest colonial writings, suggesting a change from a mid-back vowel or close-mid vowel to a close-back , which can be reconstructed from development. For example, 'snake' is askꝏk (ask8k) and descends from Proto-Algonquian *aθko·ka and Proto-Eastern Algonquian *axko·k.Based on regular patterns of sound change from Proto-Algonquian. Wiktionary *aθko·ka . Eliot created a letter represented in the modern Wampanoag script as to distinguish the long 'oo' from the short 'oo,' but noted that the vowel he was trying to represent was between the two. Just as , represented in Algonquian linguistics as , shifted to , a similar process occurred in English just a few generations before Eliot's time during the Great Vowel Shift, and both book and mood would have rhymed with the current pronunciations of poke and mode; even in the Early Modern English of Eliot's time, mood and book shared the same vowel.Görlach, M. (1991). Introduction to Early Modern English. Cambridge University Press. pp. 67-69.
Consonants LabialAlveolarPalatal/PostalveolarVelarGlottalNasalPlosiveAffricateFricativeApproximant
Massachusett has thirteen consonant phonemes, not including possible allophones. They are divided into the affricate ; plosive and the voiceless alveolo-palatal stop ; the voiceless affricates , and and the voiced continuants, which comprises the voiced nasal and and the voiced approximants and . The stop consonants were particularly difficult for early English missionaries to record with the Latin alphabet because Massachusett did not make phonemic distinctions of voicing with these consonants, and these consonants likely had voiced allophones of , dependent upon word environment, dialect, or speaker. In addition, Massachusett consonants probably lacked distinctions based on aspiration for these consonants. In English, the equivalent stop consonants are aspirated in stressed and in final positions, but not in consonant clusters after (for example, English spin is pronounced while pin is pronounced ).Goddard, I. (1990). 'Unhistorical Features of Massachusett.' J. Fisiak (Ed.), Historical Linguistics and Philology: Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs [TILSM] (Vol. 46, pp. 227–244). Berlin, Germany: Walter de Gruyter.
As a result of these differing phonologies, the colonial orthography can be separated into unvoiced/voiced pairs that do not change meaning, such as //, /, /, / and /, which correspond to , , , and , respectively, in the modern orthography.Fermino, J. L. D. (2000). p. 9. Eliot and the other colonial missionaries often switched between the unvoiced-voiced pairs, and it is possible that the consonants themselves had allophones dependent on word position and dialect.Goddard, I., & Bragdon, K. (1988). Native writings in Massachusetts. In Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society (185 ed. Part II, pp. 276-279). Philadelphia, PA: American Philosophical Society.
The phonetic value of in clusters probably approached , given the alteration of and and and in representation in the colonial orthography. As and had merged in Proto-Southern New England Algonquian, restoration of in consonants, especially in clusters with , indicates that the allophone of in these environments was generally , which sounds closer to and generally represented by in the WLRP new orthography.Goddard, I. (1981). pp. 59-68.
As a result of borrowings, English-language religious, technical, agricultural, legal, societal, cultural, and governmental terminology was adopted by the Indians. Foreign sounds, or recognition of the preferred allophone, led to the adoption of and as phonemes in these English loanwords. However, it is likely that only bilingual speakers or those exposed to English speakers pronounced these words more akin to their English values, whereas monolingual Massachusett speakers and those further from English contact would have likely used native approximantions. For example, colonial-era documents include both preserved Frenchmenog (possibly ) vs. nativized panachmanog (possibly ). In addition, anecdotal evidence from accounts of English colonists indicate that the Massachusett or related N-dialect speakers had trouble with English and , even though they existed in related languages, since they pronounced English words sleep and lobster as sneep and nobstah. However, final goes unnoticed as English in New England developed non-rhotically.
Although the revived dialect of the Wampanoag continues to use some loan words from English (such as pâyum-, from English pay), most borrowings are eschewed for native equivalents, neologisms coined from known Massachusett radicals and adoption of terms from cognate, extant Algonquian languages since the new speakers of the language are all bilingual or more proficient in English.Hicks, N. (2006). p. 80. For example, the colonial-era Indians adopted the English calendrical system, and adopted all the terms for units of time and names for the days and months. Thus, 'Thursday' and as well as its alternate Early Modern English form Yurſday existed along the lesser-used Massachusett coinage nappanatashikquinishonk (nôpanatahshuquneehshôk) , which can be translated as 'that which goes five days long' (after the [original] Sabbath).Cf. Portuguese quinta-feira, 'fifth day' or 'Thursday.' However, nappanatashikquinishonk is created from Massachusett radicals by the Indians, even if it referred to a Western cultural introduction.Cotton, J. (1830). Vocabulary of the Massachusetts (or Natick) Indian Language in Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society. John Davis (ed.) Vol II(3). pp. 242-243. Cambridge, Massachusetts: E. W. Metcalf Company. Publication of notes compiled in 1707-1708 of by Josiah Cotton, some with the help of his father, John Cotton, Jr.
Phonotactics Few consonant clusters, especially in relation to Proto-Eastern Algonquian and Proto-Algonquian, are permitted in the Massachusett language; however, syncopation, i.e., deletion of , or when they fall in weak or weaker stress positions in a word, increased the number of possible clusters in the rare Massachusett dialects that employed it. Clusters also tend to occur at the end of a root word before a following suffix, often restoring etymological and or even entire syllables, which were dropped at the end of consonants as early as Proto-Eastern Algonquian, but are common enough that they have to be learned. For example, annum (anum, 'dog,') but annúmmwag (anumwak, , 'dogs').Fermino, J. L. D. (2000). p. 13. Also, additional morphemes attached to the root word often begin with consonants themselves, thus increasing their likelihood at these junctures.