I. PHONOLOGY. Consider the following data from Choctaw, an indigenous American language. Provide a complete description of the vowel system in this language. Identify what vowels are contrastive. Consider all differences between the vowels in the data set. Perform tests for distribution, if necessary. You may want to draw a vowel chart but please describe phonetic properties of vowels in words, too.
ohoyo ‘woman’ hattak ‘man’ kallichih ‘scratch’ pres. tachi ‘corn’ bilika ‘near’ shofih lunfetter pres. takkon ‘apple’ bo:k ‘river’ hi:li ‘fly’ pl. ti:k ‘female’ ka:h ‘car’ tobi ‘bean’ kopolitok ‘bit past. pisah ‘see pres.
Note: The words are written in standard English orthography, i.e. y stands for 0], ch stands for pa sh for Di etc. The tilde “indicates a nasal vowel. The column : represents vowel length
II. MORPHOLOGY. provide a description of morphological structure of Choctaw. Give a list of grammatical morphemes, identify their meaning/function and type. Comment on the order of morphemes in a word. Indicate cases or allomorphy and explain condition(s) for allomorphs. Describe the morphological typologies of Choctaw.
In addition, consider the following sentences. What do the new data tell you about morphological structure of Choctaw? Specifically, refer to 1) variation in the way demonstratives are used and 2) the category of number in Choctaw.
1. Hattak yammat oil shofitok. That man unfettered the dog.’ 2. Alla toklo yammat ittolatok. Those two kids fell down.’ 3. Issoba ilappat chimofi kopolitok. This horse bit your dog.’ 4. Ohoyo tokloyat tamaha iyatok. Two women went to town.’ 5. Pilashash allayat tamaha iyatok. ‘Yesterday the children went to town.’
III. SYNTAX. Using the data from handouts I-Ill discussed in class (posted on BB), provide a description of syntactic structure of Choctaw. Describe all semantic roles in a clause. Draw tree diagrams for a transitive clause, intransitive clause, and a clause with negation. Identify the basic word order in a clause. Describe the syntactic typologies of Choctaw.
In addition, consider the following sentences. How are two VPs connected in Choctaw? How are two clauses connected in Choctaw? Discuss how conjunction in Choctaw is different from English.
6. Tobi apalitok. ‘I ate beans.’ 7. Oka ishkolitok. ‘I drank water.’ 8. Hattakat oka ishkotok. The man drank water.’ 9. Tobi apalicha oka ishkolitok. ‘I ate beans and drank water.’ 10. Tobi apalina oka ishishkotok. ‘I ate beans and you drank water.’ 11. Hattakat tobi apacha oka ishkotok. The man ate beans and drank water.’ 12. Hattakat tobi apana oka ishkolitok. The man ate beans and I drank water.’ these are the 3 questions ” he is asked to solve 2 only