(6.) According to David Kanatawa'kon Maracle, songs sung in
Iroquoian languages, in the Longhouse and especially in the centuries-old (Christian) hymn singing tradition, are often marked by the fluid relationship between text and tune.
As a linguist working on a related
Iroquoian language (i.e.,
However, Cherokee and other
Iroquoian languages exhibit certain phonetic limitations.(1) The most overt and problematic factors are the absence of bilabial stops /p/ and /b/ and the noticeable lack of labio-dental fricatives /f/ and /v/.
The Cherokees occupied the Piedmont and Appalachian regions in what are now North and South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee, speaking an
Iroquoian language. By the 16th century, when Hernando de Soto visited them, they had established an agricultural economy.
Seneca is a Northern
Iroquoian language still spoken by a few dozen people on three reservations in western New York State (Chafe 1996).
Suffice it to mention a couple of examples from Eskimoan and
Iroquoian languages in North America.
On one hand, of course, alliterative meter belongs to a quite different cultural tradition, and it originated in a Germanic language group whose aural hallmarks differ greatly from the
Iroquoian languages. (5) On the other hand, Zimmer seems to have valued this meter for its archaic feel, something he considered appropriate for a nonWestern cultural tradition whose development came independently of Europe's post-Renaissance "modernity"--and at least one contemporary Native American poet, Carter Revard, has likewise found alliterative meter useful for presenting indigenous themes.
Cranberry (Vaccinium macrocarpon Ait.) ('Atoca' or 'Ataca' in the
Iroquoian languages, a designation commonly used in the province of Quebec, Canada) is the American name for an Ericaceous plant domesticated in North America since the beginning of the 19th century, and since 1939 in Quebec, Canada.
In contrast with Sierra Popoluca and the
Iroquoian languages, languages of the Eskimo-Aleut family seem surprisingly devoid of coordinating and subordinating conjunctions.
