Wichita is a Caddoan language that was spoken in Anadarko, Oklahoma, by the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes. The last fluent heritage speaker, Doris Lamar-McLemore, died in 2016. This has rendered Wichita functionally extinct; however, the tribe offers classes to revitalize the language and works in partnership with the Wichita Documentation Project of the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Dialects

When the Europeans began to settle North America, Wichita separated into three dialects; Waco, Tawakoni, and Kirikirʔi꞉s (aka, Wichita Proper). However, when the language was threatened and the number of speakers decreased, dialect differences largely disappeared.

Status

By 2008, Doris Lamar-McLemore was being referred to as the last known fluent speaker. She died on 30 August 2016. This is a sharp decline from the 500 speakers estimated by Paul L. Garvin in 1950.

Classification

Wichita is a member of the Caddoan language family, along with modern Caddo, Pawnee, Arikara, and Kitsai.

Consonants

Wichita has 10 consonants. In the Americanist orthography generally used when describing Wichita, is spelled , and is .

{| class="wikitable" style=text-align:center

|-

! rowspan="2" |

! rowspan="2" |Alveolar

! colspan="2" | Dorsal

! rowspan="2" | Glottal

|-

! <small>plain</small>

! <small>labial.</small>

|-

! Plosive

|

|

|

|

|-

! Affricate

|

|

|

|

|-

! Fricative

|

|

|

|

|-

! Sonorant

| ~

|

|

|

|-

! Semivowel

|

|

|

|

|}

Though neither Rood nor Garvin include nasals in their respective consonant charts for Wichita, Rood's later inclusion of nasals in phonetic transcription for his 2008 paper ("Some Wichita Recollections: Aspects of Culture Reflected in Language") support the appearance of at least .

{| class="wikitable"

|-

! colspan=2| Prefixes

|-

| aorist || a ... ki-

|-

| aorist quotative || aːʔa ... ki-

|-

| future || keʔe-

|-

| future quotative || eheː-

|-

| perfect || aɾa-

|-

| perfect quotative || aːɾa-

|-

| indicative || ta/ti-

|-

| exclamatory || iskiri-

|-

| durative || a/i-

|-

| imperative || hi/i-

|-

| future imperative || kiʔi-

|-

| optative || kaʔa-

|-

| debetative || kaɾa-

|}

{| class="wikitable"

|-

! colspan=2| Suffixes

|-

| perfective || Ø

|-

| imperfective || -s

|-

| intentive || -staɾis

|-

| habitual || -ːss

|-

| too late || -iːhiːʔ

|}

:

:future.quotative.COOK.imperfective

:'I heard she'll be cooking it.'

Instrumental suffixes

The suffix is Rá:hir, added to the base. Another means of expressing instrument, used only for body parts, is a characteristic position of incorporation in the verb complex.

  1. ha:rhiwi:cá:hir 'using a bowl' (ha:rhiwi:c 'bowl')
  2. ika:rá:hir 'with a rock' (ika:ʔa 'rock')
  3. kirikirʔi:sá:hir 'in Wichita (the language)' (kirikirʔi:s 'Wichita)
  4. iskiʔo:rʔeh 'hold me in your arms' (iskiʔ 'imperative 2nd subject, 1st object'; a 'reflexive possessor'; ʔawir 'arm'; ʔahi 'hold').
  5. keʔese:cʔíriyari 'you will shake your head' (keʔes 'future 2nd subject'; a 'reflexive possessor'; ic 'face'; ʔiriyari 'go around'. Literally: 'you will go around, using your face').

Tense and aspect

One of these tense-aspect prefixes must occur in any complete verb form.

Case

Number marking

Nouns can be divided into those that are countable and those that are not. In general, this correlates with the possibility for plural marking: Countable nouns can be marked for dual or plural; if not so marked, they are assumed to be singular. Uncountable nouns cannot be pluralized.

Those uncountable nouns that are also liquids are marked as such by a special morpheme, kir.

Those incountable nouns that are not liquid are not otherwise marked in Wichita. This feature is labeled dry mass. Forms such as ye:c 'fire', kirʔi:c 'bread', and ka:hi:c 'salt' are included in this category.

Wichita countable nouns are divided into those that are collective and those that are not. The collective category includes most materials, such as wood; anything that normally comes in pieces, such as meat, corn, or flour; and any containers such as pots, bowls, or sacks when they are filled with pieces of something.

Some of the noncollective nominals are also marked for other selectional restrictions. In particular, with some verbs, animate nouns (including first and second person pronouns) require special treatment when they are patients in the sentence. Whenever there is an animate patient or object of certain verbs such as u...raʔa 'bring' or irasi 'find', the morpheme |hiʔri|(/hirʔ/, /hiʔr/, /hirʔi/) also occurs with the verb. The use of this morpheme is not predictable by rule and must be specified for each verb in the language that requires it.

Like hiʔri 'patient is animate', the morpheme wakhahr, means 'patient is an activity'.

Countable nouns that are neither animate nor activities, such as chairs, apples, rocks, or body parts, do not require any semantic class agreement morphemes in the surface grammar of Wichita.

The morpheme |ra:k| marks any or all non-third persons in the sentence as plural.

The morpheme for 'collective' or 'patient is not singular'. The shape of this varies from verb to verb, but the collective is usually |ru|, |ra|, or |r|.

The noncollective plural is usually |ʔak|. Instead of a morpheme here, some roots change form to mark plural. Examples include:

{| class="wikitable"

|-

! Word

! Singular

! Plural

|-

| cook

| ʔarasi

| wa:rasʔi:rʔ

|-

| eat

| kaʔac

| ʔa

|-

| kill

| ki

| ʔessa

|}

A surface structure object in the non-third-person category can be clearly marked as singular, dual, or plural. The morpheme ra:k marks plurality; a combination oh hi and ʔak marks dual. Singular is marked by zero.

If both agent and patient are third person, a few intransitive verbs permit the same distinctions for patients as are possible for non-third objects: singular, dual, and plural. These verbs (such as 'come' and 'sit') allow the morpheme wa to mark 'dual patient'. In all other cases the morphemes ru, ra, r, or ʔak means 'patient is plural'.

  • |hi| subject is nonsingular
  • |ʔak| third person patient is nonsingular
  • |ra:k| non-third-person is plural. If both the subject and object are non-third person, reference is to the object only.
  • |hi ... ʔak| non-third-person is dual
  • |ra:kʔak| combine meanings of ra:k and ʔak
  • zero singular

Endangerment

According to the Ethnologue Languages of the World website, the Wichita language is "dormant", meaning that no one has more than symbolic proficiency. The last native speaker of the Wichita language, Doris Jean Lamar McLemore, died in 2016. The reason for the language's decline is because the speakers of the Wichita language switched to speaking English. Thus, children were not being taught Wichita and only the elders knew the language. "Extensive efforts to document and preserve the language" are in effect through the Wichita Documentation Project.

Revitalization efforts

The Wichita and Affiliated Tribes offered language classes, taught by Doris McLemore and Shirley Davilla. The tribe is collaborating with Rood of the University of Colorado, Boulder to document and teach the language through the Wichita Documentation Project.