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Onondaga is a Iroquoian language, specifically of the Five Nations-Susquehannock branch. It is spoken in two locations: in Onondaga Nation, just south of Syracuse, New York, and in the Six Nations of the Grand River First Nations Reserve, near Brantford, Ontario.

Onondaga is a Moribund language, with an extinction status of 8a. Currently, there are approximately 40 speakers of Onondaga. Two different dialects of Onondaga are spoken in the two locations mentioned above, Onondaga Nation and Six Nations of the Grand River First Nations Reserve. At Onondaga Nation, it is estimated that there are less than 12 native speakers of Onondaga, but language classes have been set up within the community to promote the maintenance of Onondaga.

It is believed that some of the history of the Onondaga people in recent centuries has had an impact on certain features of the language. After their villages along Onondaga Creek were were destroyed during the Revolutionary War, the Onondaga moved to Buffalo Creek, where there were already villages of Seneca and Cayuga people. The left behind approximately 100 native speakers of Onondaga. It is argued that it was this point that Onondaga acquired certain feature relating to the loss of the phoneme r, a feature which is shared the Seneca and Cayuga languages.

In 1784, the Onondaga who settled in Buffalo Creek were granted land along the Grand River in Canada, and moved there, which prompted the creation of the Six Nations Reserve. Since the separation which occurred in 1778, after the Revolutionary War, speakers of Onondaga in the Six Nations Reserve and in Onondaga Nation have developed slightly different dialects.

Vowels
Onondaga contains five oral vowel phonemes, and two nasal vowel phonemes, to give seven vowels in total.

Oral vowels are pronounced with a raised velum and the breath exiting through the mouth. The phoneme /i/ occurs as a high front unrounded oral vowel, /e/ occurs as a mid front unrounded oral vowel; /æ/ occurs as a higher-low front unrounded oral vowel, /a/ occurs as a low back unrounded vowel, and /o/ occurs as a mid back rounded vowel.

Nasal vowels are pronounced with a lowered velum and the breath exiting through the nose and the mouth. The vowel /e̜/ is a lower-mid front nasal vowel, and /u̜/ is a lower-high back rounded vowel.

Consonants
There are ten consonant phonemes in Onondaga, which are generally grouped into four groups based on their shared characteristics. The two plosives /t/ and /k/ and the fricative /s/ are grouped together as oral obstruents, /ts/ and /kw/ are internally complex consonants, the nasal consonant /n/ and the two glides /y/ and /w/ are grouped as resonants, and /h/ and /ʔ/ are laryngeal obstruents.

The plosives /t/ and /k/ are pronounced as voiceless unaspirated [t] and [k] when they come before another obstruent. When they come at the end of a word, they are aspirated prepausally. Depending on the environment the phoneme /s/ occurs as the palatoalveolar affricate [dj], as postalveolar fricative [ʃ], or as [s]. The resonants /y/ and /w/ are high front and high back glides respectively; /n/ is an alveolar nasal. Two internally complex consonants, /kw/ and /ts/ are a labiovelar consonant and an alveolar affricate respectively.

The laryngeal consonants /h/ and /ʔ/ are a fricative and a stop respectively.

Multi-place consonants: [kw], [ts], [dj].

Distribution of Phonemes
All of the vowel phonemes both occur word-initially and word-finally, with the phoneme /æ/ the only exception. The two internally complex consonant phonemes /ts/ and /kw/ never appear word-initially or word-finally. The resonant /y/ never appears word-initially or word-finally. The laryngeal obstruent /ʔ/ appears word-finally but not word-initially, and the resonants /w/ and /n/ occur word-finally but not word-initially.

Stress
Stress, as used by Woodbury, is used in Onondaga to express the abstract idea of accent, which includes pitch, intensity, and duration.

There are three patterns which dictate where a word's main stress lies. This location of this stress is influenced by the location of the word in a sentence.

The three patterns are as follows; i) utterance-final intonation, ii) phrase-final intonation, and iii) word-level intonation.

Utterance-final intonation is denoted by penultimate main stress, as is phrase-final intonation, but phrase-final intonation is not followed by a pitch reset with the next utterance. Word-level intonation is marked by the main stress falling on the final syllable of a word, followed by another word with no pause.

Syllable Structure
In Onondaga, main stress is distributed by position of the syllable in the word. The distribution of syllables receiving secondary stress depends on a classification of syllables in terms of the rhythmic stress, which means that syllable-weight is used as a identifier when describing syllable structure in Onondaga. Heavy syllables attract secondary stress.

There is further sorting of syllables into open and closed syllables, as shown in the table below. An open syllable is one that is followed by a) a single, non-laryngeal consonant i.e (C)C.CV, or b) a consonant cluster consisting of either an oral obstruent followed by a resonant i.e. (C)V.CR or of two resonants i.e. (C)V.RR.

A closed syllable consists of either a single laryngeal consonant, i.e. (C)VL.V, or two or more obstruents, i.e. (C)VC.C.

Morphology
Onondaga is a non-configurational language, and is polysynthetic and fusional.

Interestingly, there is no lexeme in Onondaga that denotes the concept of a word, although there is both phonological and grammatical evidence for the existence of such a concept.

In Onondaga, three parts of speech can be identified using their internal structures. Nouns and verbs are morphologically complex and particles lack internal structure.

Every Onondaga verb or noun is composed of one or more lexical elements surrounded by various classes or affixes, which must occur in specific positions in relation to the lexical elements and in relation to one another. The position classes differ depending on whether the word is a verb or a noun.

Clitics are the final part of speech present in Onondaga. Clitics have a diverse set of meanings, and their attachment is not specific to a particular lexical class. The attach to fully inflected words.

The verb
The verb is the nucleus of Onondaga, and is the most morphologically complex element of the language, capable of standing alone as complete clause syntactically.

The structure of the verb
Of these position classes, only the verb stem may be hierarchically organised. The elements comprising the three other classes each are linearly organised in relation to one another.

The prepronominal prefix and modal prefixes
Modal prefixes express modal meanings, and non-modal prefixes express adverbial meanings.Modal prefixes co-occur with the punctual aspect (explained more fully below).

The pronominal prefix
Every verb in Onondaga must have a pronominal prefix, which identifies the core participant of the verb (the agent and/or patient) in terms of person, number, and gender. There are three 'persons': first person, second person, and third person. There are four genders: masculine, non-animate, and two masculine categories. There are four numbers: singular, dual, plural and non-singular. There are three types of pronominal prefix; the agent series, the patient series, and the transitive series. Agent and patient prefixes occur where there is a single animate argument, while transative prefixes occur where there are two animate arguments.

The verb stem
The phrase "verb stem" is used to refer to the constituent that is subject to inflectional processes. The verb stem consists minimally of a verb root.

The aspect suffix
To the right of the verb stem is the aspect suffix position, which is present in every well-formed Onondaga verb. Aspect is concerned with temporal organization, and provides information about how a situation unfolds temporally. In Onondaga, grammatical aspect is expressed primarily through suffixes to the verb stem. Aspect and mood are intertwined in Onondaga. Mood signifies if something being reported is real, or if it is unreal, i.e has it actually taken place or not. Tense is expressed through the modal categories in Onondaga, and is generally only very weakly expressed.

The three morphologically marked aspects of Onondaga are the habitual, the stative, and the punctual. The habitual refers to evolving processes, the stative to static states of affairs, and the punctual to completed events.

The imperative
Although not usually considered an aspect category, in Onondaga, as well as in other Iroquoian languages, the imperative also appears in the aspect position. In its simplest form, the imperative takes the imperative suffix and agent pronominal prefixes. s-e̜niˑhe̜-h'

2SG.IMP-stop-IMP

stop!

The noun prefix
Nouns whose referents are non-animate entities are prefixed with noun prefixes that are formally identical to the verbal singular or patient pronominal prefixes, but function in this context to mark the stem as a noun. This is the basic noun prefix.

o-ne̜h-aʔ

NPF-bucket-NSF

bucket

To mark a noun for possession, a pronominal prefix from the agent or patient series of verbal pronominal prefixes referencing the possessor is used.

The noun suffix
The simple noun suffix is used to indicate a noun. It can sometimes be replaced by the internal locative suffix, which derives a location expression from a simple noun.

ga-hesgaR-aʔ

NPF-arrow-NSF

arrow

ga-Rihse̜ˑhd-agu̜wa

NPF-dream-LOC

in a dream

Particles
Particles are a closed class, and are by definition monomorphemic, meaning they cannot be analyzed into smaller constituents. As a class, particles are prolific in Onondaga, with approximately 185 particles, divided into four categories: (i) pro-forms, (ii) adverbials, (iii) particles with grammatical functions, and (iv) particles with discourse-pragmatic functions.

The most important of these are pro-forms, which are words or affixes that substitute for nouns, and are either independent words or bound morphemes. Personal pronouns can occur in both forms. Independently occurring pro-forms are the personal pronouns, interrogative particles, indefinite particles, and demonstrative particles.

Cliticization
Clitics are a small group of affixes which attach to the right of fully inflected words, and are not specific to any lexical class, as noted above. There are nine clitics in Onondaga, with numerous functions.

Syntax
The relatively simple organization of Onondaga at the syntactic level is a reflection of the verb's abundant and complex morphological patterning. Much of what is accomplished by the rules of syntax in other languages takes place at the morphological level in Onondaga. Whereas in languages like English the arguments of verbs are realized by separate words, in Onondaga arguments are referenced morphologically by obligatory pronominal prefixes within the verb and separate words simply add additional information.

Therefore, in Onondaga, discourse is analyzed in terms of intonationally defined units involving accent placement, pitch contours, pauses, and various phonological markers.

Included below are some examples of sentences in which the verb acts as a clause. These examples illustrate the way in which the basic word order of Onondaga is not fixed, but is in fact extremely fluid.

Sahahde̜yáʔ neʔ Shohéˑyis

REP-FACT-3M.SGA-move.on-PNC NOM NAME

Shoheyis returned home

In this example, the verb and the object are combined, and the subject follows, giving a syntactic structure of something like V+OS.

ne̜gé̜ neʔ he̜wéh waʔshaˑgóˑyoʔ neʔ héˑnaʔ

DEM NOM 3M.SG.A-man:SUFF FACT-3M.SG>3-kill-PNC NOM NOUN

This man killed his wife

In this example, we can see an SVO syntactic structure, as found in a language such as English.

Ge̜dyohgówane̜ oné̜ hu̜wanaʔwé̜thwih

3N/K.SG.A-crowd-be.large-STV TMP 3>3M.PL-slaughter-STV

The have slaughtered a lot of people by now

In this example, the verb and the subject are combined, and the sentence begins with the object, which gives a syntactic structure of OS+V