Native to United States Extinct early 20th century Glottolog ofoo1242 | Region Mississippi ISO 639-3 ofo | |
 | ||
Language family Siouan
Western Siouan
Ohio Valley Siouan
Ofo–Biloxi
Ofo | ||
The Ofo language was a language spoken by the Mosopelea tribe who lived until c. 1673 in what is now Ohio along the Ohio River. They moved down the Mississippi River to Mississippi, near the Natchez people, and thence to Louisiana, settling near the Tunica.
Contents
- Phonology
- Consonants
- Vowels
- Morphology
- Possession
- Negation
- Pluralization
- Instrumental Prefixes
- Gender
- Space Time Modality
- Syntax
- Case
- Complements Causatives
- References
In the eighteenth century, the Mosopelea were known under the names Oufé and Offogoula. On the basis of the presence of the phoneme /f/ in these names, it was once suspected that Ofo was a Muskogean language. However, in 1908 anthropologist John R. Swanton discovered an aged female speaker of Ofo, Rosa Pierette, while he was conducting fieldwork among the Tunica, and from her he was able to confirm that the language was Siouan and was similar to Biloxi. Pierette had spoken Ofo as a child, but told Swanton that the rest of her tribe killed each other off when she was seventeen years old.
Phonology
Ofo follows Grassmann's Law, with /h/ counting as an aspirated consonant. Thus /oskʰa/ 'crane' + /afʰã/ 'white' > /oskəfʰa/ 'white egret', and /apʰeti/ 'fire' + either /təsʰihi/ 'to burn' or /təsʰihi/ 'to breathe' > /apesʰihi/ 'smoke'.
The inventory is as follows:
Consonants
The following table lists the consonants of Ofo in IPA notation:
Vowels
All vowels, including /ə/, may bear stress.
Morphology
Ofo is considered to be a mildly polysynthetic language.
Possession
Ofo distinguishes between alienable and inalienable possession through the use of a prefix for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person singular and 1st person dual (abbreviated as 1sg, 2sg, 3sg and 1du respectively). The alienable possessions include the following: 1sg {ba-, aba-}, 2sg {č-, ača-}, 3sg {}, 1du {ã-}. The inalienable possessions include the following: 1sg {mi-}, 2sg {čĩ-}, 3sg {ĩ-}, 1du {ã-}.
Negation
Ofo uses the enclitic suffix, -ni, to demonstrate negation. This enclitic is usually added after the predicate.
Pluralization
Ofo uses the enclitic suffix, -tu, to pluralize either the subject, object, or both.
Instrumental Prefixes
Instrumental prefixes describe the manner in which an action is carried out. Some of the instrumental prefixes in Ofo include:
Gender
Ofo appears to not have grammatical gender
Space, Time, Modality
Irrealis mood consists of the suffix -abe. This can be translated as future tense. Below are some examples:
Continuative aspect is formed using the word nóñki.
Iterative aspect is created using reduplication. Below are some examples:
Syntax
The documentation of Ofo has not provided enough information to develop a complete syntax of the language. The data provided contains enough information to elicit commonly sentence structures that are also found in Ofo's related languages.
Ofo appears to have a head-dependent ordering in sentences, which gives it an OV word order. The order of verbs may be described as being clause-final. There appear to be many cases which support this. An example can be seen below:
b-aphú̂ska a-tci-tp-ábe
my-fist I-you-hit-IRREALIS
'I will hit you with my fist'
Case
There doesn't appear to be much data for case, because of the lack of phrases recorded. However, some case structures can be elicited.
Dative case appears in Ofo and can be interpreted as resembling an accusative pronoun in English.
tcilétci ó̃tcĭku
your.tongue me.you.give
'hold your tongue!'
athé ãtcókpe
dress me.you.put on
'you help me dress'
Complements, Causatives
The data for Ofo does not yield data in support of explicit complement clauses. However, it is apparent that embedded clauses precede the main clause.
détõ-ni á-kiu-bĕ
(he),go.COND I-come-IRREALIS
'if he goes, I will come'
Causative is marked with the enclitic -we.
ifphé-we
teach-CAUSATIVE
'to teach'