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Unami is an Algonquian language spoken by Lenape people in what was then the lower Hudson Valley area and New York Harbor area, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware, but later in Ontario and Oklahoma. It is one of the two Delaware languages, the other being Munsee. The last fluent speaker, Edward Thompson, of the Delaware Tribe of Indians, died on 31 August 2002.〔 His sister Nora Thompson Dean (1907–1984) provided valuable information about the language to linguists and other scholars. ''Lenape'' is from , a word in the Unami dialect whose most literal translation into English would be "common person".〔Composed of , "common, ordinary", with sense extension suggesting "original, real" + "person"〕〔Bright, William (2004). ''Native American Place Names in the United States''. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, p. 251〕 The Lenape names for the areas they inhabited were ''Scheyichbi'' (i.e. New Jersey), which means "water's edge", and ''Lenapehoking'', meaning "in the land of the Delaware Indians", although the latter is a term coined by the Unami speaker Nora Thompson Dean in 1984, to describe the ancient homeland of all Delaware Indians, both Unami and Munsee.〔Kraft, Herbert C., ''The Lenape-Delaware Indian Heritage: 10,000 BC to AD 2000'', Lenape Books, p.9, n.2〕〔(Lenapehoking Map ), showing approximate locations of Lenape Indian Bands, Lenape Lifeways website (accessed December 16, 2007)〕 The English named the river running through much of the traditional range of the Lenape after the first governor of the Jamestown Colony, Lord De La Warr, and consequently referred to the people who lived around the river as "Delaware Indians". ==History== Unami is an Eastern Algonquian language. The hypothetical common ancestor language from which the Eastern Algonquian languages descend is Proto-Eastern Algonquian (PEA). An intermediate group ''Delawarean'' that is a descendant of Proto-Eastern Algonquian consists of Mahican and Common Delaware, the latter being a further subgroup comprising Munsee Delaware and Unami Delaware.〔Goddard, Ives. 1996. "Introduction." Ives Goddard, ed., The Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 17. Languages, pp. 1-16. Washington, D.C.: The Smithsonian Institution.〕 The justification for Delawarean as an intermediate subgroup rests upon the high degree of similarity between Mahican and the two Delaware languages, but relatively little detailed argumentation in support of Delawarean has been adduced.〔〔Goddard, Ives, 1978〕〔Pentland, David, 1982〕 The International Encyclopedia of Linguistics lists Tla Wilano as one of the Delaware or Unami related languages. Until recently, Tla Wilano was spoken by members of the Ani-Stohini/Unami Nation in Virginia. Now there is only one speaker. Compared to Munsee, Unami has undergone extensive phonological innovation, coupled with morphological regularization.〔Goddard, Ives. 1982. "Munsee historical phonology." International Journal of American Linguistics 48: 16-48.〕 The PEA vowel system consisted of four long vowels '' *i·, *o·, *e·, *a·,'' and two short vowels '' *a'' and ''ə.'' The vowel history is as follows: '' *i·'' (from PEA merger of Proto-Algonquian (PA '' *i·'' and '' *i'' to PEA '' *i·''), '' *o·'' (from PEA merger of PA '' *o·'' and '' *o'' ), '' *e·'' (from Proto-Algonquian '' *e·''), and '' *a·'' (from Proto-Algonquian '' *a·''; the short vowels are'' *ə'' (from Proto-Algonquian '' *e''), and '' *a'' (from Proto-Algonquian '' *a''). This system was continued down to Common Delaware,〔Goddard, Ives, 1982; Goddard, Ives, 1979, p. 11,〕 but Munsee and Unami have innovated separately with respect to the vowel systems. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Unami language」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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