Concept
Algonquian languages
Overview
The Algonquian languages ( al-GONG-k(w)ee-ən; also Algonkian) are a branch of the Algic language family. The name of the Algonquian language family is distinguished from the orthographically similar Algonquin dialect of the Indigenous Ojibwe language (Chippewa), which is a senior member of the Algonquian language family. The term Algonquin has been suggested to derive from the Wolastoqey word elakómkwik (pronounced [ɛlæˈɡomoɡwik]), meaning "they are our relatives/allies".
Speakers of Algonquian languages stretch from the east coast of North America to the Rocky Mountains. The proto-language from which all of the languages of the family descend, Proto-Algonquian, was spoken around 2,500 to 3,000 years ago. There is no scholarly consensus about where this language was spoken.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
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These languages consist of monosyllabic words which follow one another in direct succession without any intermediate inflectional elements to modify their meaning. Philologists usually call such languages 'root-languages,' because a sound complex that carries the essential meaning of a word, apart from all modifying elements, is called by their science a verbal root.
Wilhelm Max Wundt, Elements of Folk Psychology Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind
States what Algonquian languages is.
This process of composition is sometimes found in its incipient stage—a stage in which the component words are temporarily united to signify some unnamed object, and do not (from lack of frequent use) permanently cohere. But in the majority of inferior languages, the process of “agglutination,” as it is called, has gone far enough to produce considerable stability in the compound words: there is a manifest…
Herbert Spencer, First Principles
States what Algonquian languages is.
Among them existed what Morgan terms the syndyasmian or pairing family, a monogamous state easily dissolved by either side. The offspring of such a couple was identified and acknowledged by all the world. There could be no doubt to whom to apply the terms father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister. But the actual use of these words was not in keeping with their fundamental meaning. For the Iroquois addresses as…
Friedrich Engels, The origin of the family, private property, and the state
States what Algonquian languages is.
Philosophers who discussed Algonquian languages
Related ideas
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Language.