A few comments, which are not intended to dispute what is written here. One, there are dialects of Choctaw. I have noticed differences between Mississippi Choctaw and Oklahoma Choctaw. Two, the position of the noun in the sentence determines what article it takes. Three, I don't have sufficient data to say exactly what governs article usage in Choctaw. I have seen one story, for example, that has tons of articles in it. It may be that in conversation articles tend to be dropped more than in more formal uses of the language like story-telling. Similar constraints happen in English as an analogy. George Ann >From: "Sean P. S. George" <seanps@george.net> >Reply-To: CHOCTAW-SOUTHEAST-L@rootsweb.com >To: CHOCTAW-SOUTHEAST-L@rootsweb.com >Subject: Re: [CHOCTAW-SE] parts of speech, word definitions, etc. >Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 23:44:08 -0500 > >Well John, > >I'm not a native speaker, only a student of the online courses offered >by the Nation in OK, so I am not a comprehensive authority. In the >course of the 3 semesters that I was taking the classes however, along >with the various printed resources that I have gathered over the past >several years, the only article words that I have run across are the >ones I mentioned in my original posting-- "yvmma," "ilvppa" and number >words. > >The first two are often abbreviated and tacked onto the end of the noun >phrase, almost like a suffix. "Chukka yvmma" (that house) would in >common conversation be shortened to "chukka-ma." Likewise, "chukka >ilvppa" (this house) would be shortened to "chukka-pa." So to the extent >of my instruction so far, "yvmma" and "ilvppa", and their respective >abbreviated forms ("-ma" and "-pa") are the only words besides numbers >that are used as articles in Choctaw. > >The use of number words as articles is the same as in English. When we >say "one house" or "two houses" in English, we are using the numbers >"one" and "two" as articles, instead of a word like "the" or "a." >Likewise, in Choctaw, number words can be used as articles, as in >"chukka achvfa" (one house) or "chukka tuklo" (two houses). > >Hope that helps. > >--Sean > > >==== CHOCTAW-SOUTHEAST Mailing List ==== >Need more CHOCTAW information?? Try Rusty Lang's website at >http://www.choctaw-web.com for censuses, genealogy lessons, articles, etc. > _________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx