History
Munsee 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 Delawaran 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. The justification for Delawaran 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 Delaware has been adduced.
Munsee is demonstrably phonologically conservative, and is considered to have retained many of the phonological characteristics of PEA. In comparison, Unami has undergone extensive phonological innovation, coupled with morphological regularization.
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, but Munsee and Unami have innovated separately with respect to the vowel systems.
Contrastive vowel length for Munsee high vowels has been reintroduced, and also for the front mid vowels. For modern Munsee it is necessary to recognize long /i·, o·, e·, a·/ and short /i, o, e, a/. Innovating instances of short /i, o, and e/ arise from for example reduplicating syllables and loan words.
Read more about this topic: Munsee Language
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