Caddo is the only surviving Southern Caddoan language of the Caddo language family. It is spoken by the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma.^[1] Today, only 25 elderly speakers are estimated to remain, none of whom are monolingual Caddo speakers, making Caddo a critically endangered language.^[2] There are several mutually intelligible dialects of Caddo; some of the more prominent dialects include Kadohadacho, Hasinai, Hainai, Natchitoches, and Yatasi. Today, the most commonly used dialects are Hasinai and Hainai.^[3]

Caddo is linguistically related to the members of the Northern Caddoan language family; these include the Pawnee-Kitsai (Keechi) languages (Arikara, Kitsai, and Pawnee) and the Wichita language. Kitsai is now extinct, and Pawnee, Arikara, and Wichita each have fewer surviving speakers than Caddo does.^[4] Another language, Adai, is postulated to have been a Caddoan language while it was extant, but because of scarce resources and the language’s extinct status, this connection is not conclusive, and Adai is generally considered a language isolate.^[5]

Phonology[link]

Consonants[link]

Caddo has nineteen contrastive consonants, which is a normal-sized consonant inventory. It is somewhat unusual in that it lacks lateral consonants.^[6] The IPA symbols for the consonants of Caddo are given below:

Caddo also features contrastive gemination (lengthening) of consonants, which is generally indicated in orthography by a double letter; e.g. /hɑ́ttih/ ‘woman’.^[7]

Vowels[link]

Caddo has three contrastive vowel qualities, /i/, /ɑ/, and /u/, and two contrastive vowel lengths, long and short, for a total of 6 vowel phonemes.

However, there is a great deal of phonetic variation amongst the short vowels. The high front vowel /i/ is generally (but not always) realized as its lower counterpart /ɪ/, and the high back vowel /u/ is similarly often realized as its lower counterpart /ʊ/. The low back vowel /ɑ/ has a wider range of variation, pronounced (most commonly) as /ʌ/ when followed by any consonant except a semivowel or a laryngeal consonant, as a low central vowel (for which IPA lacks a symbol) at the end of an open syllable or when followed by a laryngeal consonant, and as /ə/ before a semivowel.

In general, the long vowels do not feature this kind of variation, but are simply lengthened versions of the phonemes represented in the chart.^[8]

Caddo also has four diphthongs, which can be written a number of different ways; the transcription below shows the typical Caddo Nation orthography (a vowel paired with a glide) and the IPA version, represented with vowels and offglides.^[9]

• ay /ɑj/ – Pronounced like English ‘eye’
• aw /ɑw/ – Pronounced like ‘’ou’’ in English ‘out’
• iw /iw/ – Pronounced like English ‘ew’
• uy /uj/ – Pronounced like ‘’uoy’’ in English ‘buoy’

Tone[link]

Caddo is a tone language. There are three tones in Caddo: low tone, which is unmarked (ɑ); high tone, which is marked by an acute accent over the vowel (ɑ́); and falling tone, which is always long, and marked by a grave accent over the vowel (ɑ̀ː).

Tone occurs both lexically (as a property of the word), non-lexically (as a result of tonological processes), and also as a marker of certain morphological features; for instance, the past tense marker is associated with high tone.^[10]

Tonological processes[link]

There are three processes that can create non-lexical high tone within a syllable nucleus.^[11] (Note: see the section below for an explanation of other phonological changes which may occur in the following examples.)

1. H-deletion

VhCC → V^HighCC

An /h/ before two consonants is deleted and the preceding vowel gains high tone.

Ex: /kiʃwɑhn-t-ʔuh/ → [kiʃwɑ́nːt’uh] ‘parched corn’

2. Low tone-deletion

VRV^LowC → V^HighRC

A low tone vowel following a resonant (sonorant consonant) is deleted and the preceding vowel gains high tone.

Ex: /sa-baka-nah-hah/ → [sawkɑ́nːhah] ‘does he mean it?’

3. Backwards assimilation

VRV^High → V^HighRV^High

A vowel preceding a resonant and a high tone vowel gains high tone.

Ex: /nanɑ́/ → [nɑ́nɑ́ː] ‘that, that one’

Phonological processes[link]

Vowel syncope[link]

There are two vowel syncope processes in Caddo, which both involve the loss of a low-tone vowel in certain environments.^[12] The first syncope process is already described as Low tone-deletion (above). The second syncope process is described below:

Interconsonantal Syncope

VCV^LowCV → VCCV

A low-tone vowel in between a vowel-consonant sequence and a consonant-vowel sequence is deleted.

Example (shown with intermediary form): /kak#(ʔi)t’us-jaʔah/ → kahʔit’uʃaʔah → [kahʔit’uʃʔah] ‘foam, suds’

Consonant cluster simplification[link]

As a result of the syncope processes described above, several consonant clusters emerge which are then invariably simplified by way of phonological process. At the present stage of research, these processes seem to be unrelated, except that they represent a phonetic reduction in consonant clusters; therefore, they are listed below without much further explanation.^[13]

1. nw → mm

2. tw → pp

3. tk → kk

4. n → m / __ [+labial]

5. ʔʔ → ʔ

6. hh → h

7. ʔ+Resonant → Resonant+ʔ / syllable final

Syllable coda simplification[link]

Similar to the consonant cluster simplification process, there are four processes by which a syllable-final consonant is altered.^[14]

1. b → w / syllable final

2. d → t / syllable final

3. k → h / syllable final (but not before k)

4. tʃ → ʃ / syllable final

Word boundary processes[link]

There are three word-boundary processes in Caddo, all of which occur word-initially:

1. n → t / # __

2. w → p / # __

3. y → d / # __

Ex. /ni-huhn-id-ah/ → [tihúndah] ‘she returned it’

These processes are generally not applicable in the case of proclitics (morphemes which behave like an affix and are phonologically dependent on the morpheme they are attached to, e.g. an apple in English).^[15]

Glottalization[link]

Caddo has a glottalization process by which any voiceless stop or affricate (except p) becomes an ejective when followed by a glottal stop.^[16]

Glottalization

[-sonorant, -continuant, -voice, -labial, -spread glottis] → [+constricted glottis] / ___ [+constricted glottis, -spread glottis]

A voiceless stop or affricate (except p) becomes an ejective when followed by a glottal stop.

Ex. /sik-ʔuh/ → [sik’uh] ‘rock’

Palatalization[link]

Caddo has a palatalization process which affects certain consonants when followed by /j/, with simultaneous loss of the /j/.

Palatalization

a) /kj/ → [tʃ]

b) /sj/ → [ʃ]

Ex. /kak#ʔa-k’as-jaʔah/ → [kahʔak’a ʃʔah] ‘one’s leg’

(Melnar includes a third palatization process, /tj/ → [ts]. However, /ts/ is not a palatal affricate, so this process has not been included here. Nevertheless, it is probably the case that this third process does occur.)^[17]

Lengthening[link]

Caddo has three processes by which a syllable nucleus (vowel) may be lengthened.^[18]

Syllable Lengthening Process One

V^High(Resonant)CVC# → V^High(Resonant)ːCVC#

When the second-to-last syllable in a word has a nucleus consisting of a high tone vowel (and, optionally, a resonant), and the last syllable has the form CVC, then the high tone nucleus is lengthened.

Ex. /bak-‘ʔawɑ́waʔ/ → [bahʔwɑ́ːwaʔ] ‘they said’

Syllable Lengthening Process Two

V(Resonant)ʔ → V(Resonant) ː / in any prepenultimate syllable

In any syllable before the penultimate, a glottal stop coda is deleted, and the remaining nucleus is lengthened.

Ex. /hɑ́k#ci-(ʔi)bíhn-saʔ/ → [hɑ́hciːbíːsaʔ] ‘I have it on my back’

Syllable Lengthening Process Three

a) ij → iː

b) uw →uː

Any syllable nucleus consisting of ij or uw must convert to a long vowel.

Education and preservation attempts[link]

The Caddo Nation is making a concentrated effort to save the Caddo language. The Kiwat Hasinay ('Caddo Home') foundation, located at the tribal home of Binger, Oklahoma, offers regular Caddo language classes, in addition to creating dictionaries, phrase books, and other Caddo language resources. They have also made a long-term project of trying to record and digitally archive Caddoan oral traditions, which are an important part of Caddo culture.^[19]

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Caddo Nation. 2007. Caddo Nation – Language. http://www.caddonation-nsn.gov/history/language.html (October 20, 2011).
• Kiwat Hasinay Foundation. 2005. Kiwat Hasinay Foundation. http://www.ahalenia.com/kiwat/index.html (October 20, 2011).
• Melnar, Lynette R. 2004. Caddo verb morphology. Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press.
• Native Languages of the Americas. 2011. Caddo Language and the Caddo Indian Tribe (Kadohidacho, Hasinai, Hasinay). http://www.native-languages.org/caddo.htm (October 20, 2011).
• SIL International. 2009. Caddo. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth Edition. Online: http://www.ethnologue.com/15/show_language.asp?code=cad (October 20, 2011).
• The Linguist List. Caddo – MultiTree. http://multitree.org/codes/cad.html (October 20, 2011).
• World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Caddo. http://wals.info/languoid/lect/wals_code_cad (October 20, 2011).

External links[link]

• Ethnologue report for Caddo
• Kiwat Hasinay Foundation
• Caddo Alphabet (PDF)
• Kúhaʔahat Oklahoma! - How to say "hello" in Caddo
• http://www.socrata.com/Education/CaddoLanguage/kerq-ib5s - Search-able Caddo Language Dictionary on Socrata, created by Michael Sheyahshe (replaces Caddo WebLEX)

v t e Languages of Oklahoma Alabama Arapaho Caddo Cayuga Cherokee Cheyenne Chickasaw Chiwere (Iowa and Otoe) Choctaw Comanche Delaware English German Hitchiti-Mikasuki Kansa Koasati Mescalero-Chiricahua Apache Mesquakie (Fox, Kickapoo, and Sauk) Muscogee Osage Ottawa Pawnee Plains Apache Ponca Potawatomi Quapaw Seneca Shawnee Spanish Tonkawa Vietnamese Wichita Wyandot Yuchi Italics indicate extinct languages

v t e Languages of Texas Italics indicate extinct languages Immigrant languages American English (Southern American English, Texan English) Spanish Texas German Texas Silesian Chinese French Tagalog Vietnamese Indigenous languages Caddo Comanche Lipan Apache Southern Tiwa Solano Wichita Tonkawa Atakapa Koasati Karankawa Cotoname Other languages American Sign Language

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Caddo

Caddo Nation flag
Total population
5,757[1]
Regions with significant populations
United States Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas
Languages
Caddo, English
Religion
Native American Church, Christianity
Related ethnic groups
Pawnee, Wichita, Kitsai Caddo Confederacy: Adai, Cahinnio, Eyeish, Hainai, Hasinai, Kadohadacho, Nabedache, Nabiti, Nacogdoche, Nadaco, Nanatsoho, Nasoni, Natchitoches, Nechaui, Neche, Ouachita, Tula, Yatasi

The Caddo Nation is a confederacy of several Southeastern Native American tribes, who traditionally inhabited much of what is now East Texas, northern Louisiana and portions of southern Arkansas and Oklahoma. Today the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma is a single federally recognized tribe with its capital at Binger, Oklahoma. The different Caddo languages have converged into a single language.

Government and civic institutions[link]

The Caddo Nation was previously known as the Caddo Tribe of Oklahoma. A tribal constitution provides for a tribal council consisting of eight members with a chairperson, based in Binger, Oklahoma.^[2] The tribal complex, dance grounds, and the Caddo Heritage Museum are located south of Binger. 5757 people are enrolled in the tribe, with 3044 living within the state of Oklahoma.^[1] The tribe operates its own housing authority and issues its own tribal vehicle tags.^[1] It maintains administrative centers, dance grounds, several community centers, and an active NAGPRA office.

Several programs exist to invigorate Caddo traditions. The tribe sponsors a summer culture camp for children.^[3] The Hasinai Society^[4] and Caddo Culture Club^[5] both keep Caddo songs and dances alive, while the Kiwat Hasinay Foundation is dedicated to preserving the Caddo language.^[6]

Current tribal officials[link]

• Chairperson: Brenda Shemayme Edwards
• Vice-chairperson: Todd Downing Goodman
• Secretary: Diane Sparks
• Treasurer: Laura Sue Butler Jarvis
• Representative, Fort Cobb: Eloise Harjo
• Representative, Anadarko: Anna Donaghey
• Representative, Binger: Marilyn Williams Threlkeld
• Representative, Oklahoma City: Jennifer Reeder Crump^[7]

Precontact history[link]

Archaeology[link]

Map of the Caddoan Mississippian culture and some important sites

The Caddo are thought to be an extension of Woodland period peoples, the Fourche Maline culture and Mossy Grove cultures who were living in the area of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas between 200 BCE to 800 CE.^[8] The Wichita and Pawnee are related to the Caddo, as shown by their speaking Caddoan languages. By 800 CE this society had begun to coalesce into the Caddoan Mississippian culture. Some villages began to gain prominence as ritual centers, with elite residences and temple mound constructions. The mounds were arranged around open plazas, which were usually kept swept clean and were often used for ceremonial occasions. As complex religious and social ideas developed, some people and family lineages gained prominence over others.^[8] By 1000 CE a society that is defined as "Caddoan" had emerged. By 1200 the numerous villages, hamlets, and farmsteads established throughout the Caddo world had begun extensive maize agriculture.^[8] Their artistic skills and earthwork mound-building flourished during the 12th and 13th centuries.^[9] Spiro mounds, some of the most elaborate in the United States, were made by ancestors of the Caddo and Wichita.^[10] The Caddo were farmers and enjoyed good growing conditions most of the time. However, the Piney Woods, the geographic area where they lived, was affected by the Great Drought, from 1276–1299 CE.^[11]

Archeological evidence that the cultural continuity is unbroken from prehistory to the present, and that the direct ancestors of the Caddo and related Caddo language speakers in prehistoric times and at first European contact and the modern Caddo Nation of Oklahoma is unquestioned today.^[12]

Oral history[link]

Caddo turkey dance, Caddo National Complex, Binger, Oklahoma, 2000. The turkey dance relays Caddo history.

Caddo oral history says the tribe emerged from an underground cave, called Chahkanina or "the place of crying," located at the confluence of the Red and Mississippi Rivers in northern Louisiana. Their leader, named Moon, instructed the people not to look back. An old Caddo man carried with him a drum, a pipe, and fire, all of which continued to be important religious items. His wife carried corn and pumpkin seeds. As people and accompanying animals emerged, the wolf looked back and the exit was closed to the remaining people and animals.^[13]

The Caddo peoples moved west along the Red River, or Bah'hatteno in Caddo.^[14] A Caddo woman, Zacado, instructed the tribe in hunting, fishing, home construction, and clothing. Caddo religion focuses on Kadhi háyuh, translating to "Lord Above" or "Lord of the Sky." In early times, the people were led by priests, including a head priest, the xinesi, who could commune with spirits residing near Caddo temples.^[13] A cycle of ceremonies corresponded to corn cultivation. Tobacco was and is used ceremonially. Early priests drank a purifying sacrament made of wild olive leaves.^[15]

Geography[link]

The Caddo lived in the Piney Woods eco-region of the United States up to the foothills of the Ozark Mountains and often near the Caddo River. The Piney Woods is a dense forest of deciduous and conifer flora covering rolling hills, steep river valleys, and intermittent wetlands called Bayous. Several Caddo villages were resettled, including the community of Elysian Fields, Texas, and Nacogdoches and Natchitoches, both of which have kept their original names. The Caddo were progressively moved further west until they reached what is now western Oklahoma. The geography of the drier plains was quite a contrast to the lush hilly forest that were formerly their homeland. The Caddo's food varied in many types, the most common being dried corn. Sunflower seeds and pumpkins were also important staples with cultural significance, as were wild turkeys.

Post-contact history[link]

Kaw-u-tz, photographed in 1906. Photo courtesy SMU.

The Caddo first encountered Europeans in 1541 when the Hernando de Soto Expedition came through their lands.^[16] De Soto's force had a violent clash with one band of Caddo Indians, the Tula, near Caddo Gap, Arkansas. This event is marked by a monument that stands in the small town today.

The Caddo tribes were divided into three confederacies when first encountered by the Europeans, the Hasinai, Kadohadacho, and Natchitoches, and loosely affiliated with other tribes. The Haisinai lived in East Texas, the Kadohadacho lived near the border of Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas, and the Natchitoches lived in now northern Louisiana.^[17]

With the arrival of missionaries from Spain and France, a smallpox epidemic broke out that decimated the population. Measles, influenza, and malaria also devastated the Caddo, as these were Eurasian diseases to which they had no immunity.^[14]

Before extensive European contact, some of the Caddo territory was invaded by migrating Osage, Ponca, Omaha and Kaw, who had moved west beginning about 1200 CE because of years of warfare with the Iroquois in the Ohio River area of present-day Kentucky. The Osage particularly dominated the Caddo and pushed them out of some former territory, becoming dominant in the region of Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas and Oklahoma. The new tribes had become well settled in their new traditional grounds west of the Mississippi by mid-18th century European contact.^[14]

Having given way over years before the power of the former Ohio Valley tribes, Caddos later negotiated for place with Spanish, French, and finally Anglo-American settlers. After the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, the United States government sought to ally with the Caddos. In 1835 the Kadohadacho, the northernmost Caddo confederacy, signed a treaty with the US to relocate to then Mexico. This area had been rapidly transformed by greatly increased immigration of European Americans, who in 1836 declared independence from Mexico with the Republic of Texas.^[14] "Texas" comes from the Hasinai word táysha?, meaning "friend."^[18]

In 1845 when Texas was admitted to the US as a state, the government forced the relocation of both the Hasinai and the Kadohadacho onto the Brazos Reservation. In 1859 many of the Caddo were relocated to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River. After the Civil War, the Caddo were concentrated on a reservation located between the Washita and Canadian rivers.^[14]

In the late 19th century, the Caddo took up the Ghost Dance religion, which was widespread among American Indian nations in the West. John Wilson, a Caddo-Delaware medicine man who spoke only Caddo, was an influential leader in the Ghost Dance. In 1880, Wilson became a peyote roadman. The tribe had known the Half Moon peyote ceremony, but Wilson introduced the Big Moon ceremony to them.^[19] The Caddo tribe remains very active in the Native American Church today.

After the turn of the century, the Curtis Act dismantled tribal institutions. The Dawes Act was directed at assimilation by breaking up tribal common landholdings into allotments for individual members. The Caddo vigorously opposed allotment. Whitebread, a Caddo leader, said, that "because of their peaceful lives and friendship to the white man, and through their ignorance were not consulted, and have been ignored and stuck away in a corner and allowed to exist by sufferance."^[14]

The Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act of 1936 provided the opportunity for the Caddo to reform their tribal government. They organized in 1938 as the Caddo Indian Tribe of Oklahoma. They ratified their constitution on 17 January 1938.^[2] In 1976, they drafted a new constitution. During the 20th century, Caddo leaders such as Melford Williams, Harry Guy, Hubert Halfmoon, and Vernon Hunter have shaped the tribe.^[14]

In a special election on 29 June 2002, six amendments were made to the constitution. Tribal enrollment is open to individuals with a documented minimum of 1/16 degree Caddo blood quantum.^[20]

Notable Caddo[link]

• T. C. Cannon, Kiowa-Caddo-Choctaw artist
• LaRue Parker, former tribal chairperson
• John Wilson, peyote roadman

See also[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Caddo

• Caddoan village bundle
• Caddo Lake
• Dush-toh, traditional Caddo women's hair ornament
• List of sites and peoples visited by the Hernando de Soto Expedition
• Spiro Mounds

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Bolton, Herbet E. The Hasinais: Southern Caddoans As Seen by the Earliest Europeans. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002. ISBN 978-0-8061-3441-3.
• Carter, Cecile Elkins. Caddo Indians: Where We Come From. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001. ISBN 0-8061-3318-X
• Fford, Cressida, Jane Hubert, and Paul Turnbull. The Dead and their Possessions: Repatriation in Principle, Policy and Practice. New York: Routledge, 2004. ISBN 978-0-415-34449-4.
• Stewart, Omer Call. Peyote Religion: A History. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993. ISBN 978-0-8061-2457-5.
• Sturtevant, William C., general editor and Raymond D. Fogelson, volume editor. Handbook of North American Indians: Southeast. Volume 14. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution, 2004. ISBN 0-16-072300-0.

Further reading[link]

• Dorsey, George Amos. Traditions of the Caddo. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997. ISBN 0-8032-6602-2
• LaVere, David. The Caddo Chiefdoms: Caddo Economics and Politics, 1700–1835. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998. ISBN 0-8032-2927-5
• Newkumet, Vynola Beaver and Howard L. Meredith. Hasinai: A Traditional History of the Caddo People. College Station: Texas A&M Press, 1988. ISBN 0-89096-342-8
• Perttula, Timothy K. The Caddo Nation: Archaeological and Ethnohistoric Perspectives. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997. ISBN 0-292-76574-6
• Smith, F. Todd. The Caddo Indians: Tribes at the Convergence of Empires, 1542–1854. College Station: Texas A&M Press, 1995. ISBN 0-89096-981-7
• Swanton, John R. "Source Material on the History and Ethnology of the Caddo Indians." Bureau of American Ethnology. Bulletin 132. (1942) ASIN B000NLBAPK

External links[link]

• Caddo Nation of Oklahoma, official website
• Caddo Heritage Museum
• Kiwat Hasinay Foundation – Caddo Language for Caddo People
• Caddo Legacy from Caddo People, arts and humanities
• Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture – Caddo (Kadohadacho)

Wallace Chafe ( /ˈtʃeɪf/; born 1927) is an American linguist. He is Professor Emeritus and research professor at The University of California: Santa Barbara.^[1]

Chafe was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He graduated from Yale University, where he obtained his doctorate in 1958. From 1975 to 1986 he was the director of the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages at the University of California, Berkeley.^[2] He later moved to the University of California, Santa Barbara, and became professor emeritus at UCSB in 1991.

Chafe is a cognitivist; he considers semantics to be a basic component of language. He is a critic of Noam Chomsky's generative linguistics.^{[citation needed]}

He is an influential scholar in indigenous languages of the Americas, notably Iroquoian and Caddoan languages, in discourse analysis and psycholinguistics, and also prosody of speech.

Together with Johanna Nichols, he edited a seminal volume on evidentiality in language in 1986.

Works[link]

• 1962. "Phonetics, semantics, and language." Language 38.335-344.
• 1967. Seneca Morphology and Dictionary. Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology, vol. 4. Washington: Smithsonian Institution.
• 1968. "Idiomaticity as an Anomaly in the Chomskyan Paradigm." Foundations of Language 4.109-127.
• 1970. Meaning and the Structure of Language. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
• 1970. "A Semantically Based Sketch of Onondaga." International Journal of American Linguistics, Memoir 25 (Supplement to vol. 36, no. 2).
• 1976. "Givenness, contrastiveness, definiteness, subjects, topics, and point of view." In Li 1976, 25-55.
• 1980. The Pear Stories: Cognitive, Cultural, and Linguistic Aspects of Narrative Production. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
• 1988. "Linking Intonation Units in Spoken English." In Haiman and Thompson 1988, 1-27.
• 1994. Discourse, Consciousness, and Time: The Flow and Displacement of Conscious Experience in Speaking and Writing. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
• 1996. "Beyond Beads on a String and Branches in a Tree." Conceptual Structure, Discourse, and Language ed. by Adele Goldberg, 49-65. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information.
• 2000. "The Interplay of Prosodic and Segmental Sounds in the Expression of Thoughts." Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 1997, 389—401.
• 2000. "Loci of Diversity and Convergence in Thought and Language." Explorations in Linguistic Relativity ed. by Martin Pütz and Marjolijn H. Verspoor, 101—123. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Wallace Chafe's homepage
• Chafe's Autobiographical memoir about his professional life and research into unconventional areas of lingusitcs

This article on a linguist is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

Nelle Harper Lee
President George W. Bush presents Harper Lee with the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House on November 5, 2007
Born	(1926-04-28) April 28, 1926 (age 86) Monroeville, Alabama
Occupation	Novelist
Nationality	American
Subjects	Literature
Literary movement	Southern Gothic
Influences Truman Capote, William Faulkner
Influenced David Watterson
Signature

Nelle Harper E. Lee (born April 28, 1926) is an American author known for her 1960 Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird, which deals with the issues of racism that were observed by the author as a child in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama. Despite being Lee's only published book, it led to her being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom of the United States for her contribution to literature in 2007.^[1] Lee has also been the recipient of numerous honorary degrees but has always declined to make a speech.

Other significant contributions of Lee include assisting her close friend Truman Capote in his research for the book In Cold Blood.

Biography[link]

Early life[link]

Nelle Harper Lee, the youngest of four children of Amasa Coleman Lee and Frances Cunningham Finch Lee, was born and raised in Monroeville, Alabama. Her mother's maiden name was Finch.^[3] Her father, a former newspaper editor and proprietor, was a lawyer who served in the Alabama State Legislature from 1926 to 1938. As a child, Lee was a tomboy, a precocious reader, and best friends with her schoolmate and neighbor, the young Truman Capote.

[edit] To Kill a Mockingbird

While enrolled at Monroe County High School, Lee developed an interest in English literature. After graduating in 1944,^[3] she went to the all-female Huntingdon College in Montgomery. Lee stood apart from the other students—she could not have cared less about fashion, makeup, or dating. Instead, she focused on her studies and on her writing. Lee was a member of the literary honor society and the glee club.

Transferring to the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, Lee was known for being a loner and an individualist. She did make a greater attempt at a social life there, joining a sorority for a while. Pursuing her interest in writing, Lee contributed to the school’s newspaper and its humor magazine, the Rammer Jammer. She eventually became the editor of the Rammer Jammer.^[5][6]

In her junior year, Lee was accepted into the university’s law school, which allowed students to work on law degrees while still undergraduates. The demands of her law studies forced her to leave her post as editor of the Rammer Jammer. After her first year in the law program, Lee began expressing to her family that writing—not the law—was her true calling. She went to Oxford University in England that summer as an exchange student. Returning to her law studies that fall, Lee dropped out after the first semester. She soon moved to New York City to pursue her hopes to become a writer.

In 1949, a 23-year-old Lee arrived in New York City. She struggled for several years, working as a ticket agent for Eastern Airlines and for the British Overseas Air Corp (BOAC). While in the city, Lee was reunited with old friend Truman Capote, one of the literary rising stars of the time. She also befriended Broadway composer and lyricist Michael Brown and his wife, Joy. Having written several long stories, Harper Lee located an agent in November 1956. The following month at the Browns' East 50th townhouse, she received a gift of a year's wages from them with a note: "You have one year off from your job to write whatever you please. Merry Christmas."^[7] She quit her job and devoted herself to her craft. Within a year, she had a first draft. Working with J. B. Lippincott & Co. editor Tay Hohoff, she completed To Kill a Mockingbird in the summer of 1959. Published July 11, 1960, To Kill a Mockingbird was an immediate bestseller and won great critical acclaim, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961. It remains a bestseller with more than 30 million copies in print. In 1999, it was voted "Best Novel of the Century" in a poll by the Library Journal.

Details[link]

Many details of To Kill a Mockingbird are apparently autobiographical. Like Lee, the tomboy (Scout) is the daughter of a respected small-town Alabama attorney. The plot involves a legal case, the workings of which would have been familiar to Lee, who studied law. Scout's friend Dill was inspired by Lee's childhood friend and neighbor, Truman Capote,^[8] while Lee is the model for a character in Capote's first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms.

Harper Lee has downplayed autobiographical parallels. Yet Truman Capote, mentioning the character Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird, described details he considered biographical: "In my original version of Other Voices, Other Rooms I had that same man living in the house that used to leave things in the trees, and then I took that out. He was a real man, and he lived just down the road from us. We used to go and get those things out of the trees. Everything she wrote about it is absolutely true. But you see, I take the same thing and transfer it into some Gothic dream, done in an entirely different way."^[9]

[edit] After To Kill a Mockingbird

After completing To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee accompanied Capote to Holcomb, Kansas, to assist him in researching what they thought would be an article on a small town's response to the murder of a farmer and his family. Capote expanded the material into his best-selling book, In Cold Blood (1966).

Since publication of To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee has granted almost no requests for interviews or public appearances and, with the exception of a few short essays, has published no further writings. She did work on a second novel—The Long Goodbye—eventually filing it away unfinished.^[10] During the mid-1980s, she began a factual book about an Alabama serial murderer but also put it aside when she was not satisfied.^[10] Her withdrawal from public life prompted unfounded speculation that new publications were in the works. Similar speculation followed the American writers J. D. Salinger and Ralph Ellison.

Lee said of the 1962 Academy Award-winning screenplay adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird by Horton Foote: "I think it is one of the best translations of a book to film ever made".^[11] She also became a friend of Gregory Peck, who won an Oscar for his portrayal of Atticus Finch, the father of the novel's narrator, Scout. She remains close to the actor's family. Peck's grandson, Harper Peck Voll, is named after her.

In June 1966, Lee was one of two persons named by President Lyndon B. Johnson to the National Council on the Arts.

Lee showed her feistiness in her 1966 letter to the editor in response to the attempts of a Richmond, Virginia area school board to ban To Kill a Mockingbird as "immoral literature":

James J. Kilpatrick, then editor of The Richmond News Leader, started the Beadle Bumble fund to pay fines for victims of what he termed "despots on the bench". He built the fund using contributions from readers and later used the Beadle Bumble Fund to defend books as well as people. After a school board in suburban Richmond ordered school libraries to dispose of all copies of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, because the board found the book immoral, Kilpatrick wrote, "A more moral novel scarcely could be imagined". In the name of the Beadle, he then offered free copies to children who wrote in and by the end of the first week, he had given away 81 copies.^[12]

When Lee attended the 1983 Alabama History and Heritage Festival in Eufaula, Alabama, she presented the essay "Romance and High Adventure."

Lee has been known to split time between an apartment in New York and her sister's home in Monroeville. She has accepted honorary degrees but has declined to make speeches. In March 2005, she arrived in Philadelphia—her first trip to the city since signing with publisher Lippincott in 1960—to receive the inaugural ATTY Award for positive depictions of attorneys in the arts from the Spector Gadon & Rosen Foundation. At the urging of Peck's widow Veronique, Lee traveled by train from Monroeville to Los Angeles in 2005 to accept the Los Angeles Public Library Literary Award. She has also attended luncheons for students who have written essays based on her work, held annually at the University of Alabama.^[13][14] On May 21, 2006, she accepted an honorary degree from the University of Notre Dame. To honor her, the graduating seniors were given copies of Mockingbird before the ceremony and held them up when she received her degree.

On May 7, 2006, Lee wrote a letter to Oprah Winfrey (published in O, The Oprah Magazine in July 2006). Lee wrote about her love of books as a child and her dedication to the written word: "Now, 75 years later in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books."^[15]

While attending an August 20, 2007 ceremony inducting four members into the Alabama Academy of Honor, Lee responded to an invitation to address the audience with "Well, it's better to be silent than to be a fool."^[16]

In a 2011 interview with the Daily Telegraph, Lee's close friend Rev. Dr. Thomas Lane Butts said that Lee is in an assisted-living facility, wheelchair bound, partially blind and deaf, and suffering from memory loss. Butts also said that Lee told him why she never wrote again: "Two reasons: one, I wouldn't go through the pressure and publicity I went through with To Kill A Mockingbird for any amount of money. Second, I have said what I wanted to say and I will not say it again." ^[17]

Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient[link]

On November 5, 2007, Lee was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush at a White House ceremony. The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest civilian award in the United States and recognizes individuals who have made "an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors."^[18][19]

Fictional portrayals[link]

Harper Lee was portrayed by Catherine Keener in the film Capote (2005), by Sandra Bullock in the film Infamous (2006), and by Tracey Hoyt in the TV movie Scandalous Me: The Jacqueline Susann Story (1998). In the adaptation of Capote's Other Voices, Other Rooms (1995), the character of Idabel Thompkins, who was inspired by Truman Capote's memories of Harper Lee as a child, was played by Aubrey Dollar.

Writings[link]

• To Kill a Mockingbird. (1960) New York: J. B. Lippincott.
• "Love—In Other Words". (April 15, 1961) Vogue, pp. 64–65
• "Christmas to Me". (December 1961) McCall's
• "When Children Discover America". (August 1965) McCall's
• "Romance and High Adventure" (1983), a paper presented in Eufaula, Alabama and collected in 1985 in the anthology Clearings in the Thicket.
• Open letter to Oprah Winfrey (July 2006), O: The Oprah Magazine

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Harper Lee

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Harper Lee

• Harper Lee at the Internet Book List
• Harper Lee at the Internet Movie Database
• Works by or about Harper Lee in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Harper Lee collected news and commentary at The Guardian