Ebook: A History of the Iroquoian Languages

Winnipeg, Manitoba: University of Manitoba, 2010. – 595 p.
The Iroquoian language family is indigenous to eastern North America. It has both a southern branch, represented by Cherokee, and a northern branch, represented by Huron, Mohawk, and Tuscarora, among others. The languages are notable for their rich inflectional morphology and complex patterns of allomorphy, as well as their small numbers of consonant phonemes which nonetheless yield complex consonant clusters.
To date, the history of the Iroquoian languages has been limited to short summaries, and formal reconstruction of the phonology and morphology of Proto-Iroquoian (PI) has not been undertaken. This work represents the first systematic attempt to reconstruct PI phonology and morphology and trace subsequent developments through to modern languages. The comparative method has been used, but the theoretical disposition of the work is otherwise neutral and should permit interpretation of the data by researchers of any theoretical persuasion.