Oneida Language Dictionary

Each dictionary entry has a citation form. Citation forms for verbs (including statives) are their stems (minus any prefixes and suffixes). Citation forms for nouns and particles are complete words, but in their simplest form (e.g. without possessives or counting affixes).

English to Oneida

Enter an English word and the result is a list of all citation forms whose glosses contain that word. Click on any citation form to find the dictionary entry.

Root Search

Enter characters for an Oneida root (hyphens are optional) and the result is all the citation forms whose analysis contains an exact match to that root. Click on the citation form to see the dictionary entry. Grammatical morphemes such as reflexive or distributive can be searched by entering their abbreviation.

Stem Search

Enter characters for an Oneida stem and the result is the citation form that is an exact match. If you are not sure of the exact form (e.g. whether a stem begins with an a or contains a glottal stop), it may take a few tries to get the exact match.

Word Search

Enter characters for an Oneida word in its unwhispered form. If there is an exact match in the database, it will be reported. If there is no exact match, the stem (for verbs) or root (for nouns) used in your word may still have an entry. The search result will try to guide you to possible stems or roots to search for. This is a matter of separating off prefixes and suffixes and finding a normalized or base form of the stem or root. You may try the possibilities listed in the search result or (if you have some understanding of Oneida word structure) try a stem or root search on your own.

Citation Scan

If you would like more direct access to the database itself, this function allows you to scan in Oneida alphabetical order all the current citation forms in the database. Copy and paste an item from this list to get the entry for that citation form. A final caution is that this work is based on an understanding

A final caution is that this work is based on an understanding of Oneida that is necessarily incomplete, both in lexical and grammatical ways. A patient user may discover many patterns of the language, but there are times when those patterns are broken. Some entries thus contain words that are at odds with their citation forms. Such words are included anyway in the hopes that some day a more complete understanding of the patterns may emerge.

Abbreviation	Meaning
-	Hyphens indicate stems, roots, or parts of words. The form with a hyphen needs prefixes (if the hyphen is on the front) or suffixes (if the hyphen is at the end) to make a complete word.
( )	Parentheses indicate: whispered sounds at the ends of Oneida words optional sounds in the middle of Oneida words grammatical analysis of stems into roots
boldface	Used for citation forms
italics	Used for translations and glosses (loose translations)
-1,2,3,4	Numbers after a stem or root are used to identify homonyms. The numbers have no significance other than to keep separate root and stems with distinctive meanings.
?	Disagreement among speakers or unknown analysis
caus	Causative, a derivational suffix
cont	Continuative, a derivational suffix
dat	Dative, a derivational suffix
dn	Derived noun, a word constructed as a verb but used as a noun
dist	Distributive, a derivational suffix
inch	Inchoative, a derivational suffix
instr	Instrumental, a derivational suffix
loc	Locative, a suffix or either the cislocative or translocative
ni-	Partitive, a prepronominal prefix
obj	Objective, a category of pronominal prefixes
part.	Particle or particle combination
pl	Plural, a suffix
pref.	Prefix (pronoun prefix or pre-pronominal prefix)
refl	Reflexive, a part of some complex verb stems
s-	Iterative, a prepronominal prefix
state	Stative, a citation category similar to adjective
subj	Subjective, a category of pronominal prefixes
t-	Cislocative, a prepronominal prefix
te-	Dualic, a prepronominal prefix
teˀ-	Negative, a prepronominal prefix
th-	Contrastive, a prepronominal prefix
trans	Transitive, a category of pronominal prefix
ts-	Coincident, a prepronominal prefix
ye-	Translocative, a prepronominal prefix

This dictionary presumes a certain amount of knowledge about Oneida and its writing system. In the Oneida section words are listed alphabetically through their citation forms. The alphabetical order is the following:

• a, e, h, i, k, l, n, o, s, t, u, ʌ, w, x, y, ˀ

Accent and length marks are ignored in this order. Hyphens are added to the front and back of citation forms to show that they are not complete words. They require prefixes and suffixes to make them complete. These hyphens are generally ignored in the alphabetical order.

Oneida does not have a long history of being written. The writing system used in this work is an adaptation of one introduced in the 1930's. It has been used increasingly since the 1970's for teaching purposes. The sound values of the letters are as follows:

Vowels

Character	Sound Example
a	as in aha or father
e	as in they
i	as in ski
o	as in no
ʌ	as in fun or uh huh (this vowel is always nasalized)
u	as in tune (this vowel is always nasalized)

Resonants

Character	Sound Example
l	as in low
n	as in no
w	as in we
y	as in yes

Other consonants

Character	Sound Example
t	as in stove or water - closer to a d when followed by a vowel or resonant as in top elsewhere
k	as in skill - closer to a g when followed by a vowel or resonant as in keep elsewhere
s	as in was - closer to a z when between vowels as in say elsewhere - there is some variation among speakers and an s often sounds partway between a buzz and a hiss
h	as in help - h is aspiration and frequently occurs before consonants producing sound combinations not found in English
ˀ	as in the catch between the syllables in uh-oh - ˀ is a glottal stop and occurs only after vowels in Oneida

Special clusters

Character	Sound Example
tsi (before consonants)	as in judge
tsy (before vowels)	as in judge
tshi (before consonants)	as in church
tshy (before vowels)	as in church
sy	as in shoe

Intonation marks

• A raised dot right after a vowel represents a lengthened vowel.
• An accent mark over a vowel represents a stressed syllable.
• The combination of both a dot and an accent on the same vowel represents a long falling tone on that vowel.
• Final syllables in parentheses represent whispered sounds.

The entries in this dictionary are based on several sources and a long history. A WPA sponsored writers project in the late 1930's collected over 800 texts in the Oneida language. These texts were written by about a dozen Oneidas - Andrew Beechtree, Dennison Hill, LaFront King, Guy Elm, Ida Blackhawk, John Skenandore, Lewis Webster, Oscar Archiquette, Stadler King, Tillie Baird, David Skenandore, Walter Skenandore, and Alex Metoxen - based on interviews with a large number of speakers in the Wisconsin Oneida community.

Floyd Lounsbury, who had worked with this project, had the individual words in these texts filed and sorted on small slips of paper. In the early 1970's with the help of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities Cliff Abbott worked those slips into a preliminary dictionary. Since this work was done on textual materials without access to native speakers, there were two major shortcomings: citation forms were often normalized predictions rather than actual attestations; and there was no control over the variability in the quality of the original transcribers.

Over the following decade, field work in Wisconsin with native speakers - Dorothy Tallakson, Melinda Doxtator, Lawrence John, Melissa Cornelius, Amos Christjohn, Maria Hinton, Mary Jourdan, Flora Skenandore, Rebecca Ninham, Lloyd Schuyler, Mamie Ryan, Bob Brown, Ruth Baird, Absalom Cooper, Sarah Skenandore, Cynthia Farmer, Leona Doxtator, Vera House - allowed most of these shortcomings to be remedied and at the same time substantially supplement the base vocabulary. By the middle 1980's all this work had been pumped into a custom designed database at UW-Green Bay. Another decade of intermittent field work further expanded these materials.

In 1994 Maria Hinton lobbied for a printed dictionary in place of various computer runs. With the help of a language preservation grant from the National Park Service the materials were transferred to a commercial database with more flexibility (FoxPro), a new format was devised, and the forms were again reviewed by native speakers, principally Maria Hinton and Amos Christjohn. This was the basis of the 1996 print version of An Oneida Dictionary.

For this web version, the database has been further revised and expanded with corrections of errors found in the print version. Maria Hinton is in the process of providing sound files for each of the words.

Each Oneida citation form in this dictionary is identified in one of eight categories: verb stem, noun root, derived noun, stative, single word, particle, name, or prefix. Hyphens around a citation form mean that form is a root or stem, not a complete word. The entry contains examples of the prefixes and suffixes needed to turn that root or stem into a full word. The first line after the citation form contains an abbreviation of the category, a variation code, and a set of English glosses. Additional information on subsequent lines depends on the category.

Verb stem

Entries for verb stems include a line of analysis that identifies the internal pieces of the verb stem. Certain of these pieces can be looked up separately (use a root search) while others are identified only by an abbreviation for a grammatical label such as reflexive, causative, or distributive. Still others may be unknown and are represented by a question mark. Stem joining vowels are omitted in this analysis. Following this analysis are example full words based on the verb stem with specific English translations. In a full paradigm these words will include a serial (habitual) form, a punctual form with an aorist (factual) prefix, a perfective (stative) form, and perhaps a command form or some specialized form. At the end of the entry there may be remarks about the use of prefixes or semantic specialization.

Stative (verb)

Most verb stems have a stative (perfective) form to signal that the action of the verb either has been done or is currently ongoing. There are, however, many verbs that have only a stative form. They require special modification to turn them into fully productive regular verb stems. Such verb stems are cited in a separate category. Many of them correspond to descriptive adjectives in English. After the general glosses and a constituent analysis of the verb stem, a full word example is given, typically in isolation form (with whispered ending). The translation of that word is fairly faithful to the internal structure of the word and thus is more literal than the freer glosses. At the end of the entry there may be an additional usage note.

Noun root

The citation form is the context form of the noun as a full word (noun root plus any required prefix and suffix). A line within the entry lists the full word form in both its context form (without whispering) and its isolation form (with whispering) if it is different. There follows a translation for the word. Most of the time this is the same as the glosses given for the root, but at times there is a semantic specialization for the full word. There are then several examples of how the noun root can be used, for example, in locative, plural, possessive, or counting expressions. An incorporation form of the noun root is also given, especially if it is different from the noun root itself. At the end of the entry are any special usage remarks.

Derived noun

The citation form for the derived nouns is the full word in its context form (without whispering). The entry includes glosses, a breakdown of the verb stem into its component parts, and then the isolation form of the word. The translation given here is a rather literal one meant to show the word's internal structure. The glosses provide a freer translation.

Single word (verb)

Some nouns occur only in a form with no obvious internal structure. Because they are clearly used as nouns, they are not listed as particles but rather put in a separate category labeled single word. The citation form is the full word. Just a gloss is given.

Name

Native Oneida names are typically structured like other Oneida verbs and nouns and can often be translated. No attempt has been made to collect those words that specifically double as names for this dictionary. Personal names adapted from English and a variety of (often local) place names are included with a simple gloss.

Particle

Particles or combinations of particles that have a distinctive meaning are given separate citations. Glosses are given sometimes along with a brief usage note. Some of the particles express a grammatical, emphatic or discourse meaning and in such cases no simple gloss can be given.

Prefixes

The forms of the pronoun prefixes are entered as citation forms. The glosses indicate person, gender, number, and case (subjective such as I, he, she or objective such as me, him, her). Transitive pronoun prefixes indicate both subject and object, so, for example, a pronoun that signals she is the subject of the action and he is the object receiving the action would be glossed as she to him. Since there are many sets of such pronoun prefixes each compatible with different kinds of verb stems, a base form of the pronoun prefix is given and a usage note on the compatibilities. Much of this is determined by the beginning sound of the verb stem.

All the combinations of the pre-pronominal prefixes attached before the pronoun prefixes are also listed as citation forms. Sometimes these meld into the pronoun prefixes. Glosses for these are not given since their meanings are so dependent on the particular verb stem they are attached to, but the internal parts of complex combinations are identified by their technical labels. See the grammar for more explanation.

Many of the citation forms in this dictionary are not full words. A dictionary of full words in Oneida would get impossibly large because of the extensive amount of grammatical prefixation on words. In fact, most Oneida words are combinations of quite a few pieces (morphemes) some of which have readily identifiable meanings and some of which serve a connecting or grammatical function. What follows is a brief description of this structure. A more complete description is in the Teaching Grammar.

Name

Oneida verbs consist of a stem, which may be either simple (as simple as a single sound) or quite complex. The stem carries the basic meaning (action or state) of the verb. To the stem are added suffixes usually adding information about tense or grammatical aspect. Stems also have prefixes. All verbs must have a pronoun prefix. The forms of these pronoun prefixes are listed in the dictionary and they generally add information about the number, gender, and person of the subject and object of the verb. In addition there may be more prefixes, sometimes called pre-pronominal prefixes, attached before the pronoun prefixes. There are about a dozen of these, but there are hundreds of ways to combine them. The meanings they contribute to the verb are mostly adverbial although some are grammatically required with particular stems with no additional meaning. Their technical names are: dualic, iterative, cislocative, translocative, aorist (or factual), indefinite, future, partitive, coincident, contrastive, and negative. Their combination forms are listed in the dictionary, but their meanings and conditions of use are largely described in the grammar of Oneida.

The structure of the verb stems themselves all have to include a verb root, but that root may be augmented with several other grammatical or meaning segments in the following order. First there may be a reflexive element, required by some stems and optional in others. It has a number of meanings, most having to do with reflecting the action back to or for the subject (specified in the pronoun prefix). Then there may be an incorporated noun root (perhaps with a noun suffix) which often narrows the meaning of the verb, say from washing to washing hands, or from eating to eating corn, or from running to running along a path. The next slot is for the verb root itself. This specifies the core meaning of the action or state. Then there may be one or more grammatical suffixes which can further modify the basic verb meaning such as doing the action to or for someone (dative), making the action happen (causative), undoing an action (reversive), using a tool or place to do the action (instrumental), or doing the action in several places, times, or ways (distributive). These suffixes may occur in combinations and may have very specialized meanings when used with certain verb roots.

An Oneida verb consists thus of:
prefixes + verb stem + suffix

Prefixes consist of:
(combinations of pre-pronominal prefixes) + pronoun prefixes

Verb stems consist of:
(reflexive) + (noun stem) + verb root + (derivational suffixes)

Nouns

The structure of nouns is simpler than verbs. They are built from noun roots and in some cases the noun root itself makes a complete word. In most cases, however, the noun root has to have a prefix (usually o- or ka-) and often a suffix to turn the root into a complete word. These prefixes and suffixes don’t add any special meaning but most roots are not complete without them. Many of these same noun roots can often be incorporated into complex verb stems. In such cases their form may be slightly altered or a suffix may be added.

It is also common for Oneida to use as a noun a word that is formally constructed as a verb. For example, there is a verb yehyatúkhwaˀ that means one uses it to write with . This word can be used as the description of an action or it can be used to refer to an object - a pen, pencil, or some other writing implement. Verbs used this way are called derived nouns and some develop specialized senses (or at least translations). Kawʌnaye·nás as a verb means it catches words, but used as a derived noun it means tape recorder.

Particles

Any Oneida word that is not structurally a noun or a verb is called a particle. These typically do not have internal structure, although they are often used in combinations. Many correspond to English adverbs or conjunctions. They frequently have a variety of grammatical and discourse functions

Whispering

Many Oneida words have two pronunciations depending on where they occur in the sentence. In a context with other words immediately following, a nonwhispered form is used, but before a pause a form with the last syllable whispered is often used. Sometimes the whispering is the only difference between the two forms and sometimes the difference involves an h, an added e, or changes in intonation.

Regular Sound Variation

any Oneida roots and stems do not have an invariant form but one that changes when the environment of attached roots, prefixes, and suffixes changes. Suffixes affect where the accent goes and that in turn affects vowel length, presence or absence of glottal stops and h's, and glottal stops becoming h's. When two parts of a word are put together, boundary sounds may be lost or added or changed. These variations are describable by a complex set of rules. The rules are given in the grammar but their effects are provided within each entry. Citation forms that are full words can be compared to the base forms given in the grammatical breakdown. Citation forms that are not full words, i.e. roots and stems, are normalized base forms whose alternate forms can be seen in the full words given within their entries.

Speaker Variation

There is, of course, variability among speakers and there is an attempt to reflect at least some of it in this dictionary. Each entry, right after the identification of the part of speech, contains a code.

• OK - means the entry has been confirmed by multiple sources and even if a particular speaker prefers alternative forms, the given forms are acknowledged as acceptable.
• ? - means sources disagree.
• i - means the given forms are accepted and confirmed but the entry is incomplete.

No coding at all means the entry has received only minimal review and confirmation has not been extensive.

While these codings may represent real variation within the language, they may also just indicate that field work has not been comprehensive enough or clever enough to determine the actual lexical knowledge of speakers.

In addition to the above codings, some entries are labeled "ceremonial" at the end of the entry. These have been taken from language used exclusively in or about the Longhouse tradition. These terms tend to be more recent borrowings from the Canadian dialect of Oneida and less familiar to long term Wisconsin residents.