Gulf languages

The Golf languages ​​form a hypothetical North American language family, which is composed of the Muskogee languages ​​on the one hand and four extinct, so far considered as isolated individual languages ​​, namely, Natchez, Tunica, Chitimacha and Atakapa.

The Golf languages ​​have been proposed by Mary Haas ( Haas 1951, 1952) as a language family, but this family could not be uniquely identified by comparative linguistics. Historical linguists such as Lyle Campbell ( Campbell and Mithun 1979, Campbell 1997) mention the relationship as unproven, though some Muskogee linguists believe that the Muskogee languages ​​are at least related to Natchez ( Campbell 1997:305 ).

Anyway, some saw specialists Muskogee linguistics, including Mary Haas and Pamela Munro ( Munro 1995), the hypothesis of a golf - language family as promising; Haas said that the most closely related language of the Muskogee languages ​​would Natchez, followed by Tunica, and Atakapa - dubious - Chitimacha. One difficulty in verifying the hypothesis represented by the lack of accessible primary sources. Most of the records to Natchez and Chitimacha are still unpublished and kept in archives.