The Choctaw curriculum was developed by Dr. Marcia Haag working with Henry Willis and Buster Jefferson. Chahta Anompa: A Textbook of the Choctaw Language, the textbook for the three-semester series of classes, was published in 2001 at the University of Oklahoma Press.
The Curriculum
In Beginning Choctaw the student learns the sounds of Choctaw and the orthography adopted by the Choctaw Nation, the noun phrase, the word order of the basic sentence, the past tense, subject/agent markers, question words, object/affected markers, word formation and verbs with affected subjects, indirect object and possession markers, the future tense and verbs with recipient subjects, and construction of sentences with two or more verbs. In Intermediate Choctaw (Choctaw II), the student learns more complex grammatical patterns, including dependent clauses, commands, subordinate clauses and subject tracking, aspect, clause conjunction, negation, focus, indefinite words and indirect questions, the subjunctive mood. In Advanced Choctaw, the student works with oral narratives and Choctaw written texts and learns more complex grammatical patterning, including manner adverbs, relative clauses, emphatic pronouns, reason clauses, excess and comparison, the potential mood, hortative and optative mood, directional particles and postpositions, discourse markers and time marking.
Faculty
Brenda Samuels
LeRoy Sealy
Michael Stewart
