Uto-Aztecan languages

Uto-Aztecan or Uto-Aztekan /ˈjuːtoʊ.æzˈtɛkən/ is a Native American language family consisting of over 30 languages. Uto-Aztecan languages are found from the Great Basin of the Western United States (Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Utah, California, Nevada, Arizona), through western, central and southern Mexico (incl. Sonora, Chihuahua, Nayarit, Durango, Zacatecas, Jalisco, Michoacán, Guerrero, San Luis Potosí, Hidalgo, Puebla, Veracruz, Morelos, Estado de México, and the Federal District), and one dialect of Nahuatl is nearly extinct in western El Salvador and has gone extinct in Guatemala and Honduras. Utah is named after the indigenous Uto-Aztecan Ute people. Classical Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, and its modern relatives are part of the Uto-Aztecan family.

Proto-language and Uto-Aztecan homeland

The Proto–Uto-Aztecan language is the hypothetical common ancestor of the Uto-Aztecan languages. Authorities on the history of the language group have usually placed the Proto-Uto-Aztecan homeland in the border region between the USA and Mexico, namely the upland regions of Arizona and New Mexico and the adjacent areas of the Mexican states of Sonora and Chihuaua, roughly corresponding to the Sonoran Desert and the western part of the Chihuahuan Desert. The proto-language would have been spoken by mesolithic foragers in Aridoamerica, about 5,000 years ago. Based on her reconstruction of maize related vocabulary in Proto-Uto-Aztecan, Hill (2001) has proposed a homeland further south, making the assumed speakers of Proto-Uto-Aztecan maize cultivators in Mesoamerica, who were gradually pushed north, bringing maize cultivation with them, during the period of roughly 4,500 to 3,000 years ago, the geographic diffusion of speakers corresponding to the breakup of linguistic unity.^[1] This hypothesis has been criticized on several grounds, and is not generally accepted by Uto-Aztecanists.^{[2] [3][4][5][6]}

The homeland of the Proto-Uto-Aztecan has been placed in the borderlands between Arizona, Northern Mexico and southern California. The Homeland of the Numic languages has been placed in Southern California near Death Valley, and the homeland of the proposed Southern Uto-Aztecan group has been placed on the coast of Sonora.^[7]

Vowels

Proto-Uto-Aztecan is reconstructed as having an unusual five-vowel system: *i *a *u *o *ɨ. Before Langacker (1970) demonstrated that the fifth vowel should be reconstructed as *ɨ as opposed to *e, there had been a long-running dispute over the proper reconstruction (Campbell 1997:136).^[8]

Consonants

*n and *ŋ may have actually been *l and *n, respectively.

Geographic distribution

Present day Locations of living Uto-Aztecan languages in Mexico and Mesoamerica

Classification of Uto-Aztecan languages

History of classification

Uto-Aztecan has been accepted by linguists as a language family since the early 1900s, and six subgroups are universally accepted as valid: Numic, Takic, Pimic, Taracahitic, Corachol, and Aztecan. This leaves two ungrouped languages—Tübatulabal and Hopi (sometimes termed "isolates within the family"). As to higher level groupings, disagreement has persisted since the 19th century. Presently there is also disagreement as to where to draw language boundaries within dialect continua.

The similarities between the Uto-Aztecan languages were noted as early as 1859 by J.C.E. Buschmann, who however failed to recognize the genetic affiliation between the Aztecan branch and the rest, instead ascribing the similarities between the two groups to diffusion. Brinton added the Aztecan languages to the family in 1891 and coined the term Uto-Aztecan. John Wesley Powell, however, rejected the claim in his own classification of North American indigenous languages (also published in 1891). Powell recognized two language families: "Shoshonean" (encompassing Takic, Numic, Hopi, and Tübatulabal) and "Sonoran" (encompassing Pimic, Taracahitan, and Corachol). In the early 1900s Alfred L. Kroeber filled in the picture of the Shoshonean group, while Edward Sapir proved the unity between Aztecan, "Sonoran", and "Shoshonean". Sapir's applications of the comparative method to unwritten Native American languages are regarded as groundbreaking.

As of about 2000, the most widely accepted view divides the family into "Northern Uto-Aztecan" and "Southern Uto-Aztecan". The former is Powell's "Shoshonean", while the latter is all the rest, i.e., Powell's "Sonoran" plus Aztecan. But since about 1980, there have been dissenters. They reject either both nodes or the Northern node alone.^[9][10][11] Although Kaufman recognizes similarities between Corachol and Aztecan, he explains them by diffusion instead of genetic evolution.^[12] Most scholars view the breakup of Proto-Uto-Aztecan as a case of the gradual disintegration of a dialect continuum.^[13]

Present scheme

Below is the current most prevalent classification as synthesized from Campbell (1997), Mithun (1999), and Goddard (1999). For most of the individual languages and proposed nodes, links are provided to a selected bibliography of grammars, dictionaries, and linguistic researches. ( ^† = extinct)

Northern Uto-Aztecan

Hopi^{[A 1]}

Tübatulabal^{[A 2]}

Numic^{[A 3]}

• Central Numic languages
  • Comanche^{[A 4]}
  • Timbisha (a dialect chain with main regional varieties being Western, Central,^{[A 5]} and Eastern^{[A 6]})
  • Shoshone (a dialect chain with main regional varieties being Western,^{[A 7]} Gosiute,^{[A 8]} Northern,^{[A 9]} and Eastern^{[A 10]})
• Southern Numic languages
  • Kawaiisu^{[A 11]}
  • Colorado River (a dialect chain with main regional varieties being Chemehuevi,^{[A 12]} Southern Paiute,^{[A 13]} and Ute^{[A 14]})
• Western Numic languages
  • Mono (two main dialects: Eastern^{[A 15]} and Western^{[A 16]})
  • Northern Paiute (a dialect chain with main regional varieties being Southern Nevada,^{[A 17]} Northern Nevada,^{[A 18]} Oregon,^{[A 19]} and Bannock^{[A 20]})

Takic^{[A 21]}

Serrano–Gabrielino

Serran

Serrano^{[A 22]}

Kitanemuk ^{†[A 23]}

Gabrielino–Fernandeño ^†

Cupan

Cahuilla–Cupeño

Cahuilla^{[A 24]}

Cupeño†^{[A 25]}

Luiseño–Juaneño^{[A 26]}

Southern Uto-Aztecan

Pimic (Tepiman)

Pima–Papago^{[A 27]} (Upper Piman)

Pima Bajo^{[A 28]} (Lower Piman)

Tepehuán languages (Northern^{[A 29]} and Southern^{[A 30]})

Tepecano^{[A 31] †}

Taracahitic

Tarahumaran

Tarahumara^{[A 32]}

Guarijío^{[A 33]} (Varihio)

Tubar^{[A 34] †}

Cahita^{[A 35]} (Yaqui^{[A 36]}–Mayo^{[A 37]}–Cahita)

Opatan

Ópata^{[A 38] †}

Eudeve^{[A 39] †}? (Heve, Dohema)

Corachol

Cora^{[A 40]}

Huichol^{[A 41]}

Aztecan

Pochutec^{[A 42] †}

Nahuan^{[A 43]} (Aztecan, Nahua, Nahuatlan)

Core Nahua

Pipil (Nahuate, Nawat)^{[A 44]}

Nahuatl (Mexicano, Aztec)^{[A 45][A 46]}

In addition to the above languages for which linguistic evidence exists, there were several dozen extinct languages with little or no documentation in Northern Mexico, many of which were probably Uto-Aztecan.^[14]

The proto–Uto-Aztecan language

Vowels

Proto-Uto-Aztecan is reconstructed as having an unusual five-vowel system: *i *a *u *o *ɨ. Langacker (1970) demonstrated that the fifth vowel should be reconstructed as *ɨ as opposed to *e—there had been a long-running dispute over the proper reconstruction.^[15]

Consonants

*n and *ŋ may have actually been *l and *n, respectively.

Notes

Bibliography

• Campbell, Lyle (1997). American Indian Languages: The Historical Linguistics of Native America. Oxford Universiity Press. 
• Goddard, Ives (1996) "Introduction" in Goddard, Ives Handbook of North American Indians 17 Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution pp. 1–16 
• Kaufman, Terrence (2001) Nawa linguistic prehistory Mesoamerican Language Documentation Project http://www.albany.edu/anthro/maldp/papers.htm 
• Miller, Wick R. (1983) "Uto-Aztecan languages" in Ortiz, Alfonso Handbook of North American Indians 10 Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution pp. 113–124 
• Mithun, Marianne (1999). The languages of Native America. Cambridge University Press. 

Further reading

• Campbell, Lyle (1979). "Middle American languages". In Campbell, Lyle; Mithun, Marianne. The Languages of Native America: Historical and Comparative Assessment. Austin: University of Texas Press. pp. 902–1000. 
• Goddard, Ives (1999). Native languages and language families of North America (wall map). Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press. 
• Steele, Susan. "Uto-Aztecan: An assessment for historical and comparative linguistics". In Campbell, Lyle; Mithun, Marianne.. The Languages of Native America: Historical and Comparative Assessment.. Austin: University of Texas Press. pp. 444–544. 
• Suárez, Jorge (1983). The Mesoamerican Indian languages. Cambridge University Press. 

Grammars or linguistic researches for individual languages and Uto-Aztecan groupings

External links

• Uto-Aztecan.org, a website devoted to the comparative study of the Uto-Aztecan language family
• Swadesh vocabulary lists for Uto-Aztecan languages (from Wiktionary's Swadesh-list appendix)
• Ethnologue: Uto-Aztecan
• LINGUIST List MultiTree Project: Uto-Aztecan