Information about Uto Aztecan Languages

Uto-Aztecan (also Uto-Aztekan) is a Native American language family. It is one of the largest (both in geographical extension and number of languages) and most well-established linguistic families of the Americas. The Uto-Aztecan languages are found from the Great Basin of the western United States (Oregon, Idaho, Utah, California, Nevada, Arizona), through Mexico. 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.

History of classification

The similarities between the Uto-Aztecan languages were noted as early as 1859 by J.C.E. Buschmann. However, Buschmann failed to recognize the genetic affiliation between the Aztecan branch and the Northern Uto-Aztecan languages, instead ascribing the similarities between the two groups to Aztec contact influence. Brinton included the Aztecan languages in the linguistic family 1891 and coined the term Uto-Aztecan. The idea nonetheless remained controversial, and was rejected in Powell's 1891 classification.

The Uto-Aztecan family was established through systematic work in the early 1900s by linguists such as Alfred L. Kroeber, who established the relations between the Shoshonean languages, and especially Edward Sapir, who proved the unity between the Northern and Southern branches of Uto-Aztecan in a series of groundbreaking applications of the comparative method to unwritten Native American languages.

Although established as a family, the subgrouping of the Uto-Aztecan language family remains controversial at present. Only eight groupings are considered unproblematic by a wide consensus of linguists: the Numic, Takic, Tübatulabal, Hopi, Pimic, Taracahitic and Aztecan branches. The higher level relations between these as well as the further subdivision of the single branches remain controversial. The Sonoran branch (including Pimic, Taracahitic and Corachol) and Shoshonean branch (including Numic and Takic,) in particular, are not accepted by some scholars.

Uto-Aztecan has been included in some long range proposals of linguistic super-families. A hypothesis proposed by Benjamin Lee Whorf relating Uto-Aztecan to Kiowa-Tanoan, in an Aztec-Tanoan family has widespread support, but Lyle Campbell (1997) considers this hypothesis improbable. Joseph Greenberg included Uto-Aztecan in his widely criticized and highly controversial Amerind macro-family along with all Native American linguistic families except for Na-Dene.

Geographical extension and Homeland

The proto-Uto-Aztecan homeland is generally thought to have been somewhere in the south western USA - Arizona, New Mexico or northern Mexico where the first split between Northern and Southern branches took place. The homeland of the Numic branch has been placed near Death Valley, California and the Southern Uto-Aztecan languages are thought to have spread out from a place in north-western Mexico in southern Sonora or northern Sinaloa.

Original locations of living and extinct Uto-Aztecan languages in the USA and Mexico

Locations of living Uto-Aztecan languages in Mexico

The proto-Uto-Aztecan language

Main article: 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 (Campbell 1997:136).

Consonants

	Bilabial	Coronal	Palatal	Velar	Labialized velar	Glottal
Stop	*p	*t		*k	*kʷ	*ʔ
Affricate		*c
Fricative		*s				*h
Nasal	*m	*n		*ŋ
Rhotic		*r
Semivowel			*y		*w

Note that in Americanist phonetic notation, <c> and <y> are equivalent to IPA /t͡s/ and /j/, respectively. *n and *ŋ may have actually been *l and *n, respectively.

Genealogy of Uto-Aztecan languages

Uto-Aztecan has long been accepted as a genuine linguistic family, but linguists have not been in complete agreement as to its subdivisions into lower-level branches, languages, and dialects. Below is the classification proposed by Campbell (1997). The notes discuss divergent interpretations proposed by other recent authorities, such as Goddard (1996), Miller (1983), and Mithun (1999). Among the differences are the larger level subgroupings within the northern and southern branches. Some linguists for example have argued for affinities between the Takic and Numic and have grouped them together as "Shoshonean". In the southern branch Some linguists have grouped the Pimic, Taracahitan and Coracholan languages into a larger level group called "Sonoran" but this grouping has also not gained wide acceptace. Some scholars instead see a closer connection between Coracholan and Aztecan and group the two into a common group called "Aztecoid" by W. A. Mason. The ties between Coracholan and Aztecan are also recognized by Kaufman (2001^[1] ) who argues that they are best understood as the result of a period of close contact and linguistic diffusion between the Nahuan and Coracholan groups.

Northern Uto-Aztecan ^[2]

Numic (Plateau Shoshonean)

Western

:Paviotso-Bannock-Snake (Northern Paiute)

:Monache (Mono)

Central

:Shoshoni-Goshiute

:Panamint (Koso, Timbisha)

:Comanche

Southern

:Southern Paiute ^[3]

:Ute <ref name="sopaiute" />

:Chemehuevi <ref name="sopaiute" />

:Kawaiisu

Tubatulabal (Kern River)

Takic (Southern California Shoshoni) ^[4]

Serran ^[5]

:Serrano

:Kitanemuk ^†

Cahuilla ^[6]

Cupeño <ref name="cupan" />

Luiseño-Juaneño <ref name="cupan" /> ^[7]

Gabrielino-Fernandeño ^† <ref name="serran" />

Hopi

Southern Uto-Aztecan <ref name="northsouth" />

Pimic (Tepiman)

Pima-Papago (Upper Piman)

Pima Bajo (Lower Piman)

Tepehuán languages (Northern and Southern)

Tepecano^†

Taracahitic

Tarahumaran

:Tarahumara

:Guarijío (Varihio)

Tubar ^†

Cahita (Yaqui-Mayo-Cahita)

Opatan

:Ópata ^†

:Eudeve (Heve, Dohema) ^†?

Corachol-Aztecan

Cora-Huichol

:Cora

:Huichol

Nahuan (Aztecan, Nahua, Nahuatlan)

:Pochutec ^†

:Core Nahua

::Pipil (Nahuate, Nawat)

::Nahuatl (Mexicano, Aztec)

^† = extinct

Notes

References

• Campbell, Lyle. 1979. Middle American languages. In The Languages of Native America: Historical and Comparative Assessment, edited by Lyle Campbell and Marianne Mithun, pp. 902-1000. University of Texas Press, Austin.
• Campbell, Lyle. 1997. American Indian Languages: The Historical Linguistics of Native America. Oxford University Press.
• Goddard, Ives. (1996). Introduction. In Languages, edited by Ives Goddard, pp. 1-16. Handbook of North American Indians, William C. Sturtevant, general editor, Vol. 17. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
• Miller, Wick R. 1983. Uto-Aztecan languages. In Southwest, edited by Alfonso Ortiz, pp. 113-124. Handbook of North American Indians. William C. Sturtevant, general editor, Vol. 10. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C.
• Mithun, Marianne. 1999. The Languages of Native North America. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-23228-7 (hbk); ISBN 0-521-29875-X.
• Steele, Susan. 1979. Uto-Aztecan: An assessment for historical and comparative linguistics. In The Languages of Native America: Historical and Comparative Assessment, edited by Lyle Campbell and Marianne Mithun, pp. 444-544. University of Texas Press, Austin.
• Súarez, Jorge. 1983. The Mesoamerican Indian Languages. Cambridge University Press.

External links

• Ethnologue:Uto-Aztecan