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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. 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 into parts of Central America (Pipil in El Salvador; extinct varieties 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.
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 Powell's Sonoran and Shoshonean languages in a series of groundbreaking applications of the comparative method to unwritten Native American languages.
Most issues related to Uto-Aztecan subgrouping are uncontroversial. Six groupings are universally accepted as valid--the Numic, Takic, Pimic, Taracahitic, Corachol, and Aztecan branches--along with two ungrouped languages--Tübatulabal and Hopi. Higher level relations between these groups remain controversial. The Sonoran branch (including Pimic, Taracahitic and Corachol) and Shoshonean branch (including Numic, Takic, Tübatulabal and Hopi) first postulated in the 19th century, in particular, are not accepted by a number of 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 formerly had modest support, but Lyle Campbell (1997) and the great majority of modern specialists consider this hypothesis possible, but unproven (Mithun 1999). Joseph Greenberg included Uto-Aztecan in his widely criticized and highly controversial Amerind macro-family along with all Native American linguistic families except for Eskimo-Aleut and Na-Dene.
Geographical extension and Homeland
The proto-Uto-Aztecan homeland is generally thought to have been somewhere in the Southwestern United States - 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 and Mesoamerica
The proto-Uto-Aztecan language
Vowels
Proto-Uto-Aztecan is reconstructed as having an unusual five-vowel system: . 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 |
Genealogy of Uto-Aztecan languages
Uto-Aztecan has long been accepted as a genuine linguistic family, and there is general agreement on the eight primary groups into which it is divided. Disagreement arises as to the question of which varieties are separate languages and which are dialects of a single language; and higher-level groupings. Below is a consensus classification based on Campbell (1997), Mithun (1999), and Goddard (1999). 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 called Northern and Southern Uto-Aztecan. Some linguists have argued for a grouping including Takic, Numic, Hopi, and Tübatulabal and have grouped them together as "Northern Uto-Aztecan." In the southern branch, some linguists formerly grouped the Pimic, Taracahitan, and Corachol languages into a larger level group called "Sonoran", but this grouping has also not gained wide acceptance. Many scholars instead see a closer connection between Pimic, Taracahitan, Corachol, and Aztecan and group the four into a common group called "Southern Uto-Aztecan", but this also has its critics. Ties between Corachol and Aztecan have been recognized by Kaufman (2001 ), 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. Most scholars recognize an increasing need to look at the breakup of Proto-Uto-Aztecan as a case of the gradual disintegration of a dialect continuum (Mithun 1999).
Northern Uto-Aztecan
- Central Numic languages
- Comanche
- Timbisha (a dialect chain with main regional varieties being Western, Central , and Eastern )
- Shoshone (a dialect chain with main regional varieties being Western , Gosiute , Northern , and Eastern )
- Southern Numic languages
- Kawaiisu
- Colorado River (a dialect chain with main regional varieties being Chemehuevi , Southern Paiute , and Ute )
- Western Numic languages
- Mono (two main dialects: Eastern and Western )
- Northern Paiute (a dialect chain with main regional varieties being Southern Nevada , Northern Nevada , Oregon , and Bannock )
Takic
- Serrano-Gabrielino
- Serran
- Cupan
- Cahuilla-Cupeño
Southern Uto-Aztecan
Pimic (Tepiman)
- Pima-Papago (Upper Piman)
- Pima Bajo (Lower Piman)
- Tepehuán languages (Northern and Southern )
- Tepecano †
- Tarahumaran
- Guarijío (Varihio)
- Tubar †
- Opatan
- Ópata †
- Eudeve †? (Heve, Dohema)
- Cora-Huichol
- Nahuan (Aztecan, Nahua, Nahuatlan)
- Pochutec †
- Core Nahua
- Pipil (Nahuate, Nawat) )
- Nahuatl (Mexicano, Aztec )
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 (Campbell 1997).
† = 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.
- Goddard, Ives. 1999. "Native Languages and Language Families of North America." Wall Map. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press.
- 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
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Last updated on Friday June 20, 2008 at 21:31:34 PDT (GMT -0700)
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