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32-453: The Tataviam language is an extinct Uto-Aztecan language formerly spoken by the Tataviam people of the upper Santa Clara River basin , Santa Susana Mountains , and Sierra Pelona Mountains in southern California . It had become extinct by 1916 and is known only from a few early records, notably a few words recorded by Alfred L. Kroeber and John P. Harrington in the early decades of

64-449: A genetic relation between Corachol and Nahuan (e.g. Merrill (2013) ). Kaufman recognizes similarities between Corachol and Aztecan, but explains them by diffusion instead of genetic evolution. Most scholars view the breakup of Proto-Uto-Aztecan as a case of the gradual disintegration of a dialect continuum. Below is a representation of the internal classification of the language family based on Shaul (2014) . The classification reflects

96-422: A language family since the early 1900s, and six subgroups are generally accepted as valid: Numic , Takic , Pimic, Taracahitic , Corachol , and Aztecan . That leaves two ungrouped languages: Tübatulabal and Hopi (sometimes termed " isolates within the family"). Some recent studies have begun to question the unity of Taracahitic and Takic and computer-assisted statistical studies have begun to question some of

128-532: A northern branch including all the languages of the US and a southern branch including all the languages of Mexico, although it is still being discussed whether this is best understood as a genetic classification or as a geographical one. Below this level of classification the main branches are well accepted: Numic (including languages such as Comanche and Shoshoni ) and the Californian languages (formerly known as

160-480: A noun and possessive affixes. Pied-piping with inversion is a special word order found in wh-questions. It appears to be found in all Mesoamerican languages, but is rare outside Mesoamerica. All the languages of Mesoamerica have vigesimal , or base twenty numeral systems. This system has also spread to some languages just outside the Mesoamerican cultural area. No language with verb-final basic word order

192-507: A selected bibliography of grammars, dictionaries on many of the individual languages.( = extinct ) In addition to the above languages for which linguistic evidence exists, it is suspected that among dozens of now extinct, undocumented or poorly known languages of northern Mexico, many were Uto-Aztecan. A large number of languages known only from brief mentions are thought to have been Uto-Aztecan languages that became extinct before being documented. An "Aztec–Tanoan" macrofamily that unites

224-472: A well-founded area: arguably "among the very strongest that are known" (Campbell, Kaufman & Smith-Stark. 1986 p. 556). They also argued that some of the discarded traits might also be taken into consideration as strengthening the proposal, but they were not sufficient by themselves to act as foundation and other well-documented traits of a more ethnolinguistic character might not be considerable as traits that are linguistic but cultural. The following

256-461: Is Shoshoni , which is spoken as far north as Salmon, Idaho , while the southernmost is the Nawat language of El Salvador and Nicaragua . Ethnologue gives the total number of languages in the family as 61, and the total number of speakers as 1,900,412. Speakers of Nahuatl languages account for over 85% of these. The internal classification of the family often divides it into two branches:

288-485: Is a sprachbund containing many of the languages natively spoken in the cultural area of Mesoamerica . This sprachbund is defined by an array of syntactic, lexical and phonological traits as well as a number of ethnolinguistic traits found in the languages of Mesoamerica , which belong to a number of language families, such as Uto-Aztecan , Mayan , Totonacan , Oto-Manguean and Mixe–Zoque languages as well as some language isolates and unclassified languages known to

320-435: Is a brief description of the linguistic traits considered by Campbell, Kaufman and Smith-Stark as defining the Mesoamerican language area. Many of the Mesoamerican languages show a particular kind of construction for possession of nominals. The commonly found construction is "his noun1 noun2" meaning "noun2's noun1" ("his" often is a prefix in this construction), cf. his genitive in some Germanic languages. For example, in

352-501: Is attested in Mesoamerica even though most of the languages bordering on Mesoamerica are verb final ( SOV ). Also no languages with switch reference are attested in Mesoamerica, but this is supposed by Campbell, Kaufman and Smith-Stark to be a secondary effect of the Mesoamerican languages not being verb final. A strong evidence of diffusion throughout Mesoamerica is provided by a number of semantic calques widely found throughout

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384-586: Is still debate about whether to accept the proposed basic split between "Northern Uto-Aztecan" and "Southern Uto-Aztecan" languages. Northern Uto-Aztecan corresponds to Powell's "Shoshonean", and the latter is all the rest: Powell's "Sonoran" plus Aztecan. Northern Uto-Aztecan was proposed as a genetic grouping by Jeffrey Heath in Heath (1978) based on morphological evidence, and Alexis Manaster Ramer in Manaster Ramer (1992) adduced phonological evidence in

416-675: Is that Tataviam was a Chumashan language , from the Ventureño language and others, of the Chumash -Ventureño and other Chumash groups, that had been influenced by the neighboring Uto-Aztecan speaking peoples (Beeler and Klar 1977). However, the Beeler and Klar proposal is based on a word-list collected by C. Hart Merriam while the Takic proposals are based on different word lists collected by Alfred Kroeber and John P. Harrington. The current opinion

448-598: Is that the Merriam word lists represent a dialect of Ventureño (called Alliklik or Castac Chumash) and the Kroeber and Harrington word list represents a divergent Takic language (Tataviam). Uto-Aztecan languages The Uto-Aztecan language family is one of the largest linguistic families in the Americas in terms of number of speakers, number of languages, and geographic extension. The northernmost Uto-Aztecan language

480-515: The Kʼicheʼ language , a Mayan language , u-tzi' le achih "the man's dog" literally means "his-dog the man". The similar construction in Nahuatl would be i:-itskʷin in tɬaːkatɬ . Another trait shared by nearly all Mesoamerican languages is relational nouns . Relational nouns are used to express spatial and other relations, much like prepositions in most Indo-European languages but composed of

512-665: The Nahuan languages . The homeland of the Uto-Aztecan languages is generally considered to have been in the Southwestern United States or possibly Northwestern Mexico. An alternative theory has proposed the possibility that the language family originated in southern Mexico, within the Mesoamerican language area , but this has not been generally considered convincing. Uto-Aztecan languages are spoken in

544-781: The Takic group, including Cahuilla and Luiseño ) account for most of the Northern languages. Hopi and Tübatulabal are languages outside those groups. The Southern languages are divided into the Tepiman languages (including O'odham and Tepehuán ), the Tarahumaran languages (including Raramuri and Guarijio ), the Cahitan languages (including Yaqui and Mayo ), the Coracholan languages (including Cora and Huichol ), and

576-591: The 20th century. These word lists were not from native speakers, but from the children of the last speakers who remembered a few words and phrases. Scholars have recognized Tataviam as belonging to the Uto-Aztecan language family, specifically the putative Takic branch. Based on the most thorough and most recent analysis, it is part of the Serran group along with Kitanemuk and Serrano (Munro and Johnson, 2001). An earlier alternative suggestion by some scholars

608-579: The North American mountain ranges and adjacent lowlands of the western United States in the states of Oregon , Idaho , Montana , Utah , California , Nevada , and Arizona . In Mexico , they are spoken in the states of Sonora , Sinaloa , Chihuahua , Nayarit , Durango , Zacatecas , Jalisco , Michoacán , Guerrero , San Luis Potosí , Hidalgo , Puebla , Veracruz , Morelos , Estado de México , and in Mexico City . Classical Nahuatl ,

640-513: The Uto-Aztecan languages with the Tanoan languages of the southwestern United States was first proposed by Edward Sapir in the early 20th century, and later supported with potential lexical evidence by other scholars. This proposal has received much criticism about the validity of the proposed cognate sets and has been largely abandoned since the end of the last century as unproven. Mesoamerican language area The Mesoamerican language area

672-406: The area. For example, in many Mesoamerican languages the words for specific objects are constructed by compounding two different stems, and in many cases these two stems are semantically identical although linguistically unrelated. Among these calques are: Other traits found in Mesoamerican languages, but not found by Campbell, Kaufman and Smith-Stark to be prominent enough to be conclusive for

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704-469: The conclusion that their origins were very likely caused by diffusion rather than inheritance, the standard criteria for defining a sprachbund. In their 1986 paper "Meso-America as a Linguistic Area" the above authors explored several proposed areal features of which they discarded most as being weakly attested, possibly by chance or inheritance or not confined to the Mesoamerican region. However, five traits in particular were shown to be widely attested among

736-415: The decision to split up the previous Taracahitic and Takic groups, that are no longer considered to be valid genetic units. Whether the division between Northern and Southern languages is best understood as geographical or phylogenetic is under discussion. The table contains demographic information about number of speakers and their locations based on data from The Ethnologue . The table also contains links to

768-500: The early 1900s Alfred L. Kroeber filled in the picture of the Shoshonean group, while Edward Sapir proved the unity among Aztecan, "Sonoran", and "Shoshonean". Sapir's applications of the comparative method to unwritten Native American languages are regarded as groundbreaking. Voegelin, Voegelin & Hale (1962) argued for a three-way division of Shoshonean, Sonoran and Aztecan, following Powell. As of about 2011, there

800-465: The form of a sound law. Terrence Kaufman in Kaufman (1981) accepted the basic division into Northern and Southern branches as valid. Other scholars have rejected the genealogical unity of either both nodes or the Northern node alone. Wick R. Miller 's argument was statistical, arguing that Northern Uto-Aztecan languages displayed too few cognates to be considered a unit. On the other hands he found

832-558: The language of the Aztecs , and its modern relatives are part of the Uto-Aztecan family. The Pipil language , an offshoot of Nahuatl , spread to Central America by a wave of migration from Mexico, and formerly had many speakers there. Now it has gone extinct in Guatemala , Honduras , and Nicaragua , and it is nearly extinct in western El Salvador , all areas dominated by use of Spanish. Uto-Aztecan has been accepted by linguists as

864-497: The languages, with boundaries coinciding with that of the Mesoamerican region and having a probable origin through diffusion. They then compared the five traits with the traits defining other language areas considered to be well-established, like the Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area and Balkan language area . They concluded that by comparison the proposed Mesoamerican language area could indeed be considered

896-471: The long-held assumptions and consensuses. As to higher-level groupings, disagreement has persisted since the 19th century. Presently scholars also disagree as to where to draw language boundaries within the dialect continua . The similarities among the Uto-Aztecan languages were noted as early as 1859 by J. C. E. Buschmann , but he failed to recognize the genetic affiliation between the Aztecan branch and

928-425: The number of cognates among Southern Uto-Aztecan languages to suggest a genetic relation. This position was supported by subsequent lexicostatistic analyses by Cortina-Borja & Valiñas-Coalla (1989) and Cortina-Borja, Stuart-Smith & Valiñas-Coalla (2002) . Reviewing the debate, Haugen (2008) considers the evidence in favor of the genetic unity of Northern Uto-Aztecan to be convincing, but remains agnostic on

960-435: The region. The similarities noted between many of the languages of Mesoamerica have led linguistic scholars to propose the constitution of a sprachbund, from as early as 1959. The proposal was not consolidated until 1986, however, when Lyle Campbell , Terrence Kaufman and Thomas Smith-Stark employed a rigid linguistic analysis to demonstrate that the similarities between a number of languages were indeed considerable, with

992-496: The rest. He ascribed the similarities between the two groups to diffusion. Daniel Garrison 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

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1024-520: The validity of Southern Uto-Aztecan as a genetic grouping. Hill (2011) also considered the North/South split to be valid based on phonological evidence, confirming both groupings. Merrill (2013) adduced further evidence for the unity of Southern Uto-Aztecan as a valid grouping. Hill (2011) also rejected the validity of the Takic grouping decomposing it into a Californian areal grouping together with Tubatulabal. Some classifications have posited

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